People looking for colo - question for you. How much would you pay for access to remote reboot ports or console servers?

I don't see much discussion on this.

Cheers
Jeff

Personally I pay a one-time setup fee of like $75.

For APC access i'd say about 5-15 a month/port. If you have more equipment and lease half or full racks it's more economical to get your own APC Masterswitch.

We charge $10/month for access to ours. Got an 8-port one (used, of course) for $265 or so. Shop around... there are some good deals out there.

Make sure you get one that lets you have a different password for each port, however. That way you can farm them off to customers easily.

We charge £20/month for use of an APC Masterswitch - covers the rackspace, puchase price, iec-iec cables etc. This is per customer, so if you had 5 servers in 1 rack, they'd be organised to be on the same switch.

When you *need* to power cycle a machine they're invaluable, just know that some boxes seem to go into the bios setup after being powered on, and others require a bios setting for "power on after power fail" to be set - there's nothing worse than rebooting a machine and it *not* coming back to life until a button is pressed.

One trick we've found very helpfull is to labl the server, label the cable and label the port through the web interface ... even the most awkward of customer then doesn't shutdown the wrong one (very often) and if they do, it's trivial to fix

If only they had an SMS interface ...

yupe.. APC Masterswitch is the thing to have if you planning to colocate somewhere.

Though we work out of London Ontario, our machines are in GC in Atlanta.

We do have a remote reboot port, and are looking to get a console server. Thank you all for your input.

Cheers
Jeff

KVM over IP are about 2700USD brand new now for 16 servers. There are other ways to do it, but KVM over IP is still the best. One brand that makes the KVM switch is Avocent.

We are also colo in the GC datacenter directly with GC itself..

We have our own APC Master Switch Plus with remote mang. port.

Regards
Phillip

Hey Choppy :)

Guess that makes us neighbours of sorts ;). Thank you for your suggestion, I'll check it out.

Mfjp: hadn't seen KVM over IP. Thank you for that suggestion. Thats an interesting option.

Cheers
Jeff

I'm afraid to ask but how much is it to buy an APC Masterswitch?

Also I'm new to colo so would someone please provide a list of the most common scenarios as to when/why you need a remote reboot?

Originally posted by RossMAN
I'm afraid to ask but how much is it to buy an APC Masterswitch?

Also I'm new to colo so would someone please provide a list of the most common scenarios as to when/why you need a remote reboot?

Pricing:
http://www.nextag.com/APC_MASTERSWITCH_PLUS_1U~2283441z3znz300240zz1z300240zzmainz2-htm

Why (linux reasons)?
Let's say SSHD isn't running, then you cannot log into the server. If you are worried about uptime, then it is a lot quicker to reboot using a reboot port, than to call the noc, etc. (though some nocs are quite fast too).

Let's say the servers crashes.... and the rest is above.

Basically when you cannot control it remotely and you think a reboot fixes it, then that's the way to go (though sometimes you do need on-site hands & eyes).

A new one around £450 in the UK

Uses ... many and varied
- you have just upgraded a switchg and nee dto power it down then up
- a windows machine you *accidentally* did shutdown on rather than restart
- a locked machine tat you can't seem to access any other method
- a customer who hasn't paid their bills, power it off

etc etc

othellotech,

Where is this 450 bux thing?

Mfjp £ = british pound sterling

450 * 1.6 = $720

Still good price.

Tell me what it is and where to get please.

apc9212, you can get it from *hundreds* of suppliers online, pick on eclose to you :)

it's a 1u rack mountable power distribution unit takes 8 IEC-IEC cables, and has a web interface to allow you to reboot , power up or power down any of the 8 outlets ...

I'd love to hear from people that have actually used KVM over IP solutions. I'm wondering how usefull they actually are? The way I see it, the only time KVM over IP is beneficial is if you accidentaly mess up when you upgrade a kernel, and need to boot using an old kernel. (Of course you can get around this, by doing a lilo -R new.kernel to test it). Ok, so I just thought of another one... if sshd config gets turned off and won't come back up via a reboot. Or, if the ethernet card goes out entirely... but if that happened you'd still need physical access to fix it.

Hmm... well... if anyone has a KVM over IP setup, please post here on times it's come in handy over an APC reboot switch! :)

idologicJeff,

We are close bye indeed...

If you are still looking for suggestions on this let me know as i have a really good supplier with these goods.

Regards
Phillip

How many people in this thread are in Atlanta?

I'm in the Vault at 56 Marietta.

routers, swiches, apc, and little black boxes.

Me :)

Im Coloing in Global Compass with my own Switches/Apcs and of course servers.

Regards
Phillip

We have stuff with dragon.com @ 56 Marietta... No APC or Console though ;)

Most time for us, it's just manual fsck waiting there....

I picked up 4 APC Vertical mount PDUS recenly for £300 each. (brand new)

Now all our customer racks have em - and we charge £5/month per port.