Saturday, March 13, 2010

Running remote servers

How do you run a server in a remote location ?

There are many products out there to do this but most have high prices and tend to not work well when you start having more then 10 servers. The organization and wiring nightmares can make this a non working solution very quickly . One of the biggest mistakes a organization can make is in thinking that the most costly hardware will solve this problem, but in most cases it just moves the blame or responsibilities to someone or something else then it should be. Organizations need to put real commitment when they go remote to 20-30% more money and personal time in setting up and running a remote server farm. There is also the problem of getting you remote equipment working and configured correctly and of course in a remote location you don't and can't change physicals just work with whats there, so not having a full test setup non-remote will cause failure. When you do have physical hand come into your remote location you want to make the best of it that, which will require lots of test time and configure time before the change so that all is worked out before the physical work is done. Most of the ideas here are not always done thus most remote servers farms needs lots of physical work and re-work to keep running well. After a while the idea of doing remotes is not something that shops want to do because of the problems of keeping it going. In general it must be noted that all servers fail and when they do at best you can only catch about 90% of the fails the rest have to be diagnosed on site.


Tools for a remote server:
  • KVM - Most people thing about KVM's but very $$$$ and don't always work well, there are models out there that work good once you configure them right which can takes hours and working remote is always different. In most cases there are never enough ports to do you any good.
  • Remote Serial port managers - These can also be $$$ but not as bad as most KVM's but they do require a Motherboard/BIOS that supports this and there are a few brands (server class) that will do this. There are also lower cost options out there that are just port switchers this works but you need a control machine or telnet box to control it.
  • BMC / SMDC /IPMI - cards . On some servers this is a included option on others it is a small expense but for remote power on and serial card access and console/command access this may be all you really need. The hardest part is the setup which can be through the bios or through the OS driver support. Linux has good BMC support and good IPMI support . Tyan motherboards support this well and work well with a IPMI card, I've seen this on most Dells also.
  • Remote power strips - in most cases this is $$ options and it only gives you the power plug and sometimes some indication that the machine is drawing power. So not a lot of help in fixing broke machines.

Some wastland posts

Some wastland posts