Joyce Solutions

JSC are offering free Data Centre Migration - Technical, Strategy and Planning Advice Sessions with one of our senior migration specialists at the Data Centre World Show at the Excel Centre London on 12/13th April.  We are booking 20 minute sessions to talk about specific areas of your DC migration strategy, information importance and management, streamlining, risk management/avoidance and technical planning.  If you are considering any sort of technical migration within your environment and would like to book a session, please contact us via email or see us at the show to take advantage of this great opportunity.

[email protected] or 01245 392572

JSC are offering free Data Centre Migration - Technical, Strategy and Planning Advice Sessions with one of our senior migration specialists at the DCW16 show on 12/13th April at ExCeL London.  We are booking sessions to talk about specific areas of your DC migration strategy, information importance and management, streamlining, risk management/avoidance and technical planning.  If you are considering any sort of technical migration within your environment and would like to book a session, please contact us via email or see us at the show to take advantage of this great opportunity.

Over at the O2

JSC at The Chelmsford City Showcase for Business

We Won!

We're pleased to announce that we're helping to sponsor the Soundstock Festival taking place on the 2nd and 3rd May this year at Boyton Hall, Roxwell. 

Born from a desire to help others, SoundStock Music & Comedy Festival Essex is here to raise much needed funds for worthy causes.  New charities are selected annually and this year the chosen causes are Essex Air Ambulance, Wheels for Stanley and Chelmsford Community Radio.

We're going to be trialling our own  social media experiment this week @datacentreworld.  With the guys at logotag​ we've created an #NFC enabled stand which will give instant connectivity to our main social media pages.

Why's this important you might ask.  Well, have a look on-line at methods of funnelling traffic to your site, improving SEO and being more accessible to your potential clients.  Any digital marketer will tell you that the social media tools are there to be embraced, used and to offer your clients a more instant and accessible "human" face to your operation.

We're also hoping to save the dead time and potential loss of business between someone passing you their business card and you making contact in the traditional way; which could be a few days.  With logotag​ technology in place not only can we connect with the potential client instantly, through any of our social media channels, but we can measure it too.  The possibilities for this type of instant access at an expo are limitless.  For example, the delegates at the show will be accessible through social media (Twitter messaging, Facebook, LinkedIn etc) even once they have left the stand which means that we can still engage with them even if they move on to other stands, competitors or leave.

Through logotag​'s inbuilt Google Analytics engine, we'll be measuring the results both before and after the show to establish whether we've had an increase in traffic, followers, page views etc.  We're hoping that as the show has over 8000 delegates from both data centre and cloud communities that we'll have some interesting results to review when we get back to JSC HQ.

If you're not familiar with NFC technology or logotag​, take a look here and navigate through to the FAQs section http://logotag.co.uk/.

Register for your tickets at datacentreworld/joyce/solutions and visit us on Stand B08 to discuss your DC Infrastructure needs.

Whether you're considering physically migrating a small quantity of your servers and network assets or your entire data centre, cabling and connectivity will be one of your leading considerations for the move and requires excellent planning, organisation and forethought for it to be a success.

One of the very best approaches to data cabling is to "pre-patch"; that is to install new power, copper and data cabling, labelled and identifiable, into the racks and at the U positions required for the incoming equipment.  The technique is dependent on core infrastructure (racks, power and patching) being in place but when completed by skilled engineers, can be successfully implemented in the absence of any server or network equipment.  

At first glance, you may consider this approach to be expensive and time consuming but when considered in the wider context and the alternative methods which are available, we think you'll see the value in the technique.

We've taken some time to list some of the main benefits and constraints of Pre-Patching below, we hope you find it useful.

Constraints of Re-cabling Devices During/Post Move (not Pre-Patched)

It's generally slower to re-commission devices when re-cabling devices on the move day.

Any issues with patch schedules and rack plans will not be discovered until the move day and could potentially prove extremely disruptive, require additional staff to resolve issues and introduce significant delays.

Physical constraints of working within DC environments with limited space sometimes results in having to minimise the number of engineers working at the rear of the racks, therefore introducing potential delays.

If cabling is to run between racks either directly or through additional “hops” via patch panels, physical constraints again are prevalent due to only being able to have one engineer at the rear of a rack at any one time.  Patching tasks often have to be split in this situation with information passed between team members on the day in order to complete the final connections/patches.

If, by re-cabling on the day, there is a reliance on recovery of existing cabling from the source site, additional delays to the source site de-rack and migration will be experienced and additional risk introduced due to re-using patch and power cables that could be faulty.

