Keep console management mind when you make Earth Day plans

Earth Day is set for late April. With spring starting to creep into many climates and Earth day positioned as an annual tradition, many organizations use April to develop their environmental strategies. Sometimes, sustainability efforts come primarily as marketing ploys, but companies that want to make a real difference for the environment often use the seasonal focus on the environment to take time to develop strategic efficiency plans. Businesses striving to enable real sustainability gains may want to take a seriously look at using console management in the data center.

Console management and sustainability
In many data centers, resources get wasted because of issues like negligence, time constraints or costs make it difficult for IT leaders to make adjustments. For example, something as simple as heat management can be a major problem. Many data centers develop hot spots when server utilization rates rise or a usage spike occurs. This can lead to temperatures that escalate and can stay dangerously high for an extended period of time. As the thermometer rises, the cooling system will work harder. Energy use can escalate in such scenarios, creating costs and wasting power that could be saved if the hot spot is handled efficiently.

Hot spots can be difficult to deal with in a data center that is not equipped with console server systems. In such an environment, IT managers have to notice the issue through monitoring devices, track down the precise location of the hot spot and manually reconfigure devices to balance the workload and return temperatures to a reasonable location. This can often take hours, especially if the data center is at a remote location instead of the office, leading to a significant amount of wasted energy. With console management, all of the configuration adjustments can be made through a control application, allowing IT leaders to make the necessary changes from any device with the ability to connect to the network.

Maximizing energy efficiency
Dealing with hot spots is just one way that having more control over the data center can contribute to sustainability goals. Organizations often put a great deal of money into their environmental efficiency plans, but sometimes neglect to enable basic measures to improve operations. Console server systems can help companies develop the kind of day-to-day management methods they need to make the most of their sustainability efforts.

Perle's wide range of 1 to 48 port Perle Console Servers provide data center managers and network administrators with secure remote management of any device with a serial console port. Plus, they are the only truly fault tolerant Console Servers on the market with the advanced security functionality needed to easily perform secure remote data center management and out-of-band management of IT assets from anywhere in the world.