The post Six Data Center Podcasts & YouTube Channels you Should Check Out appeared first on 42U.
]]>There are several great ways to get news and insights into the data center industry. As edge computing, networking, connectivity, and a more comprehensive array of brands emerge, it becomes essential to find a more diverse set of voices in the space.
The world of networking has never been more exciting. Today, the Internet and network services play a critical role in our lives – individuals and businesses alike. Due to ever-increasing traffic growth, the evolution of networking rages on at unprecedented speed, creating a wealth of opportunities and challenges.
Coming from the fiber company Telia Carrier, the Connectivity Pod diligently covers issue after issue that affects networking services every day. With episodes usually clocking in around a half-hour, it’s well worth checking out if you find more value in a deep dive.
Welcome to JSA TV, the Virtual Newsroom for Tech and Telecom Professionals. Each week, and at key industry events, JSA interviews industry thought leaders, including the C-levels and decision-makers of our client companies, media partners, and analysts. Hear about companies’ latest news and milestones, as well as technology and telecom’s leading trends and research on video in 3-5 minute clips.
Clearly, not enough people have found this channel, so get an edge and tune into JSA TV. Delivering regular interviews and industry headlines, there are few outlets that are going to keep you as current as JSA TV. While the interviews are longer, the other videos on the channel are shorter while still informative.
Steve Cummins, VP of Marketing at Opengear, interviews IT leaders to find out what keeps them up at night, what they see in current industry trends, and how they manage as they live on the Edge of their network.
While only irregularly updated, this channel values quality over quantity. Interviews with big names in the space hold a weight that makes any update from Living on the Edge always worth checking out. Be sure to add this to your podcast list.
The Thought Cloud channel provides you with: Industry News, Engaging interviews that keep you up to date, informed and entertained!
Coming from Mission Critical this is another infrequently updated podcast well worth keeping your eye on. What helps keep the Thought Cloud apart is tackling broader subjects in the industry as well such as an annual overview, or looking at ‘The top 25 Women in Technology’
The Digital Foundation Podcast is an independent platform where the voices of technology and business leaders from around the world can be heard to help with awareness of what’s going on in the Digital Infrastructure industry.
An excellent podcast for finding the edges of the IT industry. Focusing on more prominent topics and always pressing forward, the voices of the iMasons that host the Digital Foundation Podcast giving rise to voices not normally heard in the Data Center space but should be considered.
The Data Center Hawk Youtube channel keeps a sharp eye on the data center, colocation, and cloud industries. Then we make searching for that data quick and painless.
This channel may already be on your list, but it’s worth reiterating that the Data Center Hawk youtube channel is an industry leader. With a regular and frequent output, this will be part of your regular schedule quickly. This channel covers a bit of everything: topics, interviews, overviews, quarter analysis, and more.
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]]>The post Creating an Understanding During the Global Supply Shortage appeared first on 42U.
]]>We don’t need to establish or belabor the root of the issue. You all know about the global supply shortage. You have all felt the effects personally and most assuredly professionally in the data center sector.
This shortage brings new realities to keep in mind when ordering with us or any other supplier in the tech industry.
Everything is taking longer, not just manufacturing. Putting in orders, coordinating with vendors, and receiving other information needed for any order is all taking longer.
It can take 2~3 days to get details for any (your) particular order. Yes, that sounds long. We agree. We also understand the frustration this can cause, and believe us, we’re working hard to keep the timeline limited to that much of a delay rather than it being longer.
Even if we can secure a product, the shipment process takes longer, and the exact duration will often be unknown until the product is almost delivered.
We will work hard to get your part to you ASAP. However, ‘as possible’ maybe a year out.
We are working through far more friction than in the past to place orders. Knowing details about your order can allow us to avoid miscommunication that can and will prevent us from placing potential orders ahead of others queuing for the same items. We can also potentially find items that might be equivalent to your needs and available or available sooner.
A lack of necessary details means the 2~3 days can be reset as we await asking for, receiving, and implementing those details to move the order forward.
As mentioned, if you are willing to consider similar units and other brands within certain specifications and sometimes within somewhat higher price ranges, we can find available items far sooner.
Please know that despite these concessions on your patience, we are working even harder to complete your orders. We are turning around POs and sales orders as fast as possible.
To show that we’ve still been working hard to complete your orders through these difficulties, we’ve assembled some recent customer testimonials to speak to our customer satisfaction.
Thank you for your email. Looking forward to the tracking number. – Jema
Thank you, the materials arrived today. Everyone at KVM has been so helpful. – Eric
Many thanks. I’ll reach out and request a quote if the team wants to wait for this part. – Christopher
Just letting you know the refund hit my card. Thanks for your help! – Chad
I’ll bear your generosity in mind the next time we need more of these PDUs – Peter
Yes, we received the replacement parts, and everything is working perfectly. Thank you for your assistance. – David
Received. Thank you for your quick response. Have a good day. – Brigitte
Thank you for working with us as we all deal with these changes. As always, we will continue to get you the best possible prices on quality IT infrastructure equipment.
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]]>The post Recycling Your Old UPS & other components appeared first on 42U.
]]>When talking about green data centers or moving to a carbon-neutral data center, we focus solely on the amount of energy it takes to run all of the equipment. However, this overlooks another essential aspect of how data centers impact the environment, which is all the waste when components are discarded.
The old adage is: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Given the cost and how much wear any component from a data center goes through during its lifetime; reduce does not apply. Every component serves a need and isn’t wasted. However, the principles of reuse and recycling are underused throughout the Data Center industry.
Only a handful of vendors we are aware of have addressed this need. Even then, it only seems to be the UPS units that are receiving attention. Other components can and should be recycled when their time comes.
We know that many data centers do dispose of everything properly, but we hope by seeing what the vendors are putting forward we can give resources to make it easier or show incentives to consider when the time comes.
An easy step more vendors could pursue is simply sharing knowledge of where and how users can recycle components when it’s time. This isn’t a major deal, but since these components often can’t simply be pitched into the bin, a little knowledge goes a long way.
It’s only a light touch, but they let you know to ask your local recycling center about how to deal with polypropylene compounds, which is what PlenaForm components are made from. These are also referred to as PP in the recycling world. It’s a bit of a special process, that recently has been updated, so it’s worth noting.
This knowledge, combined with some other links from other companies, grants you enough knowledge to ask intelligent questions when dealing with recycling your components.
Eaton has put together some resources to help you dispose of the used batteries of your UPS. Pointing to Call 2 Recycle for single-phase batteries. Then Heritage for Three-Phase battery disposal.
Those resources are of course available for anyone with recycling needs no matter where you purchase your goods.
Going a step further, Tripp Lite gives us a couple more resources and makes themselves available to help with UPS Battery Recycling. They point to Batteries Plus as another resource to use, claiming they will recycle any battery.
A more versatile resource is Earth 911 to help you find recycling centers for other materials not limited to but including: servers, LCD screens, and computers.
But if you still need help from Tripp Lite, they will help you out and list who to contact via your region.
While information is a decisive first step, it’s worth noting the companies going far beyond a passive stance with helping you recycle your old parts. The following companies are making an active effort to enable users to recycle by offering incentives.
If you are intrigued by any of these incentives make sure to have 42U help you negotiate this process for the best deal possible.
Offering three options, APC is making it as easy as possible to Recycle your UPS.
Option 1: Replacement Battery Cartridges (RBC); if your battery is over three years old, you’ll qualify for free return shipping.
Option 2: Trade-in UPS; Trade in any old UPS for a 2-year warranty and up to 25% off an APC model, with further discounts on accessories.
Option 3: Recycle Your Unit; APC will offer a prepaid return label for spent UPS batteries.
They offer a prepaid label to dispose of old units to their customers in New York and Maryland. This is a step forward, but clearly, Aten’s recycling program has room for growth.
Gruber will buy back functioning UPS models of almost any brand to refurbish and sell to other customers. You could get some funds back for your replacement and be more eco-friendly at the same time. What’s also great is that others can find refurbished UPS models from a trustworthy source if they’re more budget-conscious.
Vertiv may have a simple process, but there are robust outcomes. Offering to take in UPS or KVMs, you will receive incentives on replacing your units with them. While the deal needs to be registered, discounts can equate to over half of the list price for the replacements. This discount is coupled with them taking and properly disposing of your old components as part of the deal.
DVL offers a great many services for those in the Data Center space. When it comes to UPS recycling DVL will come to your site and pick up the old models and take them to the appropriate recycling center so long as the site is within 100 miles of DCLS service city. For details please contact them. They might be able to work something out if you’re in Utah, New Mexico or Pennsylvania as well.
It’s great to see so many offers and incentives for UPS battery recycling. It would be great to see more programs include KVMs and other components as well moving forward. This article only reviewed what our vendors are offering. We’d enjoy hearing about your disposal process, especially if you know of other incentives or programs others could take part in.
Recycling an old UPS or any other gear is always a chore, but we hope this information will make it easier for you.
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]]>The post Austin Hughes MiniBoot appeared first on 42U.
]]>If you prefer to read you can find our write-up of the product in this previous post.
If you’re interested in getting a miniboot for your setup you can purchase them from KVM Switches Online.
We always are committed to recommending and implementing products and strategies proven to maximize energy efficiency and minimize environmental impact. With our best-practice expertise in monitoring, airflow analysis, power, measurement, cooling, and best-of-breed efficiency technologies, we are able to help data center managers improve energy efficiency, reduce power consumption, and lower energy costs.
The post Austin Hughes MiniBoot appeared first on 42U.
]]>The post Budget Server Room appeared first on 42U.
]]>Many small businesses, especially those in the SASS or technology space, outgrow and outpace standard network setups or even colocation. Therefore, there are a great many benefits to housing and managing a small server room dedicated to your business’s needs. If done correctly, this will lead to reduced downtime, further control. In addition, potential speed increases for your customers if they are mainly local, and for many monetary savings.
There’s a great deal to consider when building out your server space. Where will you place it? You want somewhere with enough room, yet cooled. You’ll need to take time to install, considering placement, airflow, and cable management. Then you’ll need to consider your hardware.
You’ll want to start with only what you need. While some might wish to plan ahead for expansion when moving to housing their server, it’s often best to take a measured approach. You’ll need to buy some fundamental products to start. As you grow, options can change, value tends to increase, and incremental growth will allow you to take advantage of what’s on the market, and 42U will always help you navigate the best available options for your needs.
Before contacting anyone about your server room, there are a few questions you need to be prepared to answer, and in doing so, may plan out your budget server room for yourself.
Space requirements
How much space can you dedicate to your server room? If it’s a small space, you may need to invest more into your setup, but using a large closet could equal savings in the long run. But do remember that wherever you put your server room, a great deal of noise will come from the room.
Floor and cabinet types
We’ll speak to this more later, but if you use repurposed desktops as servers or blade servers/rack-mounted servers will determine a great deal about your setup.
Heating and cooling systems
The number one cost of your server that you can control is cooling to manage heat. There is plenty of solutions based on your setup, but you’ll need to invest in some solution to save in the long run.
Electrical setups
The number one cost for a budget server should be power. Therefore, ensuring a clean draw with proper PDU units is vital and helps keep your components protected from potential surges.
Fire prevention
Fires happen. With a budget setup, though, you should be fine relying on your building’s distribution of sprinklers and fire extinguishers but make sure these are available and appropriate for your setup.
Emergency electrical backup
For a budget solution, this means investing in a UPS. If you’re questioning the need for this, simply balance the downtime of your server during any power blip vs. the cost of the unit you’re considering over a five-year duration.
Security and alarms
If you require added security, such as limiting physical rack access, smoke or fire alarms, or moisture monitoring, you might need to consider appropriate rack locks or additional environmental monitoring.
