Maximize Uptime and Efficiency with Sentry Software and BMC Helix

The challenge of IT infrastructure reliability

While cloud adoption continues to grow, the role of physical IT infrastructure remains significant. Customers are still deploying physical servers in data centres and on-premises, highlighting the ongoing need for effective infrastructure management. IT operations (ITOps) executives face increasing pressure to ensure system reliability, increase uptime, and reduce costly disruptions, as a significant portion of unplanned downtime is attributed to IT infrastructure failures.

Managing physical assets can be complex, particularly in heterogeneous environments where troubleshooting the issues outlined above may delay service deployments, resulting in service level agreement (SLA) breaches and unnecessary costs.

Without a reliable observability strategy, IT teams can find themselves reacting to issues after the fact. This reactive approach not only leads to higher downtimes and increased mean time to repair (MTTR) but also higher operational costs and reduced efficiency. The integrated BMC Helix and Sentry Software solution will proactively prevent these issues from occurring.

The reality of hardware failures in IT

Physical servers, like any technology, are subject to wear and tear. When accounting for components such as disks, memory modules, power supplies, fans, and servers, customers can experience a significant annual failure rate. Typically, an organization operating 1,000 servers can expect an estimated 300 hardware failures annually, which places a significant burden on IT staff and operational outcomes.

Even with redundancy measures in place, replacing failed components always involves multiple steps:

• Identifying the faulty part
• Ordering and awaiting a replacement
• Scheduling maintenance and locating the affected server
• Potentially shutting down a server and performing the replacement
• Verifying that the fix has been successfully implemented

These steps take time and resources, delaying service availability and increasing operational pressure. When managing diverse hardware across different vendors, investigating and repairing failures can take even longer, further extending MTTR.

A smarter approach: BMC Helix and Sentry Software for proactive monitoring

Instead of waiting for failures to disrupt services and operations, IT leaders need a solution that increases visibility into physical infrastructure and identifies and addresses hardware issues before they lead to significant disruptions. That is where BMC Helix Operations Management and Sentry Software provide a powerful solution.

While Sentry Software modules collect detailed metrics on physical infrastructure, servers, and storage systems, BMC Helix Operations Management enhances their value by providing advanced analysis, including alerting, dashboards, correlation, and AIOps. These capabilities help maximize service uptime, performance and availability.

Sentry Software’s modules detect and predict issues in servers, networks, and storage before they impact operations. The metrics they generate enable rapid issue resolution and deliver reliable infrastructure observability through exhaustive coverage, consistency, and deep insights.

The Sentry Software solution is particularly useful for IT leaders who:

• Oversee their infrastructure or manage client environments.
• Require monitoring and observability as part of their pre-production processes.
• Are responsible for application performance and infrastructure observability.

By combining Sentry Software’s monitoring solution with BMC Helix Operations Management, organizations gain increased visibility into and control over their IT environments, as well as real-time application and infrastructure monitoring, faster problem identification and resolution, higher uptime, and an improved end-user experience.

A preventive IT approach

Efficiently operating and maintaining a reliable IT infrastructure is a requirement for IT executives. By integrating BMC Helix’s analytics with Sentry Software’s hardware monitoring capabilities, IT leaders will minimize downtime, maintain smooth service delivery, reduce operational risks, and optimize efficiency.

To learn more, click here to explore how Sentry Software and BMC Helix can help you hit your operational goals.

About Sentry Software

A BMC Software partner since 2004, Sentry Software has developed expertise in IT monitoring solutions. Initially focusing on hardware and application monitoring, the company later expanded into storage monitoring and capacity optimization. Today, organizations across more than 100 countries rely on Sentry Software’s solutions to maintain infrastructure reliability.

These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.

See an error or have a suggestion? Please let us know by emailing [email protected].