Let's talk data centers - remote facility management
Remote facility management can help organizations make the most of their data centers, enabling more efficient operations.
By Max BurkhalterSeptember 18, 2012
Recent studies from a variety of research organizations have pointed to an IT world that is increasingly aware of the benefits of putting data center resources at a third-party site. In fact, a study from Savvis found that almost 60 percent of IT workers now look at internal infrastructure systems as wasteful because third-party services are so accessible and cost efficient.
While this is certainly a fairly staggering statistic, it is important that we explore how third-party services really are changing corporate facilities. To do this, let's consider a company using a hosted private cloud supported by one vendor, running a backup data center at a colocation facility and maintaining internal data center systems for critical operations. Suddenly, the business has three data centers in three locations that interact and depend on one another.
How does IT adjust? Do you have your technicians drive all around the region to manage servers in each facility? Do you spend heavily on the vendor's management services and risk losing control of your systems while dealing with complex service level agreements and regulatory risk? One way to overcome this remote facility management is to implement console server infrastructure.
Console management architectures allow IT to control everything from facility elements of a data center to the virtual operating system running on a server from a remote location. That's not to say there aren't any problems that will require sending a technician out to the site, but the console server systems provide a level of oversight necessary to ensure operational efficiency and limit the number of trips needing to be made to the remote facilities. This means that a business can maintain a skeleton crew at the remote data center where its servers will still need some in-person management, but do much of the work from the primary control console at the headquarters, or remotely with a smartphone or tablet.
This capability is increasingly important in an era when the data center is being built without walls. Companies now may have multiple data centers spread between the headquarters and branch offices, a colocation plan, multiple managed and unmanaged clouds and a facility across the country to serve a new target market. The data center world is expanding, and tools to manage facility and system resources remotely are becoming essential.
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.
While this is certainly a fairly staggering statistic, it is important that we explore how third-party services really are changing corporate facilities. To do this, let's consider a company using a hosted private cloud supported by one vendor, running a backup data center at a colocation facility and maintaining internal data center systems for critical operations. Suddenly, the business has three data centers in three locations that interact and depend on one another.
How does IT adjust? Do you have your technicians drive all around the region to manage servers in each facility? Do you spend heavily on the vendor's management services and risk losing control of your systems while dealing with complex service level agreements and regulatory risk? One way to overcome this remote facility management is to implement console server infrastructure.
Console management architectures allow IT to control everything from facility elements of a data center to the virtual operating system running on a server from a remote location. That's not to say there aren't any problems that will require sending a technician out to the site, but the console server systems provide a level of oversight necessary to ensure operational efficiency and limit the number of trips needing to be made to the remote facilities. This means that a business can maintain a skeleton crew at the remote data center where its servers will still need some in-person management, but do much of the work from the primary control console at the headquarters, or remotely with a smartphone or tablet.
This capability is increasingly important in an era when the data center is being built without walls. Companies now may have multiple data centers spread between the headquarters and branch offices, a colocation plan, multiple managed and unmanaged clouds and a facility across the country to serve a new target market. The data center world is expanding, and tools to manage facility and system resources remotely are becoming essential.
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.