Some items you will need include bios level access/remote management for IT to manage crisis situations during the midnight hours that they always seem to occur during, appropriate power distribution units for a clean power draw, a reliable uninterruptible power supply to keep a momentary power blip from shutting your small server room down, and airflow management & cooling to meet the needs of your setup.
If you are still managing your setup across a few desktop boxes, it’s best to start with IT furniture rather than a rack, and a KVM switch to minimize the setup in the room by allowing you to utilize a single monitor, keyboard, and mouse setup and still access every server in the room.
If you have blade servers, you’ll want the same, but it could be in your best interest to buy ahead in one respect. Your rack should have some space to grow because then you can simply slot in components, such as an additional server with minimal setup changes or extra cost, and in the meanwhile, an inexpensive blanking panel can keep airflow optimal and keep dust out.
Another benefit of a small rack is the minimization of installation, meaning you won’t need to drill into your walls, which, if you are renting, can be a significant consideration. Finally, if space is an essential factor, a small rack and a server rack monitor can drastically reduce the space needed for a server, even if you’re simply propping up a desktop within the frame.
When considering budget options, you can quickly end up with several parts from different companies. This can be troublesome to track, and some consider adding costs upfront to minimize the number of brands used within their server room.
Your order is kept in our logs when you shop with KVM Switches Online and Server Rack Online. We can quickly reference the correct number for you to call and put you on your way when you have an issue. This means you’ll only need to remember to call us, and we’ll point you to the appropriate company.
When you get all of the components in, there might be a rush to get everything installed as soon as possible. This usually comes at the cost of cable management. It will save you time and hassle, in the long run, to purchase some hook & loop cable ties and plan to take some time to get the cables where they will stay before powering on your new server room.
Failing to plan ahead for cable management will make future upgrades much more complex, can cause an unneeded hazard by having loose cables out that can be tripped over, and even limit airflow, which can lead to increased power costs.
Experts agree it’s easy to confuse which server is which, which cord is for a monitor connection, and which is the power cord. So label these during installation and save yourself a great deal of hassle and potential downtime in your future.
We’re always here for you. If you need help selecting the correct components or considering a more complicated solution, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to help you set up your perfect server room.
The post Budget Server Room appeared first on 42U.
]]>The post Defining and Being A Green Data Center appeared first on 42U.
]]>Many Data Centers focus on being green and eco-friendly. There are some who create their own initiatives then there are others that meet certain loose standards for being a certified green data center.
Hearing ‘green’ as a phrase for energy consciousness has been used and abused somewhat through the years so let’s first step back and review what these words are actually supposed to mean.
We’ll be using the EPA’s definitions moving forward. These delineate between conventional power, renewable energy, and green energy, that means the definitions create a light taxonomy indicating a larger goal.
Conventional power includes the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil) and the nuclear fission of uranium. Fossil fuels have environmental costs from mining, drilling, fracking or extraction, and emit greenhouse gases and air pollution during extraction, combustion, and distribution. Although nuclear power generation emits no greenhouse gases during power generation, it does require mining, extraction, and long-term radioactive waste storage.
Renewable energy includes resources that rely on fuel sources that restore themselves over short periods of time and do not diminish. Such fuel sources include the sun, wind, moving water, organic plant and waste material (eligible biomass) via burning the material as you would wood or coal, and the earth’s heat (geothermal). Although the impacts are small, some renewable energy technologies can have an impact on the environment. For example, large hydroelectric resources can have environmental trade-offs on such issues as fisheries and land use.
Green power is a subset of renewable energy and represents those renewable energy resources and technologies that provide the highest environmental benefit. The U.S. voluntary market defines green power as electricity produced from solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, eligible biomass, and low-impact small hydroelectric sources. Customers often buy green power for its zero-emissions profile and carbon footprint reduction benefits.
You can see the goal further illustrated with their U.S. electricity supply breakdown from least beneficial to most beneficial.
Another great aspect of understanding the EPA’s green initiative is that you can be certified within their Green Power Partnership Requirements program. This requires a certain percentage of your energy use being classified as green respective to the total power consumption. Oddly the more you use the less percentage needs to be green. As it’s a US certification your power also needs to originate within the country. If you believe that you will meet their requirements it can be worth going to the process because customers will appreciate the accommodation from such a credible source.
While green energy tends to be a dry topic like anything, it quickly becomes more interesting when you dig into the details. Data Center Knowledge has provided us with a great list of interesting usages of green energy, primarily helping their community.
A fascinating example is from Telecity Paris Data Center who is using excess heat production as a green room.
Excess heat from servers at the new Telehouse West data center in the Docklands section of London will soon be used in nearby houses and businesses. The waste heat from the $180 million Telehouse colocation facility will be used in a district heat network, which is expected to produce up to nine megawatts of power for the local Dockland community.
An IBM data center in Switzerland is being used to heat a nearby swimming pool. Hot air generated by the Uitikon center will flow through heat exchangers to warm water that will be pumped into the nearby pool. You can read more about that setup here.
Waste heat from a data center in Finland underneath Uspenski Cathedral will warm up water pipes and channel it to nearby homes from heating. The planned data center for information technology services firm Academica would be capable of providing enough heat to warm up 500 large private houses.
A data center built by IBM and Syracuse University uses gas-powered microturbines to generate on-site power. During the winter, the 585 degrees F (307 C) exhaust from the microturbines flows through heat exchangers to produce hot water, which is then piped to a nearby office building to be reused in the building’s heating system.
The Notre Dame Center for Research Computing has placed a rack of high-performance computing (HPC) nodes at a local municipal greenhouse, the South Bend Greenhouse and Botanical Garden, to help heat the flowers and plants in the facility.
Quebecor channels excess heat produced by servers at its data center in Winnipeg, Canada to the nearby offices of a local newspaper. The company ran a second duct out of the exhaust plenum to the intake duct of the editorial office upstairs. The process was controlled by pneumatic baffles that open and close depending on readings of thermometers within the ducts.
One data center company has gone so far as to brand themselves as Greenhouse Ecological Datacenters. Despite their name, most of their advertising on their webpage focuses on what you’d expect any data center to focus on. Topics like colocation, uptime, various services, how secure they are, ect. Do not take this as downplaying them in any way. Given their name you’d think they would focus on how they set themselves apart ecologically.
When you make it to their about us page, you see a line item about being ecological. “Ecological – PUE value 1.15; adiabatic cooling; ISO 14001 certified.” It’s nice to see them point it out; however, this highlight seems well within what several other datacenters might point to as ecological concerns often come up with customers considering data centers.
Greenhouse Ecological Datacenters is a great option for housing your data if you are in the Netherlands. What is interesting in highlighting them gets to the core of advertising green in our industry as in any industry.
While it’s great to cap or put a limit on how much ecological impact a data center makes, in truth advertising green is more about feeling good about doing what many consider to be the right thing than making a true ecological impact. While it’s pushing people in positive directions as an industry, we in the server solution market have seen a stagnation of progress.
The green movement that really sprang forward in the 1990s allowed us to consider environmental needs while making business considerations which was a huge step forward. EPA certification was a great signifier of being more eco-conscious, but as mentioned earlier it’s confusing that those who consume exponentially more energy require a smaller percentage of green energy to meet their standard. Allowing the largest data centers to only use 7% of green energy to meet their certification shows that we need to refresh and renew how we think about ecological considerations.
Now more pragmatic solutions are being sought out that will include more focused goals; such as making energy draw to a datacenter completely carbon neutral.
You will be hearing more from 42U about carbon neutrality as developments with the topic become reality.
The post Defining and Being A Green Data Center appeared first on 42U.
]]>The post Aten CS1964 appeared first on 42U.
]]>You can find out more about the Aten CS1964 today.
We always are committed to recommending and implementing products and strategies proven to maximize energy efficiency and minimize environmental impact. With our best-practice expertise in monitoring, airflow analysis, power, measurement, cooling, and best-of-breed efficiency technologies, we are able to help data center managers improve energy efficiency, reduce power consumption, and lower energy costs.
The post Aten CS1964 appeared first on 42U.
]]>The post ADDERlink Infinity (ALIF) Firmware Updates appeared first on 42U.
]]>Download the Update here: (click on the downloads tab)
If you think these updates are intriguing and are want to learn more about the Adder Infinity 4000 4K 60Hz-KVIM over IP Dual Displayport Transmitter, find it on KVM Switches Online.
Download the Update now (click on the downloads tab)
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]]>The post Avocent 18.5″ Local Rack Access USB LCD Console – Promotion appeared first on 42U.
]]>This Avocent LCD display provides simplicity, efficiency, and ease of use to make it perfect for the rack access point for your data center, server room, or computer closet. The Avocent LRA Console combines the efficiency in power and space consumption needed for an emergency access solution with the convenience and user experience of a workstation solution. When connected to a KVM Switch, the Avocent LRA185KMM enables ease of access to multiple servers making software upgrades, troubleshooting, and system monitoring convenient and less time-consuming.
The Avocent LRA Console tray provides field-proven access within the data center allowing data center operators immediate access to the server, network switches, and other IT gear from inside the data center with no need for crash carts or other cumbersome equipment. The tray features standard USB and VGA interfaces providing compatibility to a vast number of servers and devices natively. It is compatible with all recent Avocent¨ data center KVM solutions and can easily be used in conjunction with many of the market-leading Avocent¨ access technologies.
(navigate through your options via the Integrated KVM Switch option on KVMSwitchesOnline. )
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]]>The post Considering NFTs for the Data Center Industry appeared first on 42U.
]]>A prominent topic in the IT industry, the financial sector, the entertainment industry, and even the news has been Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). If you are unfamiliar or need a refresher, we’ll break down the basics real quick.
If you are already familiar with the basics and definitions, please Skip ahead.
The best way to start is to define what we are talking about in relation to non-fungible tokens and address a couple of common questions.
Fungible – An economics term that has become a lot more popular recently. Fungible means an interchangeable asset. Essentially a penny is synonymous with any other penny. An euro is interchangeable with another euro.
That is until it becomes akin to something like a 1914-S Lincoln Penny, valued at $105,000+, condition pending. This would be a non-fungible item because the specific item holds value—a set number of 1914-S Lincoln Pennies globally, each with particular characteristics that matter to coin collectors. A different example of a non-fungible item would be the first print of a painting.
Blockchain – Blockchain is a specific type of database. Unlike a typical database in the way it stores information, blockchains store data in blocks that are then chained together.
As new data comes in, it is entered into a new block. Once the block is filled with data, it is chained onto the previous block, making the data chained together in chronological order.
Different types of information can be stored on a blockchain, but the most common use so far has been as a ledger for transactions. In some instances, blockchain is used in a decentralized way so that no single person or group has control, so all users collectively retain control.
Decentralized blockchains are immutable, which means that the data entered is irreversible. For Bitcoin, this means that transactions are permanently recorded and viewable to anyone.
More here: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp
Etherium– is an open-source, decentralized software platform and programming language (Turing complete) running on a blockchain, helping developers to build and publish distributed applications. It also has its own associated cryptocurrency named ether. The currency is used to keep a standard value for everything held on Etherium.
More here: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ethereum.asp
Is this related to cryptocurrency? Currently, most NFTs are valued at specific dollar amounts, but they are initially traded and purchased via cryptocurrency, and the exchange rate is a significant factor to consider.
If you still want more explanation to understand NFTs more generally or gain more understanding to how end-users would consider them, you can read through this Verge article.
ERC721 – As they describe themselves: ERC-721 is a free, open standard that describes how to build non-fungible or unique tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. While most tokens are fungible (every token is the same as every other token), ERC-721 tokens are all unique.
This was the old favorite security measure for NFTs developed for a game known as Crypto-Kitties.
