An Overview: Remote Power Management Solutions

Remote power management solutions allow administrators to remotely power cycle servers and devices and troubleshoot problems, both locally and remote, from any location in the world. This provides administrators with the ability to manage servers more efficiently and reduce server downtime by affording direct access to power control. Remote power management solutions are also used by many businesses and organizations to manage servers at offices and branch locations where there are no IT staff members, offering cost-efficient “lights-out” operation at those sites.



Remote power management solutions add increased functionality over traditional metered and basic power products. While many power distribution units (PDUs) can provide basic information and amperage readings, only intelligent or ‘switched’ PDUs truly provide the benefit of outlet-level management.



In determining an appropriate power management solution, integration with today’s KVM over IP solutions should be considered. Most enterprise KVM over IP solutions provide the ability to integrate power management within the same interface as the console session on each attached server. This integration can provide datacenter administrators with comprehensive remote power management capabilities.



Recent advances in remote power management include:



o - Branch Circuit Protection—several products now provide branch circuit protection—each branch of grouped outlets has its own fuse and circuit breaker, to isolate power anomalies and issues.



o - 3-Phase Power—the use of 3-Phase power in server room and datacenters is on the rise. 3-Phase power provides more balanced power loads and allows a greater flow of power into a server rack, while using fewer circuits.



o - Power-Up Sequencing—several products offer the ability to inflow of power to each receptacle, to prevent circuit overload and allow systems to reboot in sequence, such as firewalls, then routers, then servers.



Advantages of Remote Power Management


Compared to traditional power management solutions, remote power management offers significant and unique advantages.



Reduction of Server Downtime and Labor Costs—As remote power management solutions provide administrators with the ability to recycle power to non-responsive systems and troubleshoot problems remotely, they can lead to a reduction in server downtime and significantly reduce outages and losses. With traditional power management systems, when it is necessary to perform a cold reboot, technicians must be physically present to reboot a system, often at a substantial cost to a company or organization. With remote power management, in most instances, the dispatch of field personnel to manually execute a hard reboot is unnecessary, as administrators can immediately access the PDU via a browser and reboot the switch.



Status Monitoring—As server densities increase, power requirements and heat output are also on the rise. Remote power management solutions allow remote monitoring of amperage draw per circuit, humidity, and temperature. Many products are designed so that probes can be mounted directly onto the strip, eliminating the need for external hardware. Most remote power management solutions are SNMP-enabled so that alerts can be sent automatically when amperage, temperature, or humidity levels exceed established thresholds.



Frequently Asked Questions About Remote Power Management



Question: How do you know when circuits are at capacity?


Answer: An administrator will be notified when circuits are at capacity in two ways. An onsite administrator can check an LED on the PDU itself, which will display the total amperage draw. Additionally, administrators can view amperage remotely through a feature in the web-based management tool or utilizing SNMP integration.



Question: How quickly and effectively can power be recycled using remote power management?


Answer: Once an administrator sends a command for remote reboot, it takes place immediately.



Question: Can all remote power management solutions allow administrators to gain true redundancy and simultaneous control of multiple power supply devices?


Answer: No. However, there are several manufacturers that provide simultaneous reboot of redundant power supplies, grouped across separate circuits.



Question: What security features do remote reboot power devices offer?


Answer: Remote reboot power devices have many security features. Basic features include user name and password authentication and communication via SSL or using SSH. Additionally, the use of LDAP, Active Directory, RADIUS or TACACS+ can be added to provide integration with existing authentication schema.

42U?s team of technology specialists provide unbiased, independent expertise and solutions for Data Center infrastructure. They provide best practices and products for Data Center builds, expansions, and consolidations. For thirteen years, the majority of Fortune 500 companies have engaged the 42U team to resolve their data center management challenges. 42U (http://www.42u.com) and its sister companies, are value-added resellers that provide expert independence advice and solutions around enterprise kvm switches, remote power, computer room power and cooling , server racks and green data center solutions.

