​Data Center Hardware Shortages in the Age of COVID-19

We all know that COVID-19 changed the world of work, and those changes put new demands on IT that have been hard to address.

Since March, cloud service utilization exploded as more people work from home and remain connected with friends and family through cloud-based applications.

Some industries are seeing as much as a 30 percent increase in network capacity utilization.

And even the largest technology companies, including Google and Amazon, have had outages as they rushed to add more data center hardware to cope with demand.

But there’s a basic problem afflicting everyone in the technology world. As the world searches for a light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, leading tech companies are working to overcome supply chain shortages of critical components for servers, storage, and networking products.

Since March, businesses have been contending with manufacturing shutdowns in China and other parts of the world. Interruptions in commercial flights have nearly eliminated their traditional shipping methods, forcing many to charter private flights with excessive fees. And shipping routes are opened and closed with as little as 24-hour-notice.

Many of the same companies that build servers and storage solutions are also reallocating resources to meet consumer demands for mobile devices like tablets and laptops while maintaining social distancing requirements in factories.

When demand is at its highest, businesses and organizations are under increasing pressure to maintain and expand data center capacity, making the scarcity of network servers felt on a global scale and growing lead-times increasing from days to weeks.

Without the data center resources to repair failed hardware, cope with expansion requirements, and even support new initiatives, many companies find it challenging to keep up. They simply can’t wait on new tier-one servers and storage solutions to make their way through congested and depleted channels.

Is there a way forward when the major manufacturers are reporting thirty-day lead times?

Yes, there is. Refurbished equipment, sitting on a shelf, ready to ship, offers an alternative to high prices and long delays.

And ServerMonkey is the expert at buying, testing, customizing, delivering, and deploying refurbished servers, storage, and networking from all the leading Tier 1 manufacturers.

With ServerMonkey, you can fill critical data centers vacancies right away, with lower costs and greater ROI. And spending less allows you to add more hardware to scale with demand. It's a great way to make your IT investments go further without the wait.

Leading up to the pandemic, organizations were already in the process of upgrading their data centers with new equipment to meet the growing demands of cloud migrations and achieve other IT initiatives. During this time, ServerMonkey expanded its inventory by buying, testing, and certifying thousands of servers and storage units.

ServerMonkey has been helping businesses and organizations lower infrastructure costs by upgrading IT and data center resources with the industry's best servers, storage, networking hardware, and services.

We make refurbished servers, storage, and networking solutions from HPE, Dell, IBM, and Cisco available for a fraction of the cost of new equipment. And we cover it with a one-year standard warranty, upgradeable up to 24X7 support, 4-hour resolution, and next-business-day replacement.

To ensure the quality of our refurbished equipment, we put our servers, storage, and networking products through extensive evaluation, upgrades, and testing to meet factory requirements and identify issues before they’re deployed with critical data and applications.

Our quality program includes a five-step process designed and implemented by certified quality professionals to ensure you receive factory-new quality refurbished equipment. We can also configure your product with full diagnostics and firmware updates. Better quality equals better performance and greater reliability.

Before your equipment goes out the door, we assess everything with one final inspection to ensure that all qualities and standards are met. We can also provide additional testing with software if needed.

Just because you're buying refurbished doesn't mean you're buying off-the-rack, one-size-fits-all solutions. We know it's essential to customize your equipment to meet your specific performance needs. The great thing about refurbished hardware is that you can tailor your products to meet your business needs. You can custom configure your CPUs, hard drives, raid controllers, network cards, power supplies, and more.

Once your equipment arrives, ServerMonkey can assist with the installation and onsite testing. This applies to upgrades as well as new equipment or relocating existing systems. We will unload and unpack your hardware, configure your racks, and connect your cabling. Before we go, we will document your assets, take photos, compare against purchase orders, and label every piece. We'll even remove trash and clean the area before leaving.

Refurbished tier-one servers, storage, and networking equipment can be matched to critical applications and data within just a few days, bypassing delays by an overburdened supply chain and avoiding price hikes associated with the pandemic.

Ready to learn more? Fill out this form and we’ll be in touch right away.