Opengear has announced the inclusion of Network UPS Tools in its range of console servers, providing a further boost to its overall power management offering for data centres and remote branch offices.
The open source Network UPS Tools provide secure monitoring and control of distributed Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) hardware from all leading vendors. In addition, each UPS has serial, USB or Ethernet console ports to allow other devices to monitor their status.
“The inclusion of these UPS tools in our console servers enables administrators to monitor UPS hardware from companies like APC, Belkin, MGE, Powerware, and Tripp Lite using the one simple interface, irrespective if the hardware is serially connected or USB connected,” said Bob Waldie, CEO, Opengear.
“The console servers also provide out of band access. In the event of a power failure at a remote location the administrator can still control all the power infrastructure at the site, as well as administer all the servers and networking infrastructure. Opengear is the only console server to offer this capability,” said Waldie.
Blackouts, brownouts, spikes and surges remain a fact of life for IT managers today as do the service interruptions, data corruption, mangled file systems and hardware damage that often result from such power disruptions.
The entire business community has now begun to understand electricity, the threats it can bring, and the imperative of using UPS hardware to shield their critical infrastructure. The result is a growing UPS market with annual sales exceeding US$6 billion.
“A UPS can only provide power for a limited period of time, so it is essential that either the UPS management software is configured to initiate automatic graceful shutdowns, or administrators are alerted of power disruptions impacting any UPS and given visibility of the UPS battery status so that they have time to manage manual shutdowns.
“Opengear delivers both these features and we are UPS vendor agnostic. We also integrate the monitoring with our SDT for Nagios central management, and in the event of a UPS alert our SDT Connector can auto-load the relevant proprietary UPS client such as Power Alert or LanSafe,” said Waldie.
Opengear delivers the full Network UPS Toolset as a standard feature in all its rack mount console servers and provides a web interface tool which simplifies configuration and enables UPS hardware to be monitored locally or remotely.