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Perle Systems Application Note
In today’s world, everyone is online, computer literate and IT savvy – Universities are no exception. From application, to enrolment, acceptance, submission of coursework and examinations, right through to graduation, thousands of students depend on the University network being up and running at all times.
All of the 168 Universities in the UK, serving over 2.3 million students (Germany has 1.9 million students, USA has 14.5 million students, France has 2.1 million students) provide computer resources for its students, faculty and administrative staff.
Confidential student information, lecturer and professor information, sensitive research data, enrolment information, internal communications and other business applications, running on tens of thousands of PC’s and peripherals, need to be managed and accessed by the Network Administrators.
This equates to tens of thousands of distributed IT assets, spread over several halls, campuses, cities and even countries. Universities often have multiple data centres, labs and equipment closets in multiple buildings. In addition, there is heating/cooling, security and phone equipment to be managed. Students and staff depend on this infrastructure, and require a 24-hour service by the Network Administrators. Office hours are out of the window.
The challenges for the Network Support Teams are numerous, including:
Perle’s range of secure console servers provide an ideal solution for remote access and problem diagnosis/analysis for schools, colleges, and universities. They enable secure connections to IT equipment from anywhere at any time. Authentication (RADIUS, TACACS+, LDAP, Kerberos, NIS and RSA Security’s SecurID tokens) and encryption (Secure Shell (SSH) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)) protect vital and sensitive information on the school’s network. Many problems can be resolved remotely without sending a technician on-site, thereby saving costs and resources.
Console Servers additionally offer the following features and benefits, important to the management of University network infrastructure:
The outcome
Console Management Solutions from Perle help maximise uptime by enabling IT managers to centrally manage the University network infrastructure, ensure connectivity to enterprise-network equipment even when the network is down, protect the Universities assets through secure access and lower overall network-management costs.
Console
Servers / Data center management
Our wide range of 1 to 48 port Perle Console Servers provide data center managers
with secure remote management of any device with a console port. Plus, the only
truly fault tolerant Console Servers on the market.