How AI Managed Solutions Drive Performance and Reliability

Companies are investing heavily in AI hardware, software and technology tools; maximizing value is a top priority. That means ensuring the highest performance and reliability of their AI environments, including the orchestration layer, hardware, and building management systems like power and cooling.

When businesses integrate AI and new technologies into their operations, they encounter numerous challenges finding the necessary space, power and cooling for their data-intensive AI workloads. Attempting to scale traditional infrastructure is not the answer if they want to run AI on-premises.

Alternatively, a high-performance, colocation data center environment is another option for deploying AI at scale. AI-ready data centers offer powerful compute and advanced cooling, while addressing privacy and secure connectivity requirements.

Then there's the management of deployed AI infrastructure; ensuring maximum uptime, performance and connectivity. Continuous observability and the ability to respond to issues immediately are key. Many businesses lack the in-house staff they need to address the changing business landscape of AI. To solve this challenge, they're actively recruiting technical talent while training existing staff to manage and monitor their AI infrastructure.

Engaging with a managed solutions provider includes access to certified technical experts and sophisticated observability tools that can help reduce performance and reliability risks, allowing businesses to focus on driving AI innovation. Choosing a colocation provider that also offers managed AI infrastructure services adds a level of support that makes it easier for companies to decide where to deploy their AI infrastructure.

IDC MarketScape Names Equinix a Leader in Datacenter Services

Read this competitive assessment of providers in the space to learn more about Equinix's platform capabilities and strategy.

Should you retain or transfer AI infrastructure management?

If a business wants to run and maintain an on-premises data center for AI, the investment will be significant in terms of time, cost and staff. In-house deployments typically require:

• Retrofitting or building on-premises facilities that can meet massive power and cooling demands.
• Hiring staff with a deep understanding of AI hardware or upskilling current staff.
• Acquiring AI-specific hardware, which can take months.
• Installing equipment and networking.
• Monitoring performance and building conditions continuously.
• Identifying and resolving issues immediately.

Managing AI infrastructure in-house may also distract businesses from starting to train AI models and run inference that leads to AI innovation. Instead, they can fast-track the process in an AI-ready data center that offers an AI managed solution. Doing so shifts the responsibility for installing, monitoring and maintaining their AI infrastructure to certified technical experts.

When managed solution customers deploy AI infrastructure at an Equinix AI-ready colocation data center, they get:

• A dedicated, single-tenant environment.
• Hardware installation, infrastructure deployment and secure network connectivity by certified technical experts.
• Continuous monitoring and issue resolution with communication via a dedicated portal.
• Detailed support processes to ensure the platform is fully managed 24/7 according to service-level agreements and adheres to the highest security standards.
• Mature operational methodologies based on ITIL best practices.
• The ability to embed company policies and procedures into observability tools.
• Access to liquid cooling and other innovative AI infrastructure solutions.
• Software-defined interconnection for private, secure connectivity.
• Virtual network devices to securely manage network traffic, without physical hardware.

Equinix Managed Solutions provide businesses with event management, incident management, change management, security, business continuity, utilization and service reporting, break/fix services and service-level agreements across the entire spectrum, from infrastructure to operating system.

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This comprehensive management approach delivers exceptional infrastructure performance and reliability. Through system integration with data generators, the service achieves high availability, resulting in higher execution rates for scheduled AI workloads.

Expanding partner-specific managed solutions with enhanced observability

The partnership between Equinix and NVIDIA has evolved continuously over time, including development of the Equinix Private AI with NVIDIA DGX solution. Equinix enables private AI customers to place NVIDIA DGX systems close to their data and take advantage of direct high-speed connectivity to the public cloud as well as an ecosystem of network service providers to transfer information across corporate WANs.

This cloud-like experience helps customers avoid vendor lock-in; they can easily access our industry-leading portfolio of cloud on-ramps from all major providers. Equinix colocation services and high-performance data centers provide the security, AI-ready connectivity and energy efficiency enterprises need, making it the ideal platform to implement NVIDIA DGX and create significant data-driven advantages.

Recently, NVIDIA announced that they're combining Information Technology and Operational Technology into a single software layer, Mission Control, for a unified, single-pane-of-glass view. This will enable tighter integration between their orchestration layer and the Equinix building management systems at the data center level. Equinix also supports policy driven automated control of the infrastructure as defined in Mission Control. It's a significant development to provide observability down to the server level inside a rack.

Trust a global provider for your AI infrastructure management

High-performance data centers at Equinix help enterprises future-proof their operations with the performance and reliability of AI infrastructure that would be more challenging to achieve at legacy on-premises data centers. Our global footprint spans 270+ interconnected colocation data centers in 35 countries, ensuring global reach and proximity to data sources.

As businesses ramp up their AI initiatives, they'll need to work with multiple providers to ensure access to the distinct tools, hardware and technologies they can use to integrate AI into their operations. Thousands of clouds, network providers, AI technology companies and GPU as a Service providers are part of the robust Equinix digital ecosystem. Businesses can use Equinix Fabric® to create scalable connections with ecosystem partners and between their own infrastructure in different locations.

To learn more about Equinix Private AI with NVIDIA DGX, read our solution brief.

To learn more about Equinix Managed Solutions, visit our website today.