Device42 Helps Latin American co-location Provider, Maxihost, Expand Business Operations

February 27, 2018

The Problem

With a rapidly growing customer base and multiple hosting locations under management, Maxihost recognized the need for data center software supporting its operations. Unfortunately, the solution used for nearly five years had multiple shortcomings:

Operation latency – With the incumbent solution, Maxihost experienced screen refresh delays and slow command executions — often 30 seconds, or more. This frustrated users and negatively impacted use of the system by data center staff.
Infrequent product updates – Software releases occurred only two times each year, an unacceptable period for much needed functionality improvements, software fixes, and new feature enhancements.
No cabling documentation – The existing solution could not document rack cabling, or provide useful rack visualizations resulting in less than optimal service and support capabilities and operational efficiencies.
Challenged inventory management – Maxihost utilized spreadsheets to track and manage device inventory. This presented challenges in maintaining accurate information, as well as difficulty in maintaining the integrity of inventory data. As a result, locating assets required manual intervention which added additional cost and time to data center management tasks.
ROI failure – The previous software failed to deliver the expected ROI. The software’s performance shortcomings, along with its lack of comprehensive capabilities and feature enhancements, resulted in minimal perceived value to both the Maxihost’s data center users and its colocation tenants.

The Device42 Solution

Maxihost evaluated multiple data center software solutions and as part of the evaluation process, completed a free trial download of Device42 software. After using Device42 for more than a month and carefully considering alternative products, Maxihost selected Device42 as the single solution for managing their colocation data centers.

Within several hours of their Device42 purchase, the Maxihost team had completed an initial device discovery which accurately identified more than 90% of the active asset inventory.

“With our initial device discovery completed, we had an accurate picture of our physical and logical infrastructure including; device inventory, manufacturer data, IP addresses, switch to device connectivity, VM to VM-host relationships, and MAC addresses. In addition, we immediately had visual representations and clear understanding of device and software dependencies throughout our infrastructure for both Maxihost and all of its clients.” stated, Guilherme Soubihe Alberto.

Maxihost completed the entire implementation during the next several weeks. Device42’s extensive API library and integration connectors also enabled the import of select information from the incumbent software along with enabling simple integration to Maxihost’s existing JIRA workflow and ticketing system. Working several hours each day (for a total of approximately 1. 5 man weeks), Maxihost completed the building, room, and rack rack assignments of the discovered inventory and identified other information such as software licenses, network services currently running, asset ownership, and other device identification data.

Solution Benefits

Maxihost now utilizes Device42 as the single, complete tool for managing all aspects of their data center operations. Device42 is the central repository for infrastructure information and it serves as the one source for managing daily operations including MACD, client support, trouble ticket resolution, operations planning, and more. Long gone are the problems of inaccurate data asset inventories, challenging IP assignment and management, performance latency, lack of cabling documentation…and more.

With Device42, Maxihost has a centralized data center asset management console that contains accurate device and infrastructure relationship information. Device42 capabilities such as device and software impact dependency mapping, password management, cabling management, room, rack, and device visualizations, have all added new levels of awareness and visibility needed for their routine data center management. Device42 has also enhanced Maxihost’s strategic planning and capacity management capabilities – both important aspects of their growing business.