This standard is made to manage rare, one-of-a-kind digital collectibles. It is built with the ability to map unique identifiers to addresses representing the owner of the token. It also provides an authorized and permissioned way to transfer these assets.
ERC-1155 – Is listed as: The Multi Token Standard with the ability to mint an infinite number of both fungible and non-fungible tokens in a single deployed smart contract. ERC-1155 is the only token standard that enables you to create every type of asset, from currency and real estate to digital art and gaming items.
This standard brings the idea of semi-fungibility into the NFTs. IDs represent a class of assets instead of individual assets. They are creating an advantage with efficiency and reducing the efforts to modify intelligent contracts for many items.
These standards are made to service NFT blockchain functions, including Standardization, Traceability, Interoperability, Programmability, and Liquidity, Immutability, & Provable Scarcity. If you wish to read up more on this aspect, please read this guide.
While the current implementation of NFTs may or may not ultimately be a fad, in the form of high-priced digital collectibles, there’s more potential on display. The idea of ownership over a specific digital file raises some interesting implications moving forward. We already deal with individualized data that must remain separated and secure in things like personal documents, photos, or bank accounts. NFTs infer ownership over particular images, or even specific tweets.
We’ve even seen equitable examples before in the video gaming space where certain accounts will have access to certain items on their account. While there are multiple copies and variants of the in-game item, the game systems will need to track each individual instance of the item as it transfers or is removed from each account individually.
These game items have even had a real-world monetary value assigned to items via a currency transfer rate from in-game currency to dollars. Fungible and Non-Fungible items exist and are managed in these systems which is why they are equatable on a technological level. But these are closed systems where those who make the game can control the value, rarity, and stock of the items available. This means the technology has a proven record, but enabling it to an open market outside of a closed system is not. Thus the economic consequences are still being determined at the time of writing.
The technical implications of NFTs could affect how and where the organizations want to store them and might raise questions with redundancy.
Since the address to the NFT is stored on the blockchain but only accessible by the user with the proper credentials, or so we hope, that remains akin to accessing a bank account.
Users can access their accounts at various branches or ATMs. Actually accessing the NFT itself should be more like a safe deposit box. So when you access your NFT song for this example, it should be akin to the David Bowe’ Heroes’ 8-track with the scratches from sliding under your car that you pull out.
But is it? It’s a digital copy, it exists on a server somewhere, and if someone was to view your file or an identical file, they could right-click, save as and have an identical copy to yours.
Why should you care about this? If your customers are valuing the exclusivity of their file, you’ll need to consider how you communicate certain realities with them. It’s easy to simply not talk to them about the dubious nature of the ‘non-fungible in relation to digital goods. But they want to know their purchase is secure. Some of these NFTs are going for thousands or millions of dollars, which means a single corrupt file could become a significant issue. But if you’re dealing with duplication as a security measure, especially for a file valued at millions of dollars, you’re calling that value into question. Considering how you communicate this to your client will be necessary.
While much of the focus is on NFTs as media, Etherium has more extensive plans for this technology that are already in practice. Many are using it for bartering, exchange across other currencies, and as collateral for loans. These are complex monetary functions to be available for every user accessing the blockchain. These uses are more practical to everyday users as well, and not just people jumping on a fad or oddity, which would make these considerations more critical to several organizations beyond those dealing with entertainment.
When you mint an NFT, a few things have to happen:
It needs to be confirmed as an asset on the blockchain. The owner’s account balance must be updated to include that asset. This makes it possible for it to be then traded or verifiably “owned”.
The transactions that confirm the above need to be added to a block and immortalized on the chain
The block needs to be confirmed by everyone in the network as “correct”. This consensus removes the need for intermediaries because the network agrees that your NFT exists and belongs to you. And it’s on the chain so that anyone can check it. This is one of the ways Ethereum helps NFT creators to maximize their earnings.
While innovative this process has run into many problems, some of which data centers will need to contend with.
In short, currently, it takes a great deal of energy to generate an NFT. The proof is laid out but in short: “One researcher calculated that a certain artist is selling two pieces of artwork used over 175 MWh, creating the greenhouse gas emissions of 21 years of a U.S. household’s electricity use.” That is a single NFT. So if an artist has a release of a dozen NFTs suddenly in one night, 252 household years of greenhouse gases are used for a minimal number of tokens being generated.
It is quite a process to watch
Bitcoin: Initiated pic.twitter.com/baB58FKw6T
— Matt Lohstroh (@lohstroh) February 8, 2021
As such public perception is reacting negatively to NFTs as awareness grows. Even popular bands like the Gorillaz are being called out. The numbers are so shocking that not only are fringe environmentalists pushing against this, but most well-meaning citizens are as well.
TechCrunch had more to say about the Environmental damage as well.
However, that doesn’t mean we need to call for a full stop to NFTs. As Facilities Net mentioned in their article, we need to accelerate the use of solar and wind energy that does not produce nearly as much carbon. They also allude to how NFTs can be minted without a massive draw on power and resources.
The problem is that most current NFT services use Proof of Work to mint their coins. Proof of work represents a system that, through sheer processing power, deters any malicious activity that can potentially damage the network’s stability. It was developed as a way to prevent spam emails and DDOS attacks.
Basically, the ‘work’ is a series of arduous equations that need to be computed to prove validity. The process of doing so takes a large amount of energy.
Whereas Etherium 2.0 and others are moving to Proof of Stake. Etherium points to proof of stake having better energy efficiency, stronger immunity to centralization, and stronger support for shard chains.
Proof of stake is estimated to cut energy consumption by close to a hundredfold. However, it hasn’t been brought to scale, and nobody knows if this estimation is accurate yet. However, less is less overall, and this technology may still have room for improvement, but it needs to be tested.
Etherium plans on launching it in early 2022, but that’s still a ways off, and a lot of energy and greenhouse gases will be put out into the world before then.
Clearly the differences here equate to massive costs on the data center side, when proof of work requests pass through a data center. Pushing for proof of stake would be in the interest of data center operators as it would have a massive impact on the workload that needs to be processed.
There are efforts being made to make NFTs tied to physical items. Datacenters will need to concern themselves with this eventuality as well, when the time comes. It may be considered a doomsday scenario to some, but if any data is altered, corrupted, or ever accessed here, it would be a bigger problem than dealing with a bank account breach.
People’s ownership of a single physical item could be called into question if something odd happens with an NFT tied to a physical object. If a breach happens and someone steals the NFT they could claim ownership of an item they never possessed, or have a duplicate certification of ownership. How that could be resolved remains an open question.
What we can surmise is that legal bodies would be reaching out to data centers for an understanding here of what happened. It won’t be an issue easily resolved like refunding a user when illicit charges are made to their credit card by an unknown third party. That’s why the fungible or semi-fungible status of these items is an issue for the IT space.
However, these events happen every day. So why wouldn’t the same happen to the blockchain in time? Security is already being poked at in the NFT world and will be broken in time.
This article is covering an overwhelming amount of negative topics surrounding NFTs. Drastic environmental concerns are still in play. Questioning the very validity of the idea of an NFT and it’s worth. All of this simply points out several challenges NFTs will present in data centers as we move forward. Even future challenges with NFTs as they move into the physical realm.
What about the upside? There is a lot of money moving around with NFTs, and tying finance more closely to the tech sector as well. IT’s just impossible to ignore how crass and silly most NFTs are, and many people’s instincts are that the current implementation is a fad. However, the technology and the potential NFTs represent are here to stay, for good or ill.
It may seem crazy to open your infrastructure to an NFT today. We would agree. But once states start trying a new line of bonds to NFTs, or some massive payment validity is tied to an NFT, many data centers will need to reconsider their policies, and that day may be coming in short order.
There’s no crystal ball, no site to source for the future. However, we predict that once the NFT fad fades and fiduciary growth becomes more digital, those with policies already in place to deal with technology and the blockchain, in general, will be ahead of the game with a great line of successful business to show for it.
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]]>The post 8 Questions to learn more about the Aten KN1108VA/KN116VA appeared first on 42U.
]]>We always are committed to recommending and implementing products and strategies proven to maximize energy efficiency and minimize environmental impact. With our best-practice expertise in monitoring, airflow analysis, power, measurement, cooling, and best-of-breed efficiency technologies, we are able to help data center managers improve energy efficiency, reduce power consumption, and lower energy costs.
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]]>The post Product Feature: Austin Hughes’ MiniBoot appeared first on 42U.
]]>The MiniBoot includes several great core features for a remote reboot device. The primary feature being the ability to reboot a device from anywhere via IP. What sets the Austin Huges remote reboot option apart from competitors is the collection of other features available.
As its namesake suggests the MiniBoot is a smaller form factor that delivers enterprise-level power distribution outside of the rack. Meeting several industry and edge cases the MiniBoot has been considered for Transportation (Air, Land, and Sea), Broadcasting, Entertainment, Advertising, Manufacturing, Mining, Satellite, Defense, Education, Telecommunication, Finance & Banking, and Commercial environments. Being able to exist outside of the rack is key to enabling the following features for edge computing solutions.
The MiniBoot also auto pings, checking for the need to reboot. By sending an auto ping via IP from the MiniBoot to your device, system failure is automatically detected. The system is then activated for a timely reboot, automatically resolving the issue for the fastest possible response time.
The IP connection fostered by the device also enables remote monitoring via an included GUI, allowing for a more robust IT solution. The remote management via this online GUI – consists of the following protocols: HTTP(S); SSH Command Line Interface; Telnet; SMTP; and IPv6/IPv4. This makes the MiniBoot hardware solution adaptable to nearly any secure IP setup used within your solution.
The built-in GUI (PPS-03-S) is a user-friendly system. Capable of tracking amps, kilowatt-hour (kWh), and kilovolt-ampere (kVA). You can also toggle on/off for each outlet individually, instantly. You can plan ahead by creating a schedule for which outlets will be on at which times. Then you can ensure your equipment will handle the load when things are pressed with system audit trails. This is a more manual and
Power levels can be monitored via an LED meter on the side of the device locally, at a glance as well, keeping local surveillance of your power output a passive and constant task.
To meet various needs the MiniBoot comes in two, four, or eight-port options, no matter which regional plug you use. Outlets available include: US NEMA, IEC C13, UK BS1363, German Schuko CEE 7/3, or French CEE 7/5. Inlets only include C20 for different regional power cords by default. However, custom inlets are available upon request.
Every MiniBoot Includes a mounting kit to fit whichever model you select, ensuring the device won’t take any extra space and can be placed where it is most efficient for your setup.
While the MiniBoot accommodates outlets and inlets available for different regions, it works best with C13 cords. The C13 Outlets are lockable to prevent cables from detaching due to error or undue tension placed on the cord. Colored C13 cords can be purchased with the unit as well. Beyond merely looking nicer, color-coordinating cords can make it easier to track where each cable is going, as well as making it easier to coordinate during a hot-swap if needed.
While the MiniBoot is already a versatile tool, it can be paired with a variety of other sensors for temperature, humidity, smoke, or door security. Receive alerts can be enabled via SNMP, email (SMTP), and Syslog when predefined thresholds are exceeded or met for both the MiniBoot or connected environmental sensor events.
An optional Austin Huges peripheral WiFi kit also (IPD-WIFI) is also available complying with 802.11 g/n/ac protocols. Allowing for access beyond the reach of ethernet cords.
If you’re interested in learning more or getting a MiniBoot you can find them for the best price on KVM Switches Online.
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]]>The post Some Work From Home Products You Might Have Not Considered appeared first on 42U.
]]>As more people are settling into their work from home (WFH) environment different hardware options can assist with space-saving or even redundancy of products taking up space. From KVMs to wall mounts we’ve quickly highlighted some products that you might want to consider for your home setup.
