Free Up Your Team with our Managed Storage Monitoring Service for IBM Systems

Keeping your data storage systems running smoothly is critical, but it’s a constant drain on resources. Between updates, performance tuning, capacity planning, and the inevitable fire drills, your team’s time is stretched thin. They’re pulled away from strategic projects, and frankly, they’re probably burning out. And now, the demands on IT teams are growing exponentially. You’re not just managing storage anymore; you’re juggling compliance, security, AI adoption, and complex integrations. It’s more roles, more responsibilities, and often, the same, or even fewer, resources. You’re being asked to do more with less, and it’s not sustainable. What if you could offload the day-to-day grind of storage management without losing control or visibility?

Covenco’s Managed Storage Service offers a practical solution for busy IT teams in the UK facing these very challenges, specifically designed for environments leveraging IBM storage systems. Our service is predicated on the use of IBM Storage Insights*, providing the deep visibility and control necessary for effective management. If you haven’t already implemented Storage Insights, we can help you acquire it. We can also assist with upgrading to Storage Insights Pro**, unlocking even more powerful features for enhanced monitoring and management. We understand the pressures you face, and we’ve built our service around proactive support, expert knowledge, and a commitment to keeping your systems running at peak performance. We’re not just monitoring; we’re actively managing your storage so you can focus on the bigger picture – the strategic initiatives that actually move your business forward.

Our approach is simple: we use smart technology and experienced engineers to keep a close eye on your systems. Leveraging IBM Storage Insights (or Storage Insights Pro), we gain real-time dashboards and at-a-glance insights into your IBM storage environment. Combined with proactive alerts from your storage arrays, we’re usually aware of potential problems before they impact your users. This proactive approach is crucial when even a small outage can have significant repercussions.

Our team of IBM-qualified technicians handles everything from routine maintenance like firmware updates and security patching, to more complex tasks like performance optimisation and capacity planning. And because we know that not everyone is running the latest hardware, we support both new and older IBM systems. We’re pragmatic; we work with what you have. This is particularly valuable when budgets are tight, and upgrades are delayed.

When things go wrong – and they sometimes do – you need a quick response. Our team is available 24/7, with on-call support and weekend coverage for those critical situations. We’ll diagnose the issue rapidly, implement a fix, and keep you in the loop through our streamlined ticket management system, all within the scope of your agreed SLA’s. This rapid response can be the difference between a minor inconvenience and a major outage.

Beyond systems support, we offer a full range of services, from initial consultation and architecture design to physical installation, SAN implementation, VM integration, and data migration. Whether you need full systems management or prefer a co-managed approach, we can tailor a solution to fit your specific requirements. We can also help you plan for future growth and ensure your storage infrastructure is scalable and adaptable.

We also understand that one size doesn’t fit all. That’s why we offer different service levels, allowing you to choose the right balance of support and cost. And if none of our standard plans quite fit, we’ll work with you to create a custom solution that meets your exact needs. This flexibility is essential for all customers with busy IT environments.

Partnering with Covenco means gaining access to a team of storage and virtualisation experts. We’ve seen it all, and we can help you navigate the complexities of your data centre. Our goal is to give you confidence that your data is secure, available, and performing optimally, without the overhead of managing it all yourself. Whether your systems are in your data centre or a hosted environment, your data remains under your control. And with our 25+ years of experience in data backup, replication, and recovery, you can trust us with your critical data resiliency. We understand the nuances of storage management and know how to keep your IBM systems optimised and performing at their best.

Our ISO27001 accreditation demonstrates our commitment to data security. Our extensive inventory of over 40,000 hardware products means we can quickly source replacements and upgrades. And our multi-vendor expertise – including IBM, Dell EMC, and NetApp – ensures we can support your diverse environment. We also integrate seamlessly with leading data protection solutions like Veeam and IBM Spectrum Protect.

Ultimately, Covenco’s Managed Storage Service is about freeing up your team. It’s about giving them back their time so they can focus on strategic initiatives, innovation, and the projects that actually move your business forward. It’s about ensuring your critical IBM infrastructure is protected and performing optimally, even as the demands on your IT team continue to grow. Let us handle the storage, so you can handle the future.

*The tool set we use to monitor your IBM Storage Environment is IBM Storage Insights (or Storage Insights Pro where applicable). Storage Insights is an IBM tool that is included free-of-charge with every new IBM FlashSystem purchase, and available to use for the duration that the system is under IBM Warranty (or IBM Post-Warranty Support thereafter).

**Storage Insights Pro, which Covenco typically includes with its IBM FlashSystem offerings, is a premium version that provides additional functionality, and is purchased on a subscription basis.

Both Storage Insights and Storage Insights Pro are a prerequisite to our monitoring service, but they are not included in the monitoring solution itself. It is therefore requirement that the customer continues to renew their Storage Insights Pro licensing or at least continue to have IBM support in place to enable the standard Storage Insights to be accessed.

Covenco can set up and configure your Storage Insights to provide real-time dashboards that provide at-a-glance information on systems requiring attention. Proactive email alerts directly from your storage arrays ensure immediate awareness of potential issues, enabling our IBM-qualified technicians deliver expert maintenance, including regular firmware and security updates, performance optimisation, and capacity planning and management.