Remote Hands: What to Expect From Your Co-location Provider
One of the practical realities of co-location is that your equipment is somewhere else. Remote hands — on-site technicians acting on your instructions — bridges that gap.
Typical remote-hands tasks
- Power-cycling a server or switch
- Checking indicator lights and reading labels
- Reseating or replacing cables and optics
- Swapping failed disks or power supplies with spares you provide
- Receiving and unpacking deliveries
- Connecting a console cable for remote access
“Smart hands” for more
Complex work — racking new equipment, cabling, OS installs — is often billed as smart hands, at a higher rate or by quotation.
Making it work well
- Label everything: racks, devices, ports and cables, matching your documentation.
- Keep rack elevation drawings and port maps shared with the provider.
- Store spares on site in a labelled box.
- Install out-of-band access — a console server with a separate connection — so many tasks never need hands at all.
- Write clear tickets: device, location, exact action, expected result.
Check the terms
Response times, hours included in the contract, billing increments and after-hours rates vary widely.
Our co-location service includes coordinated remote and smart hands. Ask us.