With evolving work from home setups, there’s a good chance you’ll need an extender of some kind to connect your setup from an out of reach resource or allow your work and private setups to function in separate rooms.
NTI HDMI Over Gigabit IP Network Extender - 330 feethttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/st-iphd-lc.html A budget option to beaming your audio/visual over IP which can allow for more options with your WFH setup. |
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Adder XD150 CAT6/7 KVM Extender - USB, Audio, Single Link DVI-D, & RS232 - Up to 150m (500ft)https://www.kvm-switches-online.com/xd150-us.html This tool is a premier tool for a WFH set up. Not only allowing the normal KVM connection but also allowing audio connections in and out, creating a full extended setup. |
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Adder XDIP-POE - HDMI, USB & Audio Extender / KVM-Over-IP Matrixhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/xdip-poe.html This is another option for a full extended setup for your WFH needs. Audio in (a microphone feed) isn’t included, but another strong option. |
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NTI USB Extender, 150fthttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/usb-c5-lc.html If you need to enable a USB connection beyond normal lengths, this would be the tool for you. |
Sometimes a little plastic can make a big difference in your setup.
Acrylic Cough & Sneeze Guardshttps://www.server-rack-online.com/kh-sneeze-guards.html If you are in need of some extra barriers, you can choose a guard in the correct size to fit your need. |
With the increased need for WFH, you very well might need a USB dock to keep all your devices plugged in and your phone charging through the day. Rather than hot-swapping devices all-day keep everything plugged in and at the ready.
IOGEAR MicroHub 4 Port Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Hubhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/guh274.html If you only need USB 2.0 slots for your hub this is a good choice for you. |
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USB-C Dual-HDMI Mini Dockhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/uh3231.html This Dual-DisplayPort Mini Dock which transforms your USB-C device into a dual-monitor workstation. It's compliant with the latest USB 3.1 Type-C specifications and supports various video converters that can convert HDMI, DVI, or VGA outputs for use in dual display mode. |
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USB-C Multiport Mini Dockhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/uh3232.html This multiport mini dock connects a USB-C computer to an Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, and USB Type-A port- through a single cable. Featuring an integrated and easy-to-use connector that instantly links your USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 computer to an HDMI HD (3840 x 2160 @ 30 Hz) or VGA 2K (2048 x 1152 @ 60 Hz) video output, USB 3.1 Gen 1 port, and Gigabit Ethernet port for fast desktop docking. |
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USB-C Multiport Mini Dock with Power Pass-Throughhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/uh3236.html This device connects a USB-C enabled computer to up to 5 peripheral ports that includes a USB 2.0 Type-A, USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A, Gigabit LAN, HDMI, and VGA - through a single USB-C cable. |
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USB-C Multi-port Dock with Power Pass-Throughhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/uh3234.html ThisMultiport Dock with Power Pass-Through is a one-step total upgrade for your laptop that provides all the extra expansion you need. Simply use one cable to add up to 10 devices with power delivery pass-through to boost your productivity with extra HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA, USB3.1 Gen1, SD/MMC/MicroSD, Ethernet, and audio connections. |
Cleaning up your desk space becomes incredibly important when working from home more frequently. Having a KVM will let you take advantage of your home setup with the computing power coming from work.
Aten 2 Port VGA USB Computer Sharing Devicehttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/cs231.html This device enables two users to share the use of a single computer - each from their own console. |
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TAA Compliant, 1-Port KVM/Power/Serial Over-IP Gatewayhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/kn1000.html Helping manage and control multiple widely distributed servers efficiently from a remote console, a built-in single-port Power Switch allows remote power management of a server/installation connected locally to the KN1000, including turning servers On, Off, and Rebooting. |
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Adder AdderLink IPEPS KVM over IPhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/adder-ipeps.html Despite its small size, there is no compromise in the performance of the ADDERLink ipeps. By using Adventiq Inside® on-chip KVM-over-IP technology, an extremely high-performance solution can be contained in a compact unit. |
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2 Port 4K 60Hz HDMI Dual Display KVM w/ USB 3.0https://www.kvm-switches-online.com/cs1842.html The patented Video DynaSync technology, the CS1842 provides optimized display resolutions and accelerated switching between systems, while a built-in USB 3.1 Gen 1 hub delivers data transfer rates up to 5 Gbps. The CS1842offers flexible switching options including pushbuttons, hotkeys, mouse port switching, a remote port selector, and RS-232 for quick and streamlined port selection. |
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2 Port 4K 60Hz HDMI Dual Display KVM w/ USB 3.0https://www.kvm-switches-online.com/cs1842.html For some wanting to contend with entertainment along businesses need in their WFH set up. |
A couple of options to help integrate and expand on including a KVM to your setup.
Dataprobe-iboothttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/iboot.html Pairing well with KVM over IP this product completes a duo of products that pair to complete a remote access solution. You can find 5 uses for the iBoot here. |
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NTI VESA Mounting Kithttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/st-c5mk-vesa.html Allowing you to keep an addition of a KVM from taking up further space you might consider this mount. |
Many might just need to swap between a work laptop and a home setup but wish to take advantage of USB items for both computers.
2-Port USB-C Gen 2 Sharing Switchhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/us3342.html This 4-port USB 3.2 Gen 2 peripheral sharing device that allows users to share data between four USB devices in two different USB-C enabled laptops. The US3342 is USB 3.2 Gen 2 compliant and supports data transfer rates up to 10Gps. |
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USB 2.0 Peripheral Sharing Switchhttps://www.kvm-switches-online.com/gus402.html This USB switch is a USB 2.0 peripheral sharing switch that allows two computers to share up to four USB devices, such as keyboard, mouse, printer, portable hard drives, etc. |
Sometimes the most basic additions can make the biggest difference in cleaning up your environment.
Hook & Loop Cable Tieshttps://www.server-rack-online.com/0300-1-002-00.html No matter your setup cleaning up your messy cable situation is always relevant. With these hook & loops, a little foresight(not included), and elbow grease (also not included) will ensure cables are kept in line. |
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Cinch Strap with Buckle and Grommethttps://www.server-rack-online.com/cm-01.html Another simple strap to help keep those pesky cables in line. |
Another way to free up space is to make use of your wall space or empty space for computer storage.
Wall Mount Desktop CPU Brackethttps://www.server-rack-online.com/1915-1-400-00.html A simple stand that will fit a standard machine onto your wall. |
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Kendall Howard Adjustable CPU Holderhttps://www.server-rack-online.com/1915-1-500-00.html Taking advantage of the often unused space right under the desk but not on the floor, this can make space for your WFH setup. |
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LCD / Thin Client PC Wall Mounthttps://www.server-rack-online.com/wmtc-m.html Another great wall mount option that can work for a small computer or a monitor. |
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]]>The post Converged and Hyperconverged Infrastructure appeared first on 42U.
]]>Converged infrastructure – in most cases, converged infrastructure seeks to collapse compute, storage, and networking into a single SKU and provide a unified management layer.
Hyperconverged infrastructure – seeks to do the same, but adds more value by throwing in software-defined storage and doesn’t place much emphasis on networking. The focus is on data control and management.
Converged infrastructure
This setup is usually implemented in large data centers.
Traditionally computing, storage, and networking are separate components. To reduce deployment time and operational costs, these components are concentrated into a rack-level solution so that each part will function in tandem within a tight and efficient space.
Grow As Needed
Growth is achieved by adding more components to the racks or adding additional racks to the lineup.
Each component will have its own warranty and support managed separately. Suppose computing, storage, or networking needs additional resources. In that case, they can be added to independently as needed since any component can be added to a given rack, so long as there is space.
Scale with the Best of the Market
With each component being its own addition, it will be easier to find greater value at a cheaper price point. It will also be easier and cheaper to replace these components as upgrades and replacements are needed.
In short converged solutions are flexible to your needs, more market savvy, and will allow you to adapt your solution to your needs as they grow and change over time. Great for large data centers or those with unique needs or tighter budgets.
The hyperconverged systems are managed via “a single pane of glass” containing different PDU silos and serial or KVM switches. They bring together storage, compute, networking, and management with their software solution. This is very similar to Raritan Command Center Secure Gateway or Vertiv’s DSView software system.
For example, the Raritan Command Center Secure Gateway can manage all of your data center servers connected to their KVMs, Serial Consoles, Service Processors, and PDUs in a centralized, secure, single pane glass method.
So, instead of having a set of applications and separate teams to manage the storage array, virtualization, and server hardware, a hyper-converged environment has one team (or, in some settings, one person) to manage the complete hyper-converged stack.
Hyper-convergence infrastructure focuses on VM mobility, high availability, data efficiency, and cost-efficiency. Providing for what your environment needs, whether it’s a platform controller or color-coded blinking lights, it is essential to look at the manufacturing process along with the business model of the products; especially, since there is a rapid expansion of suppliers and not all equipment is cross-compatible.
It is easier to select, implement, and install a hyperconvergent system, and everything is held in one unit. Growth is more manageable though more expensive. You can only add additional units in line with your original purchase to your network solution, even if you only need to improve a single component. Support is more accessible as well since everything is managed through a single point of contact.
In short, hyperconverged solutions are straightforward and simpler to manage while being faster to implement. However, they are ultimately a fixed solution that won’t adapt over time. Great for edge solutions and those in need of quick or uniform deployment.
Further Reading:
Convergence
https://www.netapp.com/us/info/what-is-converged-infrastructure.aspx
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/what-is/converged-infrastructure.html
Hyperconergence
https://www.nutanix.com/hyperconverged-infrastructure
https://www.vmware.com/products/hyper-converged-infrastructure.html
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3125009/how-hyperconvergence-enables-it-flexibility.html
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]]>The post Using Social Media to Increase Your Data Center’s Outreach appeared first on 42U.
]]>Data Centers don’t always make public outreach their primary concern, but there’s a lot to gain by making yourself available online. As B2B connections occur, a strong digital presence can establish your reputation. Even if an initial connection point isn’t made online, an online presence can build trust and deeper connections.
Even a light touch with social media can help data centers take on new business and position themselves for growth.
When your company’s work is tied to the internet, people will naturally expect your online presence to be important to you. As such you should have a robust online presence which will include a strong social media presence. To keep a strong presence you’ll need to find ways to craft materials to post on a regular basis. Many data centers struggle with finding a way to grow their presence and produce regular material. This article will give you tips on both of these objectives below.
Your first goal when starting on social media is straightforward. Build your audience. Simple use of hashtags and regular posting in a cadence of three times a week will be a great start to achieving this goal. Liking and following business associates and other partners will jump-start your presence. You can also use this list of 23 data center experts to follow, giving you another jump start to building your network.
To take advantage of the full benefit of social media, you may also want to consider paid ads. Paid social media is an excellent way to ensure that you are found by your audience and that you’ll always be top of mind since your ad will be shown to your demographic and ever-expanding audience. Though for ads to be effective, you can’t post a single campaign for a few weeks and call it good.
Your ads will require a budget and tweaking based on analytics over a long term duration. A single ad can be tweaked and kept up for years. Things to test might include your CTA (call to action) with something like ‘learn more’ or ‘discover more about colocation.’
Looking to a best in class example, Stream Data Centers, received recognition in their community for their social media presence. Proving that if you invest in your presence, sometimes it pays off in unexpected ways.
A quick look through Stream Data Center’s feed will show the elements in their posts that you can incorporate to make your feed a success. Putting faces to the industry is a common practice that makes posts more engaging and humanizing in a world of data and black boxes. They use the same shade of blue along with their logo on a majority of their posts, so their ‘look and feel’ becomes more familiar to users over time and helps keep them top of mind. Their copy uses a few hashtags that make their post easier to find for those interested in the relevant topics.
