The Raritan Blog

Paragon II release 4.8.3 with SIPRNet - Now Available

Paula Alves
February 1, 2013

Paragon II release 4.8.3 with SIPRNET (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) support provides secure, remote access and control of multiple SIPRNet systems. With this new release, Raritan’s Paragon II meets the DoD Chief Information Officer, October 14, 2011 memo “DoD SIPRNet Public Key Infrastructure Cryptographic Logon and Public Key Enablement of SIPRNet Applications and Web Servers” which mandates the use of SIPRNet tokens to access classified systems.

Paragon II offers:

  • Secure, high speed, out-of-band, BIOS-level remote access and control to multiple classified systems
  • Reduced overall rack footprint and reduced cost
  • Non-blocked access for up to 64 simultaneous users controlling more than 10,000 servers
  • Consolidated view of all Paragon connected devices
  • A proven solution that passed all tests for SIPRNet tokens on DoD classified networks.

To read more about Raritan’s support for SIPRNET, please go to  https://www.raritan.com/resources/application-briefs/.

The upgrade is free for customers. It is recommended that all customers upgrade to this new release.

Release 4.8.3 firmware and documentation can be accessed at Raritan’s Paragon II support page:  https://www.raritan.com/support/Paragon-II/.


IT Telecommuting - Dream the Impossible Dream !

Richard Dominach
January 30, 2013

An article in Network World, “Want to telework? Not so fast, IT,” emphasizes that many IT Professionals would like to telecommute, but are unable to for a variety of reasons.  It even mentions a particular company for which “IT workers are expected to live within close enough proximity to the office to be able to get there quickly.”

While there are a variety of factors that may gate the ability to telecommute (including trust, technology, and culture), remote access tools are readily available for IT to effectively telecommute and perform virtually all IT tasks not requiring a wrench or a screwdriver!

 Remote access tools for telecommuting must meet the following requirements:

  • Be available anytime/anywhere
  • Provide complete and comprehensive access
  • Provide out-of-band access
  • Connect to your entire IT infrastructure
  • Connect quickly and easily
  • Provide secure access

Technologies such as KVM-over-IP, secure console servers, intelligent PDU’s, embedded service processors, and in-band access, when integrated within a centralized management system, can meet the above requirements.  Complete and comprehensive access includes BIOS-level access, access to serial devices, virtual media, and remote power control.

The Network World quotes a CIO who says:  “If their job is to stack racks or power-cycle servers, then they need to be in the data center.”    While “rack stacking” via telecommuting is beyond the state of the art in data centers, remote power cycling is completely possible via today’s intelligent rack PDU’s such as Raritan’s PX rack PDUs.  Power, energy, and environmental management are also supported.

So while there may be many “soft” reasons for gating IT telecommuting, remote access solutions are available to securely support today’s IT professionals' dreams of working from wherever they are.


DCIM, A Holistic, Shared View of the Data Center

James Cerwinski
January 28, 2013

DCIM-Data-Center

A data center is the domain of several different work groups in an enterprise.  A facilities group is responsible for such physical elements as the cooling plant and the power plant. The IT infrastructure group is responsible for the networking resources - everything from the structured cabling, to the networks, to the SANs and LANs. Then you have the IT systems group, responsible for the whole system, the servers, the storage systems, etc.  In the days of on-premise data centers, these groups worked in close physical proximity with each other and with their end users.

Over the past several years, more and more enterprise data centers have become stand-alone facilities.  No longer attached to the corporate headquarters building, they have increased the need for lights-out operation on the IT side. A new group of workers, data center ops, now manages day-to-day operations.  They’re in charge of fulfilling requests from the various groups, racking and stacking the servers, connecting them to the power chain and to the network infrastructure.

What I have been seeing in practice is that data center ops groups tend to react to these requests in a totally manual and painfully inefficient way. They may send a technician to figure out the rack spaces available.  They may send a second person to figure out the cabling and networking resources available in that cabinet and they may send a third to figure out what power is available in those cabinets.

Some of our customers have told me that this process can take so long - often several weeks - that by the time they’ve figured out these resources and their upstream dependencies, the rack space is gone.  Lacking the tools to communicate data center resources properly among all requesting groups, the ops end up resorting to manual processes.

Good Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tools address both pain points here — the repetitive, on-premise checking for data center assets, and the communication gap between departments and domains that lets those resources run out before requests can be filled.

DCIM systems start with a thorough configuration of all the assets in a data center, including their connections, and their upstream and downstream dependencies. We look at not only how much power there is, but how many network switches, ports, and power strips you have and how much power you have available in every rack - how everything is connected. You might like to know, for example, how an infrastructure element such as a circuit breaker or a network switch port may have an impact upstream on the servers that are connected to that breaker. Or you might want to know what applications are running on these servers and what departments or business units are being supported by these applications.  These problems become very difficult to solve, especially on the fly and under the stress of resolving a problem.