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Why data protection solutions are a must-have

Businesses of all sizes are increasing their use of the Internet on a daily basis. They are using the Internet to communicate, publish content and store and process data with the help of web-based applications. With all of this content and data being created and stored on servers, there is a corresponding need to ensure its safety. Hard drives can fail, servers can be hacked, human error can cause data to be deleted, and the data centers that house these servers could catch fire or become victim to natural disasters or even terrorist attacks. All of these are plausible scenarios that can threaten the integrity of the data stored on a server.

Because of these realities, it is absolutely critical that businesses complement their servers with an investment in a high-quality backup and storage solution. This will guarantee that mission-critical data and content is backed up regularly and protected against technical failure, human error or disaster. All types of organizations need this type of insurance. A single hard drive failure can result in the permanent loss of important content, contact information, sales records and financial data. Such a disaster would be a death sentence for any organization conducting business on the Internet. There are other good reasons to have a backup plan. With the right protection in place, customers can be free to experiment and push their servers to do more without having to worry about the negative ramifications. It also brings peace of mind that contributes positively to an organization’s operations.

Buy data protection from a hosting company

It makes a great deal of sense to buy storage and backup solutions from a hosting company. They already host the customer’s server and data protection is a logical extension to web hosting that can be integrated and run off the same network. Customers also benefit from a single bill for all their IT hosting services and by working with their hosting company, have a single point of contact, a high degree of familiarity and comfort and the ability to manage their environment from a single unified interface.

Customers should understand that backup and storage is typically not included with a standard dedicated server. It is usually purchased as an optional add-on service. However, a problem in the market is that many hosting companies are not aggressive about educating and selling customers about the importance of data protection. Even worse, many hosting companies do not even have an affordable, fully functional and easy to use solution. Customers that value their data and want backup and storage services should look for a hosting company that has the breadth and quality of services they are looking for.

JaguarPC’s Data LockBox

JaguarPC has been in the hosting business for over a decade and offers its customers Data LockBox, a backup and storage solution built on R1Soft’s industry-leading Continuous Data Protection (CDP) software. CDP enables customers to back up their servers by providing near real-time replication of their data. JaguarPC installs the CDP software on the customer’s server and it takes snapshots and duplicates the content and data onto a separate backup server. Because the data replication process is continuous, customers are able to restore their servers to a designated point in time in the event of hardware failure or disaster. CDP provides bare metal restore capabilities - bringing back the original state of the server, complete with the entire operating system, settings and data. No re-configuring or re-installation of the operating system is required.

Data LockBox brings a number of other features and capabilities to the table. CDP backs up incrementally, copying only sectors of a disk that have changed since the previous backup. Combined with standard compression technology, this reduces storage utilization and CPU overhead significantly and enables the replication process to be completed within minutes. CDP also features full data encryption during transmission and in storage, ensuring robust levels of security. Other features include a MySQL database add-on, true database in-memory backup, event logs, reporting capabilities and support for both Windows and Linux-based virtual machines.

With Data LockBox, customers receive access to a web-based control panel, which allows them to manage their data protection capabilities and instantly restore content directly from the backup systems. Customer can also set backups to take place on an hourly basis. The level of control provided through the management tool gives customers that prefer to be hands-on the flexibility they are looking for and enables them to access their solution remotely and on a 24/7 basis.

Data LockBox supports servers running on both the Linux and Windows platforms and can be used to backup hosted servers, on-premise servers, office workstations and personal computers. JaguarPC also provides back up servers – powered with free versions of R1Soft - to other hosting companies on a white label basis.

JaguarPC has been in the backup and storage business for several years, having been one of R1Soft’s beta testers and original hosting partners. With a long history hosting for the SMB and enterprise community, and a strong technical grasp of storage technology, JaguarPC is uniquely positioned to meet the data protection needs of customers.