Different teams will have different goals, resources, outputs, and results on social media. Some will be chasing direct sales, and some will be pushing brand recognition. Others will be driving the consideration of their brand over another brand once a potential customer has identified a particular need or solution. An example of this might be influencing a customer to choose one brand of IP KVM switch over another.
Great feeds will move past a single goal and ultimately be a presence for the industry within relevant channels. A company that stands out within the IT infrastructure industry is Green House Data. They have a top-notch team that puts out a steady stream of content that users are responding to every day.
They use a blend of blue and green to evoke a fresh and natural feeling. At the same time, they are focusing their copy on more technical matters. Ensuring their visuals evoke the impression that they’re green, saving energy, or are more natural. The pinned video posts you can see via their Twitter or Facebook are well crafted, allowing interested parties to learn more with minimal interaction.
You can also see them taking full advantage of their content with the establishment of their Youtube channel and RSS feed. This allows what was developed for other avenues to be accessed by even more people. If you are taking the time to put this level of content together, it’s well worth the time to repost it far and wide so more people will click on it.
Taking a look through their feeds, and the differences across them can also help you select which content is appropriate for each platform in the industry. You’ll see more curation on Linkedin, more shout outs and @s on Twitter, with a blend between those two on Facebook.
One of the biggest mistakes made by professional social media account managers is forgetting the need to be social. Find relevant posts others have made, and leave a comment, a like, and share with your network.
By avoiding others’ voices within any given platform and not engaging with the wider community, you are only hurting yourself. For your presence online to be relevant to others, you need to uplift and engage with your community. Only sharing business-critical announcements is dull, and will never allow you to build a following.
If you’re looking to increase your outreach, social media is still one of the cheapest, easiest, and most effective tactics available. With regular incremental gains, you’ll always be finding your next advocate, partner, or sale. Using these tips from this article, you can create a feed that will boost your data center’s brand awareness.
Do you have any thoughts about your data center’s presence on social media? Please reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and let us know.
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]]>The post Reconsidering Data Center Hiring Practices appeared first on 42U.
]]>Data Centers are facing an age-old problem that we all eventually need to contend with; time. As the clock keeps ticking forward, we forget that it’s been some decades since servicing the online needs of the world was a revolutionary new idea that never seemed like it would slow down. The eager young workers who made this industry a bedrock of society are now experienced veterans and have earned their retirement. In fact, a Vertiv survey notes that 16% of their participants plan on retiring by 2025. This is coupled with an average estimate of 33% of the American workforce planning on retiring by 2025.
The Uptime Institute put together the following graph from their 2018 Survey regarding Data Center staffing.
You can see that the primary issue is and continues to be finding qualified candidates.
There’s no need to approach the inevitable march of time with negativity. It’s essential to recognize that a significant amount of talent is leaving soon. Data centers need to bring in newer talent now so that veterans can impart skills and knowledge to the next generation.
Certain roles in the data center will always require a strong STEM related academic background. These roles will always benefit from essential knowledge that comes with experience, but the pool will be limited by those who have the proper schooling. However many roles may not require that kind of academic background. As the need to fill positions in the IT industry rise we will find that academic requirements might need to be reconsidered.
Right now, the average expected skillset for a data center worker is beyond those of the average American worker, as detailed by Zippia. Even entry-level positions have requirements that expect knowledge, expertise, or certifications that would be impossible for a lower-level worker to obtain.
Recently we’ve heard the news that more STEM college graduates are coming, which is excellent. However, even these workers will be inexperienced despite their technical aptitude. Institutional knowledge needs to be transferred to this new wave of workers. Meaning even this growth in STEM graduates in the job pool alone won’t address the growing need for more qualified Data Center workers.
Workers are often caught in a Catch-22 when looking for new work. They are usually required to have some industry or technical experience that can only be gained through work in the industry before they’ve been allowed to set foot in the industry. Some seek education on their own to become more skilled, taking online courses, or short classes to bridge the skill gap.
Those considering a career in Data Centers don’t have this option, however. It would be impossibly expensive to afford the equipment to practice with at home. Classes for Data Centers are equally costly. A course from ConnectedPNG would cost $5,200, for two days of education, and assumes that those attending are familiar with Data Centers already, as it’s intended as a boot camp for those already in the profession.
Lage Data Centers can reconsider how they come by new talent. Instead of expecting everyone applying to an entry-level position to already have the skills and experience necessary to work in a data center, the hiring gap can be bridged by bringing in motivated individuals to a journeyman like program. This will create a path for longevity that addresses many worries that come with hiring raw talent.
While younger workers are known for jumping from job to job seeking a raise, offering a journeyman role reframes expectations from the start. Working towards a future within an industry, coupled with relative job security, gives workers a salient reason to stay in their role. Employees will want to stay loyal to a company that helped them out when they were coming up and continues to foster their growth as a worker with meaningful advancements as the years continue.
Those who staff data centers should consider more rigorous hiring practices when considering this raw talent. The data from the Pew Research Center has shown us opportunities that are being overlooked in America. Some of these are more widely known, such as racial and gendered pay gaps, that can be overcome by paying everyone fairly. Advancement in pay can even be considered in advance while formulating a journeyman program. A strong show of diversity and employee development allows an organization to stand out as a community and industry leader.
The educational pay gap is hurting those who didn’t finish or attend college more so than ever before. Offering younger workers a role that comes with built-in education and the promise of longevity would produce loyalty and motivation rarely found in the job market. These workers can start with menial tasks and entry training at very competitive rates compared to other workers, and quickly scale to take on more technical tasks.
Schneider Electric has done a great deal with employee advancement in recent years. They have even moved past the journeyman path, and see a more sophisticated solution integrating education and role advancement that is starting to bear results.
They attract newer workers with the promise of experience with exciting technologies like 3D modeling and lasers. From the onset, they have a clear career path, showing a sign of development and longevity that makes their positions more attractive than a dead-end job – even if the job pays a little less to start. This career pathway shares the same benefits and appeal as a journeyman program.
What sets Schneider Electric apart is a set of internal education courses that provide workers with the education they need to move forward with their careers. These courses cover ways to move into new positions. They also ensure that their employees stay up to date with technological advances that can save time and effort. Schneider believes that newer generations are absorbing information more quickly than past generations aiding in this growth model.
Some places need to make more immediate solutions. Simply ensuring you are bringing new talent to learn directly from experienced workers is a great place to start. In short order, you’ll have redundancy for when workers take the day off, allowing data centers to remain running with less planning and frustration overall. Like anything else in the Data Center, redundancy is essential.
When coming in fresh to the data center, newer workers often expect the equipment to be performing well within standards, and are usually surprised when things are underperforming or using legacy systems.
Every data center is different, but if older tech is holding the data center back, it can send an implicit message that this component or system is a ticking time bomb that will quickly become the new hire’s problem. Who wouldn’t start thinking about removing themself from that situation? Ensuring everything is working properly will raise confidence and help demonstrate the same longevity within the data center that you’d hope to see from an employee.
This Clutch survey indicates workers consider new technology in the workplace as an opportunity. It can give them a chance to learn a system at the same time their co-workers are. We’d presume that this mindset of the worker seeing new technology in the workplace as an opportunity, would also have the mindset required to learn about the tools and practices of the data center quickly.
It can be worth waiting to purchase new technology until the new talent is hired, creating a more comprehensive data center refresh. Having the new workers handle the mundane task of inserting a new dongle, switch, or KVM across the various racks will help them learn while building familiarity right from the start of their employment.
Keeping tribal knowledge within the company can require more creative solutions. Some data centers keep old employees on tap as consultants. Some help the worker move to a new position within the company but encourage them to help their former departments when necessary.
Creating an internal library allows employees to access technical histories of their equipment, read about solutions to problems that have arisen in the past, and document other oddities that they wish they could have simply found in reference.
Once documented, this internal knowledge base can turn every difficulty, discovery, and process enhancement from ethereal into a tangible, self-service library and real time saver. Access to a library such as this should enable a newer employee to level themselves up though their employment and kick start their onboarding process. This will also keep tribal knowledge accessible to the company even after employees move on. If anyone should be using data to its fullest potential, it should be the data center industry.
This library will need to be organized in a uniform way so that anyone can navigate through the information quickly. It will also need to be updated regularly. Best practices would include an annual audit to keep everything relevant.
Hopefully, you’re convinced at this point that Data Centers need to consider their talent pool and make sure that they are always thinking about the next generation. While practices and technologies keep progressing and changing rapidly, the need for quality workers never goes away. As the adage goes: the best time to consider this was five years ago, the second-best time is now.
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]]>Welcome to the 42U data center glossary terms page. Below is a compilation of the TAGs used in data centers when referring to infrastructure technologies and energy efficiency. Rather than create three separate pages for terms, acronyms and glossary items we have chosen the more efficient approach of combining them into a single data center definitions page.
# | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
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]]>The post Popular Remote Power Management Control Switches appeared first on 42U.
]]>Remote power switching allows for secure power management via web access or phone line. By logging into the remote reboot device, users can control power-on, power-off, and reboot cycles for attached devices. Some intelligent remote power switches also allow for automatic reboot capabilities in the event of power failures.
Remote power switches are ideal for situations where remote control over power is desired or access to equipment is restricted or difficult. Just a few of the applications include: digital signage, stand-alone information kiosks, ATM Machines, vending systems, internet access terminals, distant broadcast transmitters, remote pumping stations, “lights out” management of branch offices, home office, and security and alarm systems.
The IT trends of today and tomorrow show rack density increasing as more and more servers are installed in standard cabinets. In correlation to this recent IT trend, overall rack power requirements are rising as well. The power management product range for power distribution in the data center is based on the consistent implementation of plug-&-play expansion – with no need to interrupt current operations. Downtimes are avoided, and future operating costs are decreased.
Permanent IT availability is undoubtedly a crucial issue. For this reason, you need to ensure a highly available and reliable power supply to your complex server and software system architecture. Create the framework conditions to ensure that all business processes operate on schedule with exceptionally high-level security parameters for the physical IT infrastructure.
Power Management Solution Diagram
Power Distribution Rack to accommodate a maximum of 8 PDMs
42U PDU Features:
The 42U PDU kit includes the enclosure frame with doors (without tubular door frame), rear panel, side panels and roof plate, leveling feet including base/plinth adapter, grounding of all enclosure panels, busbars shock-hazard-protected, main switch integrated.
**The Power Distribution Module is required.
42U PDM Features:
42U Power Distribution Module Package Contents: Module 482.6 mm (19″), 3U
The ever-growing power requirements of modern IT infrastructures demand advanced solutions for power distribution inside the racks, leading to the requirement for additional sockets. The new “intelligent power distribution system” from 42U significantly reduces cabling and assembly work, leading to a reduction in costs. The modular system facilitates the basic configuration of the racks, thanks to a vertical support rail with 3-phase infeed.
The various modules to supply the active components may be snap-fitted into the support rail. This can even be done while the system is operational because the support section is shock hazard protected. The various modules, grounding pins, IEC320, etc. may be inserted into the support rail in any combination. This is easily achieved, even by non-electricians, thanks to the shock hazard protected plug & play system.
42U PSM Features:
The active plug-in module for the busbar system PSM has 8 current outlets with IEC320 C13 slots. Each of the 8 outlets are individually switchable (via the CMCTC system). Furthermore, a current indicator, circuit display, and thermal overload protection are integrated into the module. The module is twice the length of a standard PSM module, so that a maximum of 2 modules may be inserted into a 1200 mm long PSM rail, and a maximum of 3 modules into a 2000 mm long PSM rail.
