How Does Yoga Compare to Your IT Health Check?

Whether you have practiced the art of savasana or not, you will soon understand how sweet the benefit of laying still can reboot your whole system. I know what you’re thinking, “I can lay still, I can sit and do nothing!” When I started practicing yoga 22 years ago, I thought the same thing. As I practiced all the yoga poses, I felt great stretching my limbs. Sometimes a little uncomfortable because the stretch was challenging, but then there was savasana.

What was my brain doing to me? Who invited these busy monkeys to dance around my head while I was supposed to be finding my zen? Yoga’s acute and intervention effects on cognition are evident once you try to quiet the mind. This brings me to my comparison of an IT Health check.

 

IT Health Check

Does the data center ever get a rest? Do you actively maintain your systems to update, reboot, or dare I say turn off? Would you like to maximize your attention, process information at higher speed, and execute daily functions with precision? What pill do I take? Who doesn’t want to operate at full capacity? Just like you made a New Year’s resolution to work out more, maintaining regimented IT heath can be as tricky as sticking to your promised workout routine.

 

Why are these routines so hard?

Savasana is often described as the most challenging pose in yoga because it requires you to simply be still – a challenge in our modern society of constant movement. What we don’t realize is that during Savasana, we are also significantly reducing our stress and anxiety levels in addition to combatting insomnia. Like other kinds of meditation, Savasana increases grey matter in the brain. This is responsible for everything from muscle control, memory, emotions, decision-making, anxiety, stress, and overall mental health.

 

Insomnia, Emotions, and Memory

When you tighten up your IT security and review your environment’s backup and disaster recovery procedures, savasana becomes that much easier. Having systems in place to ensure regular backup, appropriate storage, unlimited access to data, and a robust disaster recovery plan – should the worst happen – are essential failsafe tools for all businesses. Knowing your information is secure can relax those busy monkeys that keep you thinking, “what if!”

Emotions, you’ve got them, I’ve got them, but hackers do not! Hackers, viruses, and online fraud are generally getting smarter, faster, and more ambitious. This makes robust security and regular updates a prerequisite for IT infrastructure which can keep your serotonin and dopamine (happy chemicals in the body) levels up. When we put good practices in place, such as the consistent routine of end-user training and testing, policy reviews, and current user authentications, we begin to see the long-term benefits. Peace of mind will allow you to focus and excel at other inventions or networking issues.

 

Decision Making and Overall Mental Health

A yoga practice enables us to move in a controlled manner into modifiable physical postures concentrating initially on relaxing the body, breathing rhythmically, and developing awareness of the sensations in our bodies and thoughts. Besides the physical benefits from sequentially completing postures, breathing (pranayama), and meditation (savasana) included in yoga lead to a clear, calm, and focused mind. Which can develop greater self-awareness! Who doesn’t want to make better decisions and improve mental health? Working out with Zunesis as your yogi master will do just that.

We are an IT solution and service provider with assessments in place to help you reach infrastructure nirvana! Our savasana is called RDCAS – Recurring Data Center Advisory Service. By implementing this service into your IT environment, you can reduce unnecessary stress and anxiety from worrying, “what if!”

 

About the Author

I have made many decisions in my life, some right and some wrong. We really learn from the wrong ones, but this time I learned from the right. I began my yoga journey in a practice known as Ashtanga. Ashtanga Yoga is a dynamic, physically demanding practice that synchronizes breath and movement to produce an internal heat designed to purify the body and mind. This workout came easy as I have always enjoyed being athletic, but the meditation of quieting the mind did not! It has taken many years through discipline and repetition to achieve a quiet mind, a peaceful heart, and a clear path to making the right decisions. Following this path lead me to Zunesis and one of the best decisions I have ever made. This is an incredible company to work for. The integrity of the people and what they practice is best in class.

 

The Problem

 

Most mid-sized IT organizations suffer from inadequate time and resources to keep the business running. Organizations need to address the pressing IT changes required to keep pace with the evolving needs of their customers & competition.  These same mid-sized IT organizations do not get the same love from IT vendors that larger organization receive. Often only seeing support when they are actively in the process of buying new infrastructure.

 

Add to these factors a very tight IT labor market and this leads to big challenges and disappointed end users. This impacts one of the largest customer segment in the US economy – the mid-market.  When business owners and leaders can’t get what they need from IT, they start looking for other alternatives. This can include Cloud and IT Outsourcing.

 

An important piece of the Answer

 

Zunesis has announced a common-sense service (Recurring Data Center Advisory Service – RDCAS) that offers substantial value to our clients who operate an HPE server/storage environment.  For customers operating IT data centers, this service is designed to provide on-going expertise and advice to minimize disruption, down-time, and operational risk.

 

The sweet spot for this service is mid-market and SMB clients who can benefit from on-going expert engineering support and guidance.  This service is designed for the client who desires guidance and periodic expertise. In addition, the organization still plans to operate and manage their own HPE infrastructure.

 

The value of this service lies in its focus and consistency.  The RDCAS approach combines a focused Managed Service with consistent high-end engineering engagement.

 

What is Included?

 

The service includes an upfront assessment of the client’s HPE environment (inventory, firmware, configuration, and capacity).  From this upfront assessment, Zunesis will make suggestions and provide guidance on any needed upgrades or best practices.

 

From there, Zunesis will establish recurring quarterly sit-down, in-person meetings with senior Zunesis Engineers and Project Manager to review the following:

 

• Service tickets
• Contract support status
• Additions / subtractions to the environment
• Planned migrations / changes, O/S versions
• Customer advisory history & recommended updates/patches
• Performance & capacity
• Suggested list of priorities for remediation / updates.

 

Throughout the life of the contract, Zunesis will also serve as an advocate for resolving support issues with HPE. We will help to get support tickets escalated.  Zunesis has 15 years working with hundreds of HPE clients. Our understanding of the HPE organization and the right knobs to turn and levers to pull will help our customers get the best support possible.

 

While the RDCAS is an advisory and consulting service only, Zunesis also offers follow-on hands-on services to implement suggested updates and best practices.  Some clients want a turn-key offering where Zunesis recommends specific firmware upgrades, for example. Then Zunesis engineers would make those changes during a scheduled maintenance window.

 

The RDCAS is the ultimate preventative maintenance program.  Zunesis recommends adding this service when your maintenance support renewals are due.  This way the people at Zunesis can review and understand the current type of support you have and the current services you are already receiving from HPE.