Remote hands: what colocation providers actually do on-site for you
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"Remote hands" is the general industry term for a data centre's own on-site staff carrying out physical tasks on your colocated equipment on your behalf, so you don't have to travel in yourself for every small job. It typically covers physical-layer work such as power-cycling a server or swapping a drive you've shipped in. It typically doesn't cover troubleshooting inside your operating system or application, that stays your responsibility as the equipment owner. This article explains the term as the industry uses it. At Worldstream, the documented route for hands-on work in the data centre is Datacenter Visits in Portal.
Once equipment is racked in a colocation facility, it isn't always practical to be physically present for every task it needs. Remote hands is the industry-wide answer to that problem: data centre staff who are already on site act as your physical presence, carrying out a defined set of hands-on tasks against your hardware when you ask them to, without you needing to travel in or send someone yourself.
What remote hands typically covers
Across the colocation industry, remote hands generally means physical-layer assistance, tasks that involve touching the hardware itself rather than logging into it. Common examples include:
- Power-cycling a server that's become unresponsive and needs a hard power off/on.
- Cabling changes, such as connecting, moving, or replacing a network or power cable.
- Swapping a failed drive you've shipped in to replace one that's failed, following your instructions on which bay and which disk.
- Basic visual inspection, for example confirming status lights, checking a server has power, or reporting what's on a screen after a crash.
- Physical inventory and labelling checks, confirming what's actually racked, or applying labels you've asked for.
What it typically doesn't cover
Remote hands is physical-layer assistance, not managed support for what's running on your hardware. Across the industry, it generally does not extend to:
- In-depth troubleshooting inside your operating system or application, diagnosing why a service crashed, reading application logs, or fixing configuration issues.
- Making judgement calls about your software stack, such as which process to kill or which configuration change to apply.
- Anything that requires understanding your specific application architecture rather than following a precise physical instruction.
That distinction matters because it defines what you can reasonably ask for. A clear instruction like "power-cycle the server in rack 4, unit 12" is a remote hands task. "Find out why my database is slow" is not, that stays your responsibility as the equipment owner, or a job for your own team or a managed service you arrange separately.
How this relates to Datacenter Visits
Remote hands is an industry term, not a Worldstream product name. The documented Worldstream route for getting hands on your colocated equipment is Datacenter Visits in Portal: you, or a partner or technician you invite, plans a visit and checks in on site. See Planning a visit to a Worldstream data centre for how that works. If you need a physical task carried out and can't be there yourself, open a support ticket, describe exactly what you need and where the equipment sits, and support will tell you what's possible.