Operate the module without CMC-TC: For operation of the module, power pack 7201210 and a connection cable (see page 70) are needed. Up to two or three modules may be operated in one PSM rail (1200/2000 mm) with one power pack. Usable functions: Current display, circuit display, automatic selective activation
Operate the module with CMC-TC: No additional power pack is needed; the module is supplied with power via the CMC-TC system. Up to 4 x 4 modules may be connected to one Processing Unit II. Usable functions: Current display, circuit display, automatic selective activation, via CMC-TC in the network: Individual switching of the 8 current outlets, current limit monitoring, delayed switching of the individual current outlets, status display of the module.
Control Power System Module Functions:
New monitor plug-in play module for the busbar system PSM. The module has 4 x IEC320 C13 s.
The Dataprobe iBoot is a single outlet, power over IP switch with secure web access. The browser interface allows for power-on, power-off, and timed power functions. With the auto-ping feature, the iBoot can monitor any network-attached device and take automatic action when the device is down. Autosensing for worldwide use. For circuits up to 12 amps.
The Dataprobe iBootBar is a remote reboot power strip that allows for independent control of 8 outlets via secure web, Telnet, SNMP, or optional internal modem. The password protected interface allows for power-on, power-off, and timed power functions. Auto-ping with automatic reboot for crashed devices. Current sensing with email or SNMP trap notification. Multi-user capable with independent permission settings. Outlet grouping for simultaneous action and reboot sequencing. Connect up to 16 iBootBars together for control of up to 128 outlets from one IP address. Available in single or dual power source in 15 or 20 amp capacities.
The IPM-2 is a two outlet remote power switch that allows you to power off, power on, and reboot devices from any location via a secure web interface, SSH, or out of band (dial-up) session. Outlets can be independently controlled or grouped for simultaneous action and reboot sequencing. SNMP management and event notification allows network management systems to use SNMP requests to retrieve information and control power to individual outlets. Includes two ports for optional environmental monitoring probes. Multiple input power cord options*. Steel cased enclosure construction, industrial grade outlets, high quality powder coat finish, and upgradeable firmware. For 15 amp circuits.
* Power cord not included.
The Server Technology Sentry switched rack PDU combines remote configuration, remote management, power distribution, power monitoring, and environmental monitoring in one remote controlled power strip. The secure Sentry web interface allows for power cycling of individual or groups of outlets, power-up sequencing, powering down of unused outlets, and monitoring of input current. Access via Web interface, SSL, SSH, Telnet, SNMP, FTP, SNTP, Syslog, LDAP, LDAPS, TACACS, and RS-232. Automated SNMP-based alarms and email alerts. UL 60950-1 branch circuit protection. LED digital display reports input current. Multiple simultaneous users with independent access control. Add an expansion module and control more outlets. Includes two ports for optional environmental monitoring probes. Multiple input power cord options*. Steel cased enclosure construction, industrial grade outlets, high quality powder coat finish, and upgradeable firmware. For 20 amp circuits.
* Power cord not included.
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]]>The post Remote Power Management Software for Data Centers appeared first on 42U.
]]>Today, the message is everywhere, championed by manufacturers and users alike. Organizations are realizing that not only is power mission-critical to data center operation; it’s also a significant expense and a limited resource. It must be managed, tracked, and logged. It’s something for which a data center operation must be held accountable.
There are several best-in-class software products that make this vision a reality. Power management software promotes accountability, efficiency, and availability throughout an entire data center organization.
Power Management software allows data center professionals to optimize their power utilization by looking at one of the most energy intensive components in the data center: the IT load.
Trace consumption patterns globally (an entire data center) and locally (a specific rack) to find room for improvement and potential savings.
Generate custom reports to inform business units of power consumption and to encourage efficiency.
Monitor and measure key power data to plan for moves, adds, and changes.
Compare nameplate readings and production values to improve future planning.
Turn off outlets, assign user rights, reboot servers.
Aggregate data to calculate PUE and DCiE and to stress ongoing improvements.
The software packages can also incorporate environmental monitoring. Through sensors installed on rack PDUs, users can access the temperature and humidity levels for each individual rack.
Remote Power Management software is only applicable to monitored, switched, and outlet-level rack PDUs – models that are IP addressable. Basic PDUs and metered PDUs lack network connectivity and cannot be integrated with this software.
In addition, the accessibility varies by manufacturer. One package, for instance, can manage various Rack PDU brands. Another package is proprietary, meaning the management abilities are restricted to its own PDUs.
Throughout our 25 year history, 42U has mastered rack power management and distribution. We can sell, specify, and support a turnkey product and management solution. Please contact us to start your power project today at 1-800-638-2638.
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]]>The post Remote Power Management Reboot: Advantages & Applications appeared first on 42U.
]]>Intelligent IP Power Strips let you Remote Reboot and Measure Power to the Device, Rack, and Data Center
Data Centers utilize Remote Power Management strips in their racks to allow users to securely power cycle or power on/off hung servers or devices from outside the data center, server farm, or remote location. Remote Reboot Power can be configured to allow cold cycle power, and some of the newer technologies can even measure power consumption at the outlet, power strip, rack, and also by row of racks in your data center.
Reduce 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 reduce server downtime and 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 Rack PDU via a browser and reboot the switch.
Conduct Proactive 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.
Intelligent Power Strips / IP Power Management
As IT environments become more diverse and geographically dispersed, intelligent power management solutions provide IT professionals with the information and tools necessary to manage and maintain operations. These remote power solutions leverage hardware and/or software to monitor and control server-level power state and condition.
SMB/Kiosk Power Management
Implement secure, remote power control via a web interface, SSH, or out-of-band session to manage one to many outlets in small office/home office (SOHO) environments, digital signage, or standalone kiosks with a remote power switch.
Computer Room and Server Room Rack Rack PDU Environments
Intelligent power solutions for the data center provide remote configuration, power management, and environmental monitoring through an integrated interface. These solutions allow grouping across circuits for redundant power supplies, and many options support power-up sequencing to prevent power in-rush and branch circuit overload.
Enterprise Data Center Applications
In high-density applications, 208V single-phase or 3-phase intelligent power solutions provide infinite configuration options. Along with the benefits of a single interface for all managed power and environmental monitoring, these solutions can give graceful shutdown and load-shedding features down to the outlet level.
How do you know when circuits are at capacity?
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.
How quickly and effectively can power be recycled using remote power management?
Once an administrator sends a command for a remote reboot, it takes place immediately.
Can all remote power management solutions allow administrators to gain true redundancy and simultaneous control of multiple power supply devices?
No. However, several manufacturers provide simultaneous reboot of redundant power supplies, grouped across separate circuits.
What security features do remote reboot power devices offer?
Remote reboot power devices have many security features. Primary 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.
Uncover the Myths Behind Remote Power
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]]>
The Business Logic: As many as 95 percent of branch offices operate without on-site IT personnel, and spending on corporate IT staff continues to decline. These trends require IT professionals to do more with less resources. Determining more effective ways to perform critical tasks at remote sites may lead to the integration of remote management solutions.
A: Remote management solutions provide secure bios-level access to servers, network devices, power distribution, and other critical equipment. A complete remote management solution usually integrates KVM over IP technology or service processor management with intelligent power and environmental monitoring equipment, for true “lights out” management.
Remote Management Diagram
Comprehensive server management solutions allow you to manage mission-critical systems at any location, 24-hours-a-day.
Remote management solutions aggregate access and provide a single management portal, thus eliminating the need to manage devices individually. Through a single interface, you can view, access, and manage enterprise-wide assets and user access. If downtime occurs, these solutions provide a unified point of entry that allows you to access, troubleshoot, power cycle, and bring servers and appliances back online quickly.
In addition, these solutions enable you to:
- Reduce downtime and bring equipment back online quickly.
- Decrease operating costs by eliminating or reducing the need for IT staff or third-party service calls.
- Centralize data center control, improving security and providing easier and more efficient processes to perform system administration, maintenance, and upgrades.
- Improve physical site security and monitoring, minimizing capital loss due to vandalism or theft of equipment.
Our experts specialize in needs assessment, solution design, and implementation support to ensure IT professionals maximize the use of current technologies to improve overall business performance. 42U Data Center Solutions provide complete remote management solutions, including: KVM over IP, intelligent power, environmental monitoring, rack cooling, and rackmount solutions. Improving your data center performance by helping select solutions that are most appropriate for your organization’s particular needs and environment.
42U’s Vision is to inspire corporate responsibility in energy efficiency and be a leader in providing technology and vendor agnostic information, suggestions, and solutions for making data centers more energy efficient.
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]]>Remote reboot power management can be an excellent stand-alone solution or when combined with a KVM management system. Completing a true ‘lights out’ operations center can happen quickly and easily by introducing a simple remote reboot power management solution.
Remote KVM over IP access simply permits users to warm reboot computers. In order to cycle power to servers and network equipment, shutting down system power remotely is the only option for a total cold reboot. A remote reboot can be as simple as adding a single port Dataprobe iBoot remote power block or by employing more robust products such as chaining together Server Technology’s Power Tower XL and XM for 32-ports worth of control. Remote reboot power management for the two aforementioned products is accomplished through a standard secure internet browser session – no special software is required. In addition, alternate remote access options such as Telnet or Serial control are available in select models.
There are many advantages with this low-cost value add to your rack solution. Learn more about this tool with our Remote Reboot topic.
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]]>The post Lights Out Data Center appeared first on 42U.
]]>…going “Lights Out” improves more than your data center energy costs
It is apparent to most that having your data center go “Lights Out” is another way to improve your data center’s energy efficiency and thus reduce your organization’s data center operating costs. What is less apparent is just how significant those energy savings can be as well as the peripheral benefits going “Lights Out” provides your organization.
A lights out data center can indeed have few if any lights on, but more importantly, it is a climate controlled enclosed computer room that has minimal access to it. Obviously, the more you limit access, the less cooling escapes as doors are opened, and less energy is used to maintain proper temperatures. Other less obvious lights out benefits include improved security, reduction in damaged cabling and equipment, less theft and misappropriations of equipment, lowered insurance costs, quicker response times, and better allocation of your IT talent.
Having worked with hundreds of data centers, we have certainly heard our share of horror stories from data center managers who made the decision to go lights out. Many have made this transition after having experienced downtime and a major loss. One reported losing a rack of servers when an IT Admin unintentionally overloaded an already maxed-out strategic power strip. Another had to deal with accidental damage to fiber optic cables. And another reported drives and memory removed from servers that had been purchased for an install project and misappropriated to another manager’s project. When the day of the install came for this project, resources had been flown but wasted the day locating replacement equipment.
Having a lights out data center doesn’t completely eliminate potential problems like the ones above, but as fewer people need physical access to the computer room, you minimize your exposure. Also, limiting access enabled one Fortune 500 client to go back to their insurance company and successfully negotiate a reduction in their data center related insurance premium.
With remote bios level access to servers, the ability to do remote power “cold boots” and the ability to be notified when environmental thresholds are exceeded, IT Managers have the ability to draw on their best IT resources regardless of their physical location. Today’s remote access hardware is OS independent, and with virtual media enables you to do major software updates and patches remotely.
Many data centers are located in major metropolitan areas where IT resources are plentiful, but real estate and cost of power is extremely expensive. Often far less expensive data center real estate and power can be located only a few miles outside of these major cities. Going lights-out adds flexibility to where your IT resources are located and reduces the amount of time they have to be on site.
A major global IT service provider determined that a large percentage of their client’s server issues could be remedied remotely, thus eliminating the need to send out their support staff to isolated client locations. Often a cold boot alone remedied a hung server, but they had a novel approach on those clients’mission critical servers for whom a reboot wouldn’t bring back up the server. They delivered these mission critical with redundant boot drives, so if the server hung and couldn’t be recovered, they could remotely enter the server’s bios to change the boot drive to this secondary drive.