About JaguarPC

JaguarPC, founded in 1998, is an industry-leading provider of web hosting services to small and medium-sized businesses, government agencies and non-profit organizations worldwide. Customers enjoy the flexibility of choosing from a full suite of hosting solutions, ranging from shared hosting and virtual private servers to dedicated hosting and managed hosting. JaguarPC also operates a reseller program, helping smaller organizations jump into the hosting business or augment their current offerings. Each JaguarPC hosting plan is backed by a world-class data center infrastructure and network, and supported by a rock solid customer service operation. With over a decade of experience, JaguarPC helps organizations realize their full potential by capturing the power of the Internet.

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Greg Landis is a 32 years gentleman CEO of Jaguar PC having the cast experience in hosting company. They are using shared technology and our vast experience lets us manage the shared environments so well that we simply never run into the tiny things some watch all the time like disk space. Simply put, we just can?t run out of disk space. Even as we speak all our clients could increase their usage immediately by 500% and it wouldn?t cause alarm. Overselling as a means of marketing actually is the best way we can tell clients ?use more, if you don?t nobody will? . And our system is setup so you have to have 80% of an initial quota actually used before you request more, but you can request more as many times as you want and its automatically added.

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School educational institutions, the campus-wide network monitoring solutions - video up, program - Security Industry

In recent years, with the harmony and development into the construction of our theme, the campus has been monitoring all schools and all levels of Education Authorities more and more attention from security to protect teachers and students on campus for the purpose of peace, to the examiners to improve the efficiency of online Xunkao for the purpose, to expand services to babies for the purpose of online monitoring is extended to the campus teaching, management, security Prevention Dimensions.


And education information with the deepening of the work, the basis of national universities and primary and secondary schools Communicate Facilities, extensive spread, all kinds of vocational schools, private schools and kindergartens communications infrastructure investment growth, today's campus monitor has entered the era of network monitoring.


Mica industry Video Surveillance System for all levels and types of schools and educational administrative departments campus-wide network monitoring solution to achieve peace on campus, Electronic Xunkao, teaching assessment, baby line and other customized applications can not be at all levels of management time and place for integration of image browsing, storage, video playback, and centralized management.


Safe Campus Campus theft, terrorism, criminal cases have occurred, teachers and students for the effective maintenance of the normal teaching, research, and life to ensure the safety of life and property of all students, create safe, stable and healthy teaching Environment Ping campus came into being. Different depending on the circumstances, the actual construction of safe campus there are many models, Mika network can provide flexible solutions to meet different networking requirements.


Many primary and secondary schools, kindergartens, monitoring small, usually to the Board of Education as the center of the single-stage network architecture. Board of Education as the central configuration management platform for monitoring, storage, and TV Wall, monitoring point in the school classroom building, cafeteria, playground, garage and other places. Monitoring points and platforms connected by Internet or educational network. Leadership Board of Education office PC via direct access to the image, the school leaders, the guard can be related to control PC remote access point image.


Campus monitoring Most universities, some secondary schools to monitor large scale, and is itself a principal investor, it is often used by itself as the center of the network architecture. Guard as a control center, configuration management platform, storage and TV wall, monitoring points located in various academic buildings, dormitories, dining hall, library, playground, garage and other places. Monitoring points and platforms connected through the campus network. School leaders can access through the PC monitor image, the Board of Education Leadership Education Network via Internet or remote access to monitor the image.


Now many colleges and universities have multiple campuses, each campus area school district to conduct the monitoring application, the district headquarters is required for all campuses of the monitoring system for unified management, and to any images call to all campuses. This platform can manage multi-level cascade multi campus Internet. The school district headquarters and each branch has an independent monitoring centers, school districts access control points. Two monitoring center through the Internet or the Education Network to achieve platform cascade.

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Bandwidth Ideal Solutions For Bandwidth Hungry Companies

Every business needs bandwidth solutions of some sort. For many businesses that require large amounts of bandwidth finding just the right solution....from a cost and application standpoint....can be a confusing process. It doesn't have to be if you understand what to base your decision on.

