Practices for the actual physical management of servers and components varies by organization. In smaller settings especially Ceph admins may site near the datacenters in which production systems are housed, and be responsible for hardware installation and management. In other and larger organizations, especially those with multiple datacenters within a country or around the world, there may be a dedicated DC Ops team or contracted third party.

We often refer to anyone who performs physical server installation and maintenance tasks as remote hands or simply hands, referring to the fact that they are able to lay literal hands on the systems that a distant admin cannot.

Whichever arrangement floats your organization's boat, there are a number of practices that can optimize hardware management logistics. Some of us may work in busy, loud, shared office spaces, but datacenters are a whole new level of loud and cold. Careful co-ordination can save time and avoid mistakes...