Remote Access Digital KVM over IP products (also known as IP KVM switches) are non-intrusive hardware-based solutions that allow you both in-band and out-of-band access to all servers connected to your KVM switch, or directly connected to the KVM Over IP switch. Utilizing advanced security and regardless of operating system, these Remote Access KVM Over IP products allow you to remotely control all your servers, including pre-boot functions such as editing CMOS settings and power cycling your servers. All of these Remote Access KVM Over IP products allow you access via your internal LAN/WAN, and some allow connectivity via the Internet or dial-in access via ISDN or standard 56K modems.
Data Centers utilize intelligent Remote Power Management strip products in their racks to allow you to securely power cycle and power on/off hung servers or devices from outside your data center, server farm, or remote location. Remote power switches can be configured to allow you to cold cycle power, and some of the newer technologies can even measure power consumption at the outlet, power strip, rack, and even by a row of racks in your data center.
Setting thresholds with environmental monitoring and metering equipment alerts you to potential issues. It helps you gauge how energy efficient your lights out computer room is and take the necessary steps to reduce your power consumption costs.
Lights Out can provide tangible data center energy efficiency savings, improved security, better uptime and IT support, and geographical independence; the key to maximizing benefits is a well thought through and planned out strategy.
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]]>Power management is a top concern for data center managers. To efficiently and effectively manage power, data center managers are increasingly implementing remote or “intelligent” power management solutions, which leverage hardware and/or software to monitor and control server-level power state and condition. Intelligent power can be used in environments of varying sizes, with solutions available for a wide range of applications-from control of a few outlets in a small office/home office (SOHO) environment or standalone kiosk with a remote power switch to integrated vertically mounted solutions for medium to large-sized data centers.
Intelligent Power Management
Intelligent power solutions allow administrators to remotely power cycle servers and devices and troubleshoot problems, reducing server downtime by providing direct access to power control. In a 2005 survey conducted by Cyclades, organizations that used intelligent power products reported an average recovery time of 10-30 minutes for remotely managed devices, compared to 1-2 hours for devices that were not remotely operated.
In addition to reducing downtime and shortening the meantime to repair, intelligent power products offer several significant benefits.
Innovative Features of Intelligent Power Management
Several important features of intelligent power management products can help promote uptime and allow for more effective power management. These features include:
Smart Load Shedding
This feature, which is embedded in firmware already in many Server Technology intelligent power products, allows administrators to automatically “shed,” or perform a graceful shutdown of designated non-essential devices when certain pre-defined conditions occur, helping to avoid equipment damage and downtime when problems arise. For example, administrators can specify that non-critical devices are automatically shed when an intelligent power device is notified (via SNMP) that a UPS is on battery-power status. In addition, load shedding can also be set to take place when probes within 10 feet of an intelligent power device measure temperatures that exceed pre-defined thresholds, or when true RMS (root-mean-squared) current levels are greater than set thresholds. Also, administrators can configure the system to restore power through auto-recovery to shed devices if adverse conditions have been reversed (i.e., UPS is on main power and/or temperature, and current load are normal).
Integrated Management
Integrated management platforms aggregate access to multiple devices, including power, making management more efficient, and allowing administrators to access, troubleshoot, and power cycle devices quickly if problems occur. Server Technology’s Power Manager PDU manager provides centralized access to Sentry CDUs, Sentry Power Tower products, and Sentry Commander devices. While Server Technology products can be centrally managed, each device has its own IP address for individual access if necessary. The Enterprise View PDU manager also allows administrators to leverage their existing investments by supporting APC environmental monitoring equipment, as well as environmental monitoring appliances by other manufacturers.
Other vendors also offer products for integrated management. For example, Avocent’s DSView3 software can be used to manage the Avocent Cyclades PM family, which integrates with Cyclades ACS console servers and KVM switch products, allowing power control and console management from the same interface. Avocent’s DSView software can also be used to manage Sentry remote power management products. Raritan’s remote power control solutions integrate with Raritan’s Paragon and Dominion products and can be managed through the CommandCenter Secure Gateway appliance.
Branch Circuit Protection
Branch circuit protection can help prevent outages and losses, as each branch of grouped outlets has its own fuse or circuit breaker to isolate power anomalies and issues. Branch circuit protected devices typically fall into two categories, molded case circuit breakers listed to the UL (Underwriters Laboratories) 489 standard, or fuses listed to the UL 248 standard. Server Technology products use fuses for branch circuit protection; APC products use circuit breakers. Server Technology’s Sentry CDU family offers built-in branch circuit protection for single-phase 110V, 208V, and 240V circuits and three-phase 208V circuits.
Three-Phase Power
Recently, because of the rise in the use of blade servers and high-density computing clusters, power has become an even greater issue. Newer equipment often requires significantly more power for the same footprint, with demands as high as 40 kW per cabinet. This high-power trend is expected to continue, with estimates that blade servers will be the fastest growing server form factor through 2009. Due to this increased power demand, most of today’s high-density server environments require, at a minimum, single-phase 208V power. To help mitigate this increased demand for energy, particularly for applications that require 24-48 outlets. Many administrators are choosing to implement 208V three-phase power because compared to single-phase power, 3-Phase power uses fewer circuits, provides a more balanced power load, reduces the overall number of PDUs needed to power equipment, and significantly increases available amperage into the server rack. While three-phase power technology is not exclusive to remote power management products, many solutions can accommodate or incorporate it. To meet the demand of high-density servers, Server Technology offers several three-phase power options, including 208 V 60A 3 Phase power. For planning purposes, data center managers need to be aware of the existing circuitry in their data centers, and at a minimum, should plan on incorporating 208V 30A single-phase circuits or 208 V 30A 3-phase circuits into IT infrastructure to meet the current and future power demands of high-density environments.
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]]>Remote power management solutions provide IT professionals with the information and tools necessary to manage and maintain IT operations across geographically dispersed locations. The benefits of these tools are numerous and can offer a significant positive impact on an organization.
Minimize Downtime
As today’s organizations rely more heavily on IT infrastructure and system availability, the risk of downtime due to a server or infrastructure failure becomes an increasing concern. Recent studies show that estimated losses can reach $1.5 M per hour in manufacturing and financial organizations, and greater than $2 M per hour in other industries, such as energy and telecommunications. These numbers indicate that equipment downtime must be mitigated through all available technologies.
Remote power management products, or intelligent power solutions, reduce server downtime, outages, and losses, and shorten the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). With traditional power management systems, when the need to perform a cold reboot arises, a third-party technician is often required. These services can cost upward of $250 per incident. Should an organization be faced with temperamental or problematic equipment, this cost can quickly rise. As remote power switch products provide outlet-level power control, in most cases, it is unnecessary to dispatch field personnel to execute a hard reboot manually. Implementing this technology can help reduce dependency on IT staff and third-party services, facilitating cost-effective lights-out operation at remote offices and branch locations.
Integrate With Data Center Management Tools
While remote power management products provide full functionality as stand-alone devices, many options allow integration with existing infrastructure management tools. These products can be easily integrated with existing KVM over IP solutions and allow power control of the same servers and devices associated with KVM equipment, providing a single interface for console access and remote power. Additionally, certain intelligent power products can also be combined with environmental monitoring devices, providing mission-critical protection by monitoring datacenter conditions such as amperage draw per circuit, humidity, temperature, and in some cases, intrusion. They can alert you automatically via SMTP/SMS/SNMP when conditions exceed established thresholds and allow IT managers to respond to any irregularities before they become larger problems quickly. Similar to the integration with KVM over IP equipment, combining remote power management products with environmental monitoring devices is a simple task and can be accomplished using a variety of products.
Leverage Advances in Power
Remote power products not only provide intelligent control of attached systems, they also allow administrators to leverage leading advances in power distribution. IT administrators and datacenter managers are increasingly using 3-Phase power in server rooms and datacenters. This trend is expected to continue to rise, as the use of power-intensive blade technology increases. While 3-Phase power technology is not exclusive to remote power management products, many solutions can accommodate it. Compared to single-phase power, 3-Phase power significantly increases available amperage into the server rack, uses fewer circuits, provides a more balanced power load, and reduces the overall number of PDUs needed to power equipment. For example, in a traditional rack environment, it would require (4) 20-amp circuits to achieve 64 amps of available power (assuming a maximum 80% load). In contrast, a 3-phase circuit can provide up to 51.6 amps per circuit, or more than 82 amps of available power, while only requiring 2 circuits (assuming a maximum 80% load).
Protect Your Equipment with Power-Up Sequencing
Often overlooked, the ability to manage how devices power up can be vital to the integrity of a power system. Power-up sequencing, or the ability to control the flow of power to each outlet, can mitigate the effects of a power failure. This technology allows you to control the sequence by which your power outlets and attached devices activate, helping prevent circuit overload, and ensuring that attached devices power-up in an appropriate sequence.
Intelligent Power Management Considerations
Power Management-only one piece of the puzzle…..
When considering data center management, intelligent power management is only one piece of the puzzle. Other key considerations include effective rack cooling, KVM console management tools, and appropriate server rack or enclosure infrastructure. The team at 42U specializes in assessing needs, creating solutions, and supporting our clients, to ensure that IT professionals maximize their use of current technologies to improve overall business performance.
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]]>The post 5 uses for the iBoot appeared first on 42U.
]]>Whether you’re operating a hundred ticket kiosks in an airport or a few servers at your small business, downtime costs money. It can result in lost advertising, frustrated customers, lost transactions, missed opportunities, and idle personnel.
Remote reboot of any device, routers, servers, kiosks, etc. The device to be rebooted need not be network attached.
Secure sensitive devices by keeping them powered off when not in use. This prevents hackers from detecting them at all times.
Power down equipment when not needed for power savings and to save on wear and tear.
Power up alert devices like sirens, lamps, messages.
Power up an environmental system like heaters, coolers, pumps, etc
In today’s home office and remote branch office sites, remote power control is becoming more and more popular. Products like the DataProbe iBoot offer the ability to remotely control power over the internet to one or more outlets. With secure password protected access, IT professionals can perform a remote reboot of hung systems, control on-off power cycles, and in some cases, employ automatic reboot functionality to restart systems in the event of a power failure.
Besides being great for home offices, remote power switches are finding a valued place controlling the power to vending machines, ATM systems, information kiosks, digital signage systems, and even remotely controlling power for security and alarm systems. The remote power switch is an excellent way to reduce downtime, outages, and losses from unexpected power failures and ensure remote IT equipment is available for customer use.
Downtime is costly. iBoot® reduces tech support calls and gets your devices back up and running quickly. It can also automatically power devices up and down when you need them, saving energy costs and cutting wear and tear.
Learn more about two of the most popular models by viewing listings for Dataprobe DC Power Remote Reboot via Remote IP Web Browser and the iBoot-IO Single-Outlet, Contact Closure and Logic Level Remote Power Control.
iBoot® is a Registered Trademark of Dataprobe Inc. All rights Reserved.
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]]>Aligning business goals with IT strategies requires an intrepid mind to enter the dark abyss of cables, devices, and firmware updates. This road map to a deep dive into the nuts and bolts may help keep you on track when optimizing critical areas of your living IT system. Follow us through these ten pivots across the path from a lackluster data center all the way through the path of greatness.
Proper management and monitoring of server architecture is a proactive step taken to help keep your critical systems and workflows running more efficiently. As a benefit of tracking technical data, you’ll find more efficient ways to handle tasks and find better ways to use your gear to guarantee the maximum level of uptime and optimization. Plan to check your equipment’s performance regularly.
If your center is large and dense enough, you should consider DCIM for live monitoring that will save time and effort. These regular checks and monitoring will help establish your physical density as racks become more occupied and complex.