Visualization tools within DCIM should give data center operators and managers top views of the data center, from which they can drill down to a rack, to every device and server in the rack, and even see its front and back so they can understand what ports are configured on that device.

The discipline part of the solution — enforceable through DCIM tools — is a consistent application of change management processes, so that data center changes and installations are recorded and the overall picture is kept accurate.

A true DCIM, then, is a holistic system with components to serve many disparate groups, whether they are the technicians, the administrators, the managers or even the VPs that run each of these groups.


Lunch & Learn with JEM Tech Group

Dorothy Ochs
January 11, 2013

You’re invited to JEM Tech Group’s Lunch and Learn where you’ll get great information about data center energy monitoring and management.

JEM-Tech-Group-Logo

When:
Thursday, February 7, 2013
10:30 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Where:
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
(Lyon Meadows Conference Center)
53200 Grand River
New Hudson, MI 48165
Google Map

  1. Are you tasked to reduce your energy bill with an existing data center?
  2. Are you faced with rising energy costs and increased power load due to today’s higher density servers?

If you answered “yes” to either question, you are not alone and should RSVP to this Lunch & Learn.

In this seminar, you will learn how taking a green approach to maximizing data center efficiency will help you implement cost cutting measures, better manage and control your equipment, maximize your ROI and potentially earn rebates from your local energy company.

Your colleagues are welcome to join. The time spent will be beneficial to your IT and Facilities teams alike.

10:30 - 11:15
Registration & Networking

11:15 - 12:15
Controlling your Data Center Power Consumption
Manage power usage more effectively, with data gathering that can help you identify and gain efficiencies and interval sampling for trending, analysis and reporting over time. Presented by Quicken Loans and Raritan.

12:15 - 1:00
Lunch Buffet

1:00 - 1:45
Monitor and Manage your global IT Infrastructure
Decisions are easier to make if the right data is available through a vendor neutral solution.
Presented by Domino’s Pizza and Geist.

1:45 - 2:00
Blue Cross Blue Shield Tour of their Cold Aisle Containment Installation.
RSVP to the event by February 4th.
To register, contact Lori Obney at
(586) 783-3400 or at marketing@raritan.com

Sponsored by Raritan and Geist


We’ve Cut the Cables to Intelligent PDUs

Greg More
December 6, 2012

PDUs Intelligent

Here at Raritan, we’re very excited to announce our new Wi-Fi data center solution - the first to enable intelligent rack PDUs (iPDUs)  and telemetry sensors to communicate over regular, 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless connections.  Considering that typical equipment racks have two PDUs apiece for power redundancy, this is great news to anyone designing data centers: they’ve just lopped the cost of pulling Ethernet cable off their power management budget.

It’s also great news for anyone in an existing data center who wants to make the switch to intelligent power distribution or add environmental monitoring to their remote operation. Raritan intelligent PDU sensors can track temperature, humidity, airflow, and air pressure readings remotely.  Again, no Ethernet cost; no new switches or cables to find space for.

When you replace that cabling with an antenna and a set of wireless access points in the ceiling, you’ve opened up some great new possibilities for DCIM while reducing your deployment cost.

And your security remains tight. Admittedly, there’s no way to lock doors or build physical fences around a wireless network - most wireless waves propagate a fair distance, depending on the frequency at which they operate.  But that physical cable occupies only the bottom layer of the OSI seven-layer model. Between the basic hardware layer and the top, application layer, there are opportunities in all of the other layers to insert effective obstacles against interception or spoofing.

Secure Power Management, Environmental Monitoring - Without Stringing Cables

Just think about a firewall, one like we all have in our homes or businesses. That firewall is designed to prevent a malware attack of some sort from getting into your network physically. But if someone inside your company wants to do harm, that firewall is irrelevant. The person inside the company is also inside the firewall. So in order to protect your network from the inside, you need things that operate at the data and application layers, like authorizations, permissions, authentication, and data encryption to keep your data secure.  Our new wireless channel now does all that, restricting access to the right people. It also encrypts the information so that someone can’t just set up a wireless scanner to listen in or pick up passwords.

Generation 2 Raritan intelligent PDUs. An opening to go wireless

When we went to the Generation 2 models of our intelligent PDUs two years ago, we added USB-A and USB-B ports. (In fact, we’re the only PDU manufacturer to date that has done this.) Then we designed a cable to plug into that port, run up to the top of the cabinet, and accept a USB Wi-Fi antenna - one of our own make. This gives us control of the communication protocols. That way, we know that it operates on 802.11a, b, g and n.  In other words, it operates with whatever wireless access points the customer already has or wants.

Learn more about Raritan‘s Wi-Fi solution. Click here.

Further Reading

ComputerWorld Article


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