Intelligent control centres for centralised KVM management of server farms or widley branched IT infrastructures
Cutting-edge management tools, which are software- or web-based or embedded into a hardware application, offer the centralised local or remote management of all IT infrastructure components such as physical or virtual servers, firewalls, switches, storage equipment and telecommunication systems. They integrate and consolidate the remote (BIOS level) access to serial ports of Linux/Unix systems and KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) interfaces of PS/2, USB or SUN servers. Further they allow to monitor and control the power supply of all servers, PDUs (power distribution units) and other serial IT devices in the data centre. Depending on model, individual user access rights can be assigned and device and security profiles can be implemented by simply utilising existing LDAP-, TACAS+, Radius, or Active Directory data bases. Leading manufacturers offer for their KVM management tool the integration into third-party DCIM or BMS solutions. In this way IT professionals are able to monitor, analyse, visualise and optimise the power usage, hardware cooling and energy efficiency in their data centre environment.
Typically specifications of KVM Software and KVM Management Tools
- Provide access to an unlimited number of physical or virtual servers and serial devices, no matter where these are located
- Consolidate the control of a huge number of KVM switches on one single management platform
- Configuration and assigment of individual user, device and security profiles (model-dependent via LDAP-, TACAS+- or Radius, Active Directory data bases)
- AES, SSH or FIPS 140-2 encryption of KVM and serial signals
- Flash updates and upgrades for software and firmware
- 2-factor authentication (depending on manufacturer)
- Logging of any user or device access