In short: that which is measured improves.
Service level agreements (SLAs) can feel mundane, but they are vital to ensure that all the details agreed upon between you and your clients are being met without fail, including plans for when disaster or entropy can interfere with equipment uptime or the metrics of service being delivered such as bandwidth. Your SLAs contain promises you have made and need to keep.
By understanding and aligning your business with your data center partner, not only will they help you evolve quickly, they will help you stay resilient. They will make sure you have the resources you require to stay up, are there for you.
Efficiency for the end-user is critical when it comes to meeting and exceeding business goals. Currently, that often translates to the use of the cloud, but the security concerns may prove the idea too risky. Building a private, cloud-like structure is the answer. It is crucial to stay up-to-date and aware of private, public, and hybrid cloud environments when designing an effective IT system. If you are considering moving to a public cloud or SaaS, ensure that all access is secured and monitored.
If something goes down, you need a back-up prepared ahead of time. Make sure to incorporate redundancy plans wherever possible in the data center. Items like UPS back-up power, Automatic Transfer Switches, and ensuring that your equipment is still under warranty are easy wins.
Preparing for the worst puts you ahead of your problems and in control, even when problems occur. If you’d like to ensure your gear is under warranty or would like to extend your warranty, please contact us.
The growing desire for security over digital access will always lead to new concerns, and that will have a domino effect as you find another security gap to be filled or precaution to be taken. If you are approaching security from a holistic perspective, you will include the cyber/virtual security of your data. Start by keeping up with the latest firmware for each of your components.
Ensure that all equipment uses updated security protocols and isn’t relying on legacy or outdated security protocols such as TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1. When you need to dig deeper, please consider a few more options, such as automated fault alarm messages, and stronger firewalls.
To enable a competent level of security measures, physical considerations need to be met as well. Any sort of breach is not going to look good for anybody. Keep proactive and maintain a fortified, holistic security practice. Do you have the physical security best practices in place? To be comprehensive, physical security needs to be considered as we can easily forget routine security concerns in the tech industries and only focus on what is digital, forgetting that there are tangible concerns as well.
To meet this need, consider SMART card access or keyed locks for access or entry. Video surveillance acts as great security redundancy, supplementing access logs, and other monitoring that indicates something is amiss with a server rack at any given time.
Find ways to improve data center infrastructure. Designing a long-term system revolves around better management, automated controls, and visibility of environmental variables; especially when planning on growing your data center. Conduct a business impact analysis — know what a disruption would cost you, or if you can even live without a certain kind of application, a physical server, or some type of a workload.
Always create and optimize infrastructure around your requirements. Plan around the workload and demand for the equipment required. Ensure your cabling is tight and organized and that your architecture is placed properly in or on the rack. Simplify your environment, so if there is a problem or situation, you can resolve the problem quickly via easy access to your server rack.
The cleaner the environment, the better you can resolve issues and be more proactive in the background. If your server racks aren’t well organized, cleaning them up is an easy way to impress decision holders from within or outside of the company.
Know your role. Know everyone’s role and know what equipment they’ll need to perform efficiently and accurately when problems arise. Consolidate, virtualize, and handle more data by making your IT ecosystem a little less delicate with proper planning. Any business growth challenge includes reviewing old methods and adopting different, improved approaches as things change.
Avoid igniting a chain reaction that will have a negative impact on the data center and put out fewer fires by aligning IT strategies directly with business goals and by having each member of the team aware of the various emergency response plans. The best way to prepare for tense situations is to make clear what everyone should do during various use-cases so that you aren’t stumbling over each other when you all need to spring into action.
It’s also important to review these procedures regularly as members may forget if it’s been years between response training and the day an emergency occurs.
Whether it is a gust of air going up and down the aisle, water leaks under raised floors, or a rogue cable, you simply cannot manage what you cannot see. Proper management and monitoring are so critical in today’s environment. Examine your situation to ensure everything in your ecosystem is adequately monitored. You should consider monitoring for temperature, humidity, water, fire, smoke, power, vibration, and light.
With constant vigilance over all of these factors, you will be taking a proactive stance over environmental changes. Monitoring also allows for the identification of cost-saving opportunities as problem areas reveal themselves over time.
Following these considerations in a way that makes sense to your setup, will demonstrate that proactive steps have been taken to consider the needs and wants of your customers and project stakeholders. The shift from reactive to proactive is vital to the reputation of your data center, as uptime and professional relations are among the best ways for one data center to be held in higher standing than another.
Hopefully, this article helped refresh your proactive stance for data center management or has given you motivation for how to improve your server solution. If you need assistance with any of these considerations, please reach out to 42U.
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]]>The post Aten UC9020 Streamlive™ HD – 42U Product Spotlight appeared first on 42U.
]]>The Aten UC9020 Streamlive HD is an all in one A/V mixer solution for those wanting to stream directly to their live audience.
The StreamLIVE HD is a lightweight, portable streaming solution. Offering multi-channel audio/video mixing that integrates 1080p video capture, video source switching, stream broadcasting, video conversion, video splitting, and synced audio mixing all into one simple solution.
Eliminate the hassle of working and transporting different pieces of AV equipment for one broadcast. The UC9020 makes HDMI video broadcasts for higher quality live streams to CDN platforms such as YouTube Live, Facebook, and Twitch without the need of a computer to manage the flow.
The ATEN UC9020 StreamLIVE HD is 11.36 inches long by 7.48 inches wide by 3.8 inches tall (28.85 x 18.99 x 9.66 cm) and weighs 4.16 lbs. (1.89 kg). While being compact, this design balances portability with ease of use.
The frame is made from metal to ensure a handsome look and durability of your investment. The device intentionally avoids the use of fans and instead opts for a thermal airflow system for quiet operation, ensuring that noise won’t bleed into the broadcast.
There is even a divot for the iPad, ensuring everything fits precisely as intended during use.
The UC9020 comes equipped with a compact mixer control panel that allows users to switch, mix, and overlay between multiple video and audio sources. The control panel integrates a dedicated Transition T-Bar for smooth scene switching with fade-in/fade-out effects. These luminous keys are easily identifiable, and super easy to understand, which are used for audio level monitoring and scene mode switching.
Much of the feature set of this product is tied to the Aten On-Air app. It is a powerful tool. However, it will require an iPad or an iPad pro with the appropriate cable to function, which should be considered before purchase. You can find the app in the Apple Store.
The use of the app will enable a straightforward remote control interface. You can prep for your broadcast by setting up screens to cut to that include split screen, picture in picture, nameplates, light design elements, and more.
Once live, you’ll be able to switch between video sources that use some variation of an HDMI output, push for smooth transitions, make hard cuts, automatically prep cuts, and pause your stream. The full use of this tool should eliminate or significantly reduce the amount of editing post-broadcast for your archive.
If you are interested in the Aten UC9020 Streamlive HD please find pricing and technical specs on KVM Switches Online.
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]]>The post An Internet Timeline appeared first on 42U.
]]>* 1996 – First Viral Video
** 2005 – First Cat Video
The Communications Decency Act by Robert Cannon
History of the Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Dotcom Bubble by Adam Hayes
From Arpanet To World Wide Web: An Internet History Timeline by Brian Engard
Internet History Timeline: ARPANET to the World Wide Web by Kim Ann Zimmermann & Jesse Emspak
A Brief History of the Internet by Bernard Kohan
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]]>The post A Quick Overview of the Importance of Blanking Panels appeared first on 42U.
]]>What are Blanking Panels?
Blanking Panels, also referred to as filler panels by some manufacturers, are a simple modeled pane that is placed over a single unused Rack Unit (RU or simply U) or several RU of a server rack. These panels are easy to snap or screw into place. Their purpose is to optimize airflow so that hot and cold air don’t commingle as the heat rises from the active components within or around the rack. They are modeled to be a vented barrier rather than leaving empty RU in the rack open for air to flow through. That simplicity is why many have overlooked the benefits blanking panels can offer.
By keeping the air separated, it’s easier for the data center to manage the cooling cycle. By keeping the hot air from recirculating, it saves on costs because there is less need for lower set points to compensate for the hot air mixing with cool.
In short, blanking panels are a low-tech solution to meet the physical reality of server rooms’ existence. Now considered a best practice and a must for containment system deployment.2
As Data Centers started developing at the end of the last century, they quickly invented and iterated on the idea of using rows for server cooling via airflow. Before this process was ubiquitous, many overlooked the cost of power in use for cooling in the data center and didn’t even consider recirculation costs of warm air mixing with cold air.
“To compensate for the increased temperatures, the increase in fan power for these four servers is about 185 watts. Although this is not an enormous increase (just over 1%) for a rack using nearly 13 kW, the in-creased power adds up over a year. At $0.10 per kW‐hr and a PUE of 2.0, an additional 185 watts results in $324 of added electrical consumption.”6
The use of blanking panels has a significant impact on the amount of unwanted hot exhaust air from the equipment that is recirculated toward the front of the cabinets and then mixed with cold conditioned air available at the equipment air intakes. Covering gaps in a server cabinet leads to a significant reduction of hot exhaust air recirculation. Upsite claims, “the result of using blanking panels to reduce unwanted bypass air within the cabinet significantly reduced and stabilized the temperatures at the server air intakes.”3
The Need for Blanking Panels is Greater Than Ever
The IT industry’s recommendation of using blanking panels has been ubiquitous since the early 2000s. IT equipment manufacturers recognize the benefits of using airflow management blanking panels and advise users of the need to use airflow management blanking panels”3
According to Upsite, a leading manufacturer of blanking panels: “Increasing computing densities have raised IT equipment intake temperatures and increased failure rates, triggering awareness about the importance of effective and efficient conditioned airflow management in computer rooms.”.4
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. (ASHRAE) as well as most major server and storage manufacturers recognize the severity of the power usage being used to cool data centers, and recommend that unused rack space have blanking panels installed to maximize and improve the hot aisle/cold aisle airflow system in the room.5
One leading choice you can make between different Blanking Panels is which material to use7 points to plastic panels being inexpensive, easy to install, allowing for reasonable control, and assisting with airflow, but overall less durable. While they look to metal panels also allowing for temperate control and helping with airflow; however, the metal panels are more substantial, have sharper edges, are more expensive and harder to install. It would seem that metal panels have faded in popularity for these reasons and should only be implemented if spare RUs will remain blank and static for the foreseeable future.
There are a couple of other differentiations between blanking panels. Some panels need to be screwed in. Others can snap into place on the rack and are referred to as a tool-less solution.
For those in need of increased rack monitoring, the blanking panel temperature strip allows you to see the temperature in a glance to ensure that things are meeting ASHRAE standards.
Then there’s the part you must contend with most regularly after buying – that’s choosing which color you’d like to be staring at, either black or white.
If you require blanking panels, you can find the correct model for your needs on Server Racks Online.
Hot Aisle/Cold Aisle Layout for Data Center Racks
Data Center Rack Cooling Solutions
5 Airflow management questions to ask to improve your Data Center Environment & Save your Budget
1. A Simulation-Based Approach to Data Center Thermal Efficiency Optimization by Karman Fouladi and Joseph Schaadt
2. Rack Blanking Panels – To Fill or Not to Fill by David L. Moss and Joyce F. Ruff| Dell
3. Two-Dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of Blanking Panel Solutions by Lars Strong, Kailash C. Karki, and Berkeley T. Merchant | Upsite
4. Blanking Panels Datasheet | Eaton
5. Improving Rack Cooling Performance by Neil Rasmussen | APC
6. A Layman’s Explanation Of the Role Of IT Racks In Cooling Your Data Center By David Moss | Dell
7. Plastic vs Metal Blanking Panels by Justin Mitchell | Lone Star Racks
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