What is Remote Hands?: rawcompute.in Glossary

Remote hands is a service provided by colocation data centres where their on-site staff perform physical tasks on your equipment. Common remote hands requests include power-cycling a server, replacing a failed hard drive, checking LED status indicators, reconnecting a cable, photographing your rack for documentation, and escorting a vendor for hardware installation. The service bridges the gap between owning your own hardware and not having permanent staff at the data centre.

Remote hands is typically billed per request or per 15-minute increment, with rates varying from INR 500-2,000 per incident in Indian data centres. Many colocation contracts include a certain number of free remote hands hours per month (e.g., 2-4 hours). For more complex tasks like OS installation or hardware upgrades, data centres may offer “smart hands” or “managed services” at higher rates with more skilled technicians.

Why it matters when buying hardware

Remote hands capability is essential for any colocation deployment, especially if your team is not in the same city as your data centre. When selecting a colocation facility, evaluate their remote hands responsiveness (SLA for response time), available hours (24/7 vs business hours), skill level (can they handle BIOS configuration or just power cycling?), and pricing. For GPU server deployments, ensure the remote hands team is comfortable working with high-density equipment. Rawcompute.in coordinates remote hands tasks with our data-centre partners on behalf of customers.