Hi!

Does anybody have experience of, or know of any device / solution to power cycle using a modem to dial through?

ie. rebooting a machine by turning the power on or off remotely?

It would just be a handy extra from time to time!

Cheers,

APC (the UPS makers) as well as a couple other companies make devices that allow remote power cycles (reboots). We've found it's a very handy feature to offer people w/ their own servers (especially colo customers, since they always seem to be freezing up their machines). They aren't exactly cheap, though.

http://www.apc.com

Josh

We had a colo customer who had the APC so he could remotely power cycle at will. He set it up with his switch on it also. He accidently turned off his switch one night and couldn't figure out why he couldn't log on to his servers anymore. That was def worth a laugh at the time.

Best Regards,

Oh man. I'm sure they didn't find it funny. (I would have had to mute the line so they didn't hear me laughing hysterically).

We also have some of our dedicated customers who like to experiment with their servers setup on the switch. For us, it's worth spending the little extra money on their machines just so we're not constantly having to reboot their 'em.

Josh

This is a kick-butt, feature that i need. Co-locs should offer this as a feature for free or for a set price, figure out an automated phone number that you call and enter a customer id, then it reboots your machine, it would save everybody money, not to meantion everybody would co-loc with you because of your *cool* feature.

Talk to Carlos at Wizards Hosting, I know they use the APC units.

Its a feature we do offer. :)

Best Regards,

I was actually surprised that more hosts don't offer this as a service. It's really not that expensive. We generally throw it in as a freebie.

Mike: You use APC switches as well? So far, we haven't had any problems with ours and it was actually the cheapest we could find. Baytech makes the same switch (8 port, 10BT ethernet) for about $100-200 more.

ckizer: Most of them actually use a simple web-based control panel. It lets you turn the machine on, off, cycle the power, etc.

Z,

Most of our switches in our NOC are HP procurve 4km's. With a couple Ciscos also. I, to be honest have never looked at APC for switch's at all. I will now though.....

Best Regards,

Hmm. that makes sense, although i would really rather pay to have a phone line installed, that way no matter what i could reboot the thing. It's alot more convient when I am on business three states away to make a phone call than it is to find a web terminal.

Ckizer,

Problem with your idea though is what if someone who should not have access to that phone # and login starts turning servers off (I am just having nightmares of people doing this by bot). Only real way to do it is to have in NOC techs available for power cycling and 128 bit encryption for login of specific users (owners of the servers).

Best Regards,

Sorry, I was ambiguous. I meant for remote reboot switches.

Wait a second, don't these APS switches require like a ten digit passcode? And don't they have a lockout feature after so many tries? If not, the guys at APS were not thinking straight. Please tell me that they have some form of security, and just not the illusion of security.

Z,

Oops, I need to pay better attention. We use rack mount APC master switch AP9211. Things are a godsend at times. Well worth the money.

Best Regards,

CKizer,

Basically you have my netops team working on a individual solution for single server customers right now heh. Currently I am not aware of any solution that allows a single user to JUST have access to a single plug on the APC unit (not saying there isn't one). You can see the problems involved without that. IE you log in you have access to all the other servers power that are using that particular APC......

If I get a solution to that you can bet I will let you guys know.

Best Regards,

ckizer: It's via a weblogin. You need a username and password to login. The password is whatever your host sets it to.

Mike: cool. We use the same exact ones. They've been great so far.

Actually, with the 9211 it's simple. All you do is create a new user and give him/her priveledges on a single outlet. Just login using the admin username & password and goto System -> Outlet User Management -> Add new user button.

There you set the username & password as well as which outlets that username will have control over.

Hehe,

Thats almost word for word what one of my netops guys just told me. Awesome, thanks alot. Why I am not in netops I suppose. I know alot about a little.... ;)

Best Regards,

Does anyone know the difference between MasterSwitch AP9211 and AP9210?
Why was AP9210 discontinued?

I couldn't find anything about the AP9210's on APC's site. How long ago were they discontinued?