North American Network Operators Group
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Re: rackmount managed PDUs

  • From: Daniel Senie
  • Date: Thu Sep 25 20:08:25 2008
At 06:13 PM 9/25/2008, Adam Rothschild wrote:

Another vote for APC here.  We've deployed many hundreds in various
receptacle configurations, and n'er any failures.  The build quality
is definite cut above the competition, some with interiors that look
like they were assembled from duct tape and Radio Shack kits. :-)

As a word to the wise once you make it past the purchasing stage, the
software and IP stack is a bit fragile.  No show-stoppers, mind you,
just some items here and there which underscore the need for a proper
management infrastructure and OSS.

We've had issues with their code being fragile, failing to respond at times. Most recently, one of our AP7932's decided someone else was using the web interface and would not let me log in. Fortunately, I was simply checking on power consumption, not trying to reboot something. But it reminded me of a serious shortcoming. You can add user accounts so specific people can power cycle only their stuff, but the web interface appears to be limited to one user at a time, not very helpful.

I'll probably wind up connecting the serial ports to a terminal server to ensure access (serial port seemed to still work when web, telnet and ssh refused the login). And we're looking at other brands as options for future deployments. Would be interested in hearing from folks who've tried the newest Raritan power stuff.


(For starters, you'll want to make sure you're running the latest
firmware, as outlets and entire SNMP OID trees have been known to
'vanish' on earlier builds.  Make sure they're ACLed tightly, as even
the smallest amount of stray packets or concurrent access will make
the unit unhappy.  And if you need to provide "remote reboot"
functionality to customers, create your own interface, or consider one
the off-the-shelf solutions, Ubersmith DE being a popular choice,
given the above constraints...)

Ah, so yep, I see you've confirmed that concurrent access is a total non-starter with these, as I had guessed. Nice products, but agree their IP interfaces are lacking. And yes, you can hide them behind other software, just too bad you have to.

Dan