The Raritan Blog

Building a Resilient CommandCenter Datacenter Management System

June 21, 2010

One of the most important considerations in designing a Raritan enterprise datacenter management system is the architecture of the CommandCenter systems. This discussion provides an overview of how CommandCenter works and how it can be effectively deployed.

CommandCenter Architecture Overview

CommandCenter provides a single point of user access for all devices and systems under its management. The CommandCenter appliance is based on a hardened and secured Linux kernel. The CommandCenter appliance has dual hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration, dual 10/100/1000 NICS, and available dual power supplies. It is a fault tolerant appliance that is not prone to Windows/MS issues.

The primary function of CommandCenter is to provide centralized access to all datacenter IT resources. It also provides centralized user authentication, authorization, auditing, and reporting. Users connect to the CommandCenter and are authenticated and granted access based on local CommandCenter policies. User authentication can be Local, Active Directory, LDAP, TACACS, Radius, Radius w/RSA, or any combination of these. Once users are authenticated, their session is redirected and is sent directly to the desired KVM/Serial switch or datacenter device. This keeps traffic local between the user PC and the KVM/Serial switch or datacenter device. This architecture means CommandCenter systems are very robust, very scalable, and require minimal LAN/WAN bandwidth.