Rackspace Leverages Perle Console Servers to Manage Data Centers

Hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide depend on Rackspace for cloud, managed and hybrid hosting through an extensive network of data centers around the globe. To offer critical and stringent services to its customers, including 100% uptime Service Level Agreements, Rackspace runs an internal network which is used to manage, maintain and troubleshoot these Data Centers. Amongst other mission critical devices on the internal network are Perle IOLAN Console Servers fulfilling various requirements including…

Pre-deployment into new server rooms

When we first start building a new room, we have very little connectivity, explains John Progar, a network engineer with Rackspace, but we still need to get switches racked and configured. By placing a Perle Console Server in that room, we can get gear racked and powered immediately. We then configure everything from our desks instead of out on the data center floor with a laptop.

Pre-configuration of devices before installation

John continues, If we're going to add a switch somewhere, we need to apply some configuration to it so that once it's racked we can access it. This is done with a Perle Console Server in our office and a set of shelves where we can place devices to configure them. Once we have the configuration applied, we can rack them in the data center.

Troubleshooting when the network is down

When the network goes down, out of band access to firewalls, switches, load balancers and other networked devices allows issues to be diagnosed and corrected.

While specialist management software can be used for in-band remote monitoring, some tasks may seemingly be impossible unless the equipment can be physically accessed.

Some of our gear is in un-manned facilities and we depend on those devices to minimize the number of four-hour trips we have to take. Some Perle Console Servers actually live on the public Internet and are a last-resort door into the network in case of a catastrophic failure, says John.

Perle technology bridges the distance between remote IT equipment and technical support staff. Any device with serial connections can be networked and managed remotely — even across the Internet.

Rackspace also maintains several IOLAN Device Servers that are available for customer use should a device that they have co-located with Rackspace fail. But that's a different story…

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