Like anything in information technology, it really depends on how you will utilize this infrastructure. It certainly doesn't make sense to provision high capacity transport links if you will use them for a small fraction of the day or the traffic doesn't warrant it.

I think one of the hardest things about this arena is that many times the people requesting the bandwidth are confused about what bandwidth really is. There's a misnomer that bandwidth automatically equals speed. "Well my application is slow, I need more bandwidth". Many times if a study is done on exactly what your needs are, it turns out to be a very different story from the initial conversation.

With a plethora of technologies out there for WAN and Metro services, wired or wireless customers can choose to subscribe to always on, dedicated access methods or go for a most cost effective model with somewhat "shared" topologies like Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The idea here is that you have options and each solution can satisfy any number of requirements. There's never been a better time in the industry for choices.

The best option is the cheapest one that works. Dark Fiber and Metro Ethernet, if an option, should usually be looked at first to establish a price for negotiating. I think you should focus on negotiating techniques that work to bring these bandwidths within affordable reach.

No matter how much bandwidth you are using, you will get a better deal for it at a major Network Access Point (NAP) where you have more bidders for your business, and from which you can easily shift carriers, set up failovers and redundancy, etc.. Every high end user needs their own boxes to shape traffic at the NAP, and they need them in two different racks connected to two different carriers. Accept the hit of that and you'll quickly see that the ten to thirty thousand dollars a typical urban company requires to get two boxes into a NAP (admittedly on a single dark fiber route) pays for itself in bandwidth charges in pretty much a single year. Even just to PLAN to do it and show your spreadsheet to your carrier, a project that might cost five grand to do right, will result in more than that much per year off your bill.

Think of it like any other high end purchase. You demonstrate that you're not a pushover, that you have options, that you understand the options and how to increase the number of options, and you bargain based on the bottom line of the cheapest solution you can find. When they tell you it will "cost too much to have your own boxes and dark fiber to the NAP", you snap back the lowest number you can justify, call it "insurance", and rule it out as a cost factor. When they tell you "we can monitor boxes far better than you can", leverage that into quality of service guarantees in the contract with real dollar penalties for failures or slowdowns. When they tell you "our facility is state of the art", GO THERE and count up the number of non-bulletproof windows and visible insecure perches that someone can shoot the servers from, grab the corded phone and walk over to the rack, pulling it right out of the wall and looking astonished: "how am I supposed to give someone instructions over the phone? They can't even walk to the rack! You expect them to scribble it down while cradling the phone in their neck and then go over to the box and do what I said?!?!?!?"

Basically, you must point out every deficiency in their facility or service and refuse to acknowledge that your own home-built solution would have any inadequacies, or that the competitors all have the same problems. In a high end negotiation, you must have NO mercy.

By the way, once you've got a contract with your carrier, you must be very nice to them, in total contrast to the way you leveraged like mad in the first negotiation. Don't nickel-and-dime them after you've agreed on terms, don't let your bandwidth payments get late. These people hold your crown jewels. As mean as you are to the salespeople, be that nice to the geeks.

Technologically, you should consider Storage Area Networks (SAN) if you have multiple locations in the same city, and the use of SAN links over IP which is increasingly common. Basically, the entire city becomes a vast RAID hard drive. You should also understand some of the good business reasons to adopt very high bandwidth such as reducing the number of over-the-Internet transactions which slow things down and may compromise security in favour of internal intranet transactions. Also, having as few layers of software as possible between the hard drive and the user is a major plus.

Also consider the price difference between Sonet equipment versus Ethernet. These days layer-3 ethernet switches are more and more capable for usage as a router. While Sonet traditionally is quite expensive vs Ethernet (especialy for the hardware).... dark fiber and ethernet solutions from carriers are getting broad industry support. Although I do favor Sonet for its better debuging capablities, error counters, alarms etc. Ethernet in wide area environments seems to do the jobs as well. Ethernet would save you the need to buy a decent router able to terminate Sonet and give you the choice to go with a decent layer-3 switch. Another option is 10GigE WAN PHY.....it still has all the advantages of Sonet combined with Ethernet, gives you the ability to use cheaper layer-3 switches, looks for the carrier as a normal Sonet service and works over long distances.