Using "recovered" cables can introduce delays due to the preparation required to size, check and prepare them (remove old labels and clips etc).  Cable sizing is often an issue too as even with similar rack layouts being adopted at source and destination, rack infrastructure differs from site to site and therefore requires a different spread of sizes.  Unless known, accounted and planned for, issues will be experienced on move day.

Due to prevalent time constraints on any move day, cable routing, labelling and neatness are often not prioritised, resulting in the installation being less manageable.

Benefits of Pre-Patching and Controlled Re-Commissioning Approach

The pre-patch planning approach covers all elements from cable sizing, qty's, colour coding etc and ensures that the correct qty’s of cables are provisioned thereby eliminating the need to estimate shortfall from unknown qty’s and sizes of existing cables.

Pre-patch occurs prior to migration and so allows for any issues with rack plans, patch schedules, infrastructure, power etc to be identified and resolved prior to equipment being shut down and moved.

All new power and data cables are used for pre-patch.  This gives the added benefit of massively reducing the probability of cable failures but also enables clear, concise, clean labelling and colour coding to be implemented.

With cables already in place, re-commissioning time is massively reduced as they only need connecting and dressing rather than full installation.

Less labour is required on the move day and as such, in the case of out of hours moves, significant labour savings can be realised due to pre-patching being completed during normal business hours.

A far higher standard of cable routing and neatness can be achieved due to the greater time allowance.  This contributes to forming an environment that is easier to manage, maintain and perform troubleshooting within.

Issues with cabling on the move day are faster to resolve due to there being accurate information available and skilled staff able to troubleshoot issues.

Due to the focus on high quality information flow and update throughout the process, changes are managed and documentation always kept up to date.  This provides each client with valuable DCIM information which helps in managing and maintaining the environment going forward.

Joyce Solutions Company appointed as Global Platinum Reseller

  Identification management experts Desktag award first

Global Platinum Reseller status to Joyce Solutions Company

  01 January 2015 – Desktag has announced that it has awarded Joyce Solutions Company Limited (JSC) ‘Global Platinum Reseller’ status making JSC the first company to hold this status.

  Desktag produce the best work position identification solution on the market and the only product worldwide to incorporate low cost, reusable, flexibility alongside solid personnel management and workflow integration. Desktag is the key to desk identification, managing and improving flexible desking, disaster recovery and desk-side IT support.

  Founder of Desktag, Richard Baldock picks up the story, “Desktag has enjoyed much success since its development and release and has been successful across multiple sectors, with each using the product set for a multitude of applications.  However, we believe that Desktag has much larger potential within the ever changing hot-desking and disaster recovery market and looked to secure a partnership with a reseller that could help realise the full potential of the product. Following discussion with Paul Joyce, it was clear that JSC’s approach and fundamental understanding of the variety of applications of Desktag was key to helping drive Desktag further forward“

  JSC’s unique service offering and position within the market enables them to bring experience and value to the product and brand and further increase sales worldwide.

  Paul Joyce, founder of JSC adds “we are proud to be appointed as the first global reseller of this exciting and innovative new product, and we are confident of its huge potential and value in many areas where multiple workstations exist (e.g. within the IT industry, large office environments etc.).  We look forward to taking this product forward and assisting all prospective users with realising the full value of this unique new product and the positive impact it will have on their business.”  

Desktag provides innovative products which are moulding the office and social media environments today. The benefits of Desktag extend beyond the standard name label to workflow management, business continuity management and flexible office environment management.

  JSC provides specialist infrastructure services to companies to help facilitate change, delivered to the highest levels of quality with minimum business impact.  To find out more information about the status and also about JSC and Desktag visit www.joycesolutions.co.uk or www.desktag.com 

A great job completed by the team on this one as unusually it was reverse engineered.  Most clients we work with have a pretty good idea of how their kit needs to be connected after a migration, but due to this client using the migration as a catalyst to rebuild the servers and complete a network refresh, we created the build docs and implemented our standards after the installation.  

The equipment you see below was relocated and racked and then cabled by the client over the weekend.  After testing and post migration verification the rack was handed over to us, along with an "as built" patching schedule, to completely re-cable to our QuadConnect standard.

As you can see from the before and after shots, there's a vast improvement to the cabling which will in turn improve the manageability and maintenance of the devices and improve the airflow and efficiency of the equipment.  In addition to the cabling overhaul, we created a complete asset register, labelled all equipment, created a patch schedule, updated the rack diagrams and labelled & clipped all data cables.  This was all completed in one day.  We would have preferred to have used a colour other than black for the Cat 6 and power cables but these elements were outside our control.

All in, the client is very happy with the finished result and has the reassurance of having a manageable set-up reinforced with a solid DCIM build document.