To look at the tradeoffs, you'll have to start by finding out what is available at your end user location. Within North America, the alternatives include ATM OC-3/12/48, SONET (and Next Generation SONET) probably more likely OC-12/48/192, and Metro Ethernet at 100 Mbps (a little slower than OC-3), 1 Gbps (about OC-24) and 10 Gbps (OC-192). Things that aren't available need not be considered.

What are the availability requirements? If you are thinking of SONET, find out if it will come to your premises as a star or ring or dual ring. Metro Ethernet might be faster but not necessarily physically diverse. Sometimes, you can be creative and use a short free-space link to get access to a physically diverse medium.

For more background and insights I suggest reading "WAN Survival Guide" and "Building Service Provider Networks" by Howard Berkowitz. Both are excellent resources.

I have worked with many customers to design infrastructure solutions that incorporate high-end DWDM or CWDM connections between datacenters. Now, this is a business solution and the common user would never dream of having a connection such as this, available to them. Other customers that I work with will incorporate leased lined anywhere from a T1 to OC3. Those connections are very much sized for purpose with a percentage of growth factored in.

The practice that I go through is to evaluate need. What are you trying to accomplish? Is it transactional based or are you replicating data for DR? Are you simply connecting two or more remote offices for the purpose of a Citrix solution? Each of these questions will result in different answers when all is said and done.

Remeber that redundancy is ALWAYS a factor in business oriented solutions. Especially as it pertains to data replication and DR/HA failover to "hot" datacenters. We are starting to see more and more of this type of configuration. I have a few customers that are fortunate enough to have multi-ring DWDM infrastructures to make their valuable data available in the unfortunate event of a disaster.

As corny as it sounds, I have to say that your ultimate solution depends on the intended usage of that bandwidth. I would also say that there really is no generalized "ideal" bandwidth solution. It all comes down to intent and budget. With today's technology in WAN (TCP/IP/FC/FCIP/IFCP) acceleration (Juniper, Riverbed, Cisco), you can transfer vast amounts of data in a smaller pipe. It really is cool technology but still requires cost justification to implement.

Whatever you decide....do your homework....be prepared....negotiate....then install and enjoy.

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications including DS3-Bandwidth.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation with the latest broadband news, tips, insights, and ramblings.

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Zed-3: public security emergency communication practical solutions - Emergency Communications, Emergency Communications Solutions - Communications

With many years of VoIP Communicate In the field of technology accumulation and Communications technology Development of a deep understanding of the public security system specifically for the construction of communications networks practical, reliable, flexible and convenient platform for IP emergency communications MDS.


With the "Golden Shield", the public security system, 3 / 4 communication network construction and management of the implementation has become the focus of business, and the expansion of the five networks have also been implemented in some cities, seeks to cover all branches, to achieve system-wide data synchronization and information operations.


IP emergency communications system is based on data network security system can develop a variety of high-tech business applications, to assist police officers to complete the work faster and better. It is different from traditional emergency communications - as to achieve based on data networks, it has deployed a flexible, end-diversity and good scalability features, compatible with wired and wireless networks; same business custom, personalized simple, to the public security system to create tailor-made emergency, tune-one office line communication system.


Zed-3 (heuristic sharp Technology) company with many years of accumulation of VoIP communication technology and deep understanding of the development of communication technology, specifically for the public security system communication network construction practical, reliable, flexible and convenient IP Emergency communications platform MDS. In the platform - Emergency Command Center is the core unit, through professional dispatcher on the phone to monitor all scheduling and dispatching operations; each of the relevant units of two emergency centers are equipped with a dispatcher on the unit to monitor and dispatch management ; all departments with scheduling phone. Support multiple scheduling system default level - high-grade members of the low-level members of Dispatch, Emergency Command Center can command and dispatch all members. HA backup scheduling machine can be deployed in other locations, as a backup command center.


MDS system at the same time the daily office phone - security experts on network security systems deployed throughout the office phone, to achieve internal dedicated NGN Communication platform; complete with voice communications network resources, save a lot of Hua Fei and largely facilitated communication. The platform offers a variety of telephone services capabilities (including: telephone conference), to build a new Police Communication Systems.


MDS dispatcher the flexibility to add Fixed telephone , Mobile As the scheduling user to achieve the scheduling platform, a fixed or dial keys Mobile Number. Meanwhile, the number of participants can also be added to the group meeting - when necessary, the dispatcher can click the corresponding button or broadcast the launch meeting. When emergency personnel arrived at the scene need to command, and dispatcher not only used within the LAN, can also remotely log on to the scheduling machine MAN (scheduling machine placed in the public network or through other means to achieve the VPN connection), to achieve on-site Scheduling command; when the dispatcher to install emergency communication vehicle, can be mobile for on-site leadership, command and provide mobile dispatch services.


MDS scheduling system as users with special dispatch phone, you can achieve "a key meeting," "Automatic speaker," "green phone", "multi-line communication" and other professional schedule function. Using the custom button, the user can set flexible number of meetings or radio buttons can be made to achieve a key meeting, radio functions. When the dispatcher or dispatch phone launched broadcast notification, being called, the scheduling is all automatically enter speaker phone, instant notification listen. Scheduling can be deployed as dedicated phone hotline department, pick up the call; and, each scheduling phone with 4 lines of communication, to meet the emergency communications needs of multi-link communications.

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Open Source Solutions Small Business Problems

We aim here at taking a look at the ways in which one might utilize open source solutions. Small businesses often find themselves in a soup when they are faced with the problems of evaluating themselves. They actually find themselves with very little record of what they had been doing for the previous years, which results in great difficulty in obtaining an optimum evaluation for the company. If you are a startup company:


• Please keep records for the due diligence process.



• In the absence of cheap software products which can be used by small business houses, open source solutions are a great alternative in solving day to day problems.



Unfortunately, many of these software for open source solutions small business, which are easy-to-implement, are relatively unknown to most small businesses.



• Your choice of open end solutions should be guided by problems particular to your type of business. Random buying of costly software which is not customized to your office needs is wastage of money.



• The system you choose, should keep your network secure. While helping you in gathering business data, it should also provide networking security in the entangled world of wireless data.



Companies should be aware that the open source solutions small business that you are dependent on for the smooth running of your business should be amendable and adaptable to changes when necessary. This is necessary because small companies often cannot get the manufacturers to deal with their issues on a priority basis.



• Since most small companies run on a tight budget it is advisable that the open source solution can be amended to adapt to changing company needs. Terms and conditions of guarantee and up gradation should be taken into consideration before a particular solution is decided upon.


These open source solutions small business are aimed at teaching us how the small businesses can help open avenues in trying to solve basic computing problems.


• The open end solution helps compare open source business software with their proprietary counterparts. It helps in gauging the strengths and weaknesses of the company.


• These solutions can be of immense use in solving small office related problems which take up a lot of man power & energy thus effectively helping the human mind on concentrating on more necessary work.


• Effective document and financial management, helping in private communication by authentication, authorization and encryption apart from keeping classified data safe are some of its important functions. Keeping the system free from virus attack and timely warning of such threats so that valuable data is not misplaced is one of the major functions of theses open source solutions.


• A proper open source solution helps in marketing yourself better by effective presentations to the customer.


• Specific areas of business operations like schedule and calendar management apart from document management are greatly benefited. It helps connecting offsite with web enabled applications and virtual private networks.


Keeping in mind all these factors one comes to the conclusion that open source software is great for most small business operations and fast becoming an absolute necessity.

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