Remote-Controlled Power Strips?

Quixote asks: "We've all seen power strips; but are there ones that can be controlled via TCP/IP ? Can you turn on/off each of the outlets remotely? Such a puppy would be ideal in a machine-room or co-lo environment. Are there any drawbacks/risks to such devices?" I know such devices exist because I've used them before, but I don't know if they are exactly power-strips, but you get the idea. Plug in your servers, and a network cable and never worry about leaving home/office to restart dead servers again!

Comments

APC MasterSwitch

[3waygeek]

APC makes something pretty close to what you're asking for.

Re:APC MasterSwitch

[RallyDriver]

It meets the requirement exactly - it offers management by HTTP, which is a form of TCP/IP protocol. You can just hit the thing from a browser (or Perl script with LWP) and flick the sockets on and off (of course, don't use a browser on a machine it's powering :-)

I have one here under my desk (no troll, it isn't on the internet).

One Question

[Anonymous Coward]

What would power the powerstrips?

If a surge hits the powerstrip, would you want it to have that little power source for your TCP/IP connection not killed? So, you'll either have to use the old fashioned "manual" power on, or fry a network card/connection.

Unit Power Switch

[squeegee-me]

The only concern I cound see is if a PC/Server had a soft power switch instead of a hard switch. Not all PC's will power-on when plugged in to an outlet, while others would requior a setting in the BIOS to be changed if the option exits. I only bring this up because I am not a fan of Wake on LAN support in a PC's NIC. I've seen to many PC's powerup at users' desks just because it recieved a false signal. We were not even using the Wake feature with any PC on the network. It would be a neat thing to see in use though, but I cannot see a valid reason unless there was a central command post for several remote networks, and no remote admins, or trained monkeys at the other end of a phone. (No offence ment by this, but I've been the monkey.) This however can be delt with by use of PC Anywhere, Telnet, Proxy (a PC Anywhere competitor,) VNC or the use of a remote management card that many manufatures are now offering for servers, if they are not built in to the mainboard, with a modem.

WARNING!! GOATSE.CX LINK ABOVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning. Parent post contains link to goatse.cx web site in an obfuscated URL

Re:WARNING!! GOATSE.CX LINK ABOVE

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to admit, it's one of the more creative goatse.cx trolls, however.. ;)

MGE makes UPS's that do this

[bbk]

Check out www.mgeups.com's ESV+ line - you can control individual outlets on the back of their UPS's: http://www.mgeups.com/products/pdt120/1ph/esv/html /page23.htm

I've haven't used these personally, but they work well for a friend of mine in a colocation facility. Their software seems to be windows only.

BBK

network pwr strips are easy to build

[Anonymous Coward]

there's this thing called a "telephone", you use it to convey voice signals long distances, like to someone in the other place who can powercycle the machine for you.

Re:network pwr strips are easy to build

[Snootch]

there's this thing called a "telephone", you use it to convey voice signals long distances, like to someone in the other place who can powercycle the machine for you.

There's also this thing called a "salary". It means that you have to pay the person at the other end of the telephone to do this. If this tech gets cheap enough, you can save money by using this instead of so many on-site helpers.

the apc master switch works well

[malice95]

My company uses dozens of these for our remote
colo's. You can via a tcp/ip telnet session shut off one specific outlet or specific groups of outlets or all the outlets. It allows you to label electronically each outlet so you know what you are turning on and off. They cost ~350$ each
I would recommend them.

Malice95

Sony has something...

[bopo]

http://www.theonion.com/onion3104/newremote.html.

X10

[bluestar]

If you don't mind the massively obnoxious pop-ups and pop-unders that X10 is so fond of you can get a pretty good solution from them (http://www.x10.com).

My monitor and speakers are plugged in to separate X10 boxes. The PC (Linux of course) has an X10 transmitter. So I can ssh in from work, run "br --house b -n 3 -r 3" and freak out the burglars.

Although the switch boxes don't always like being on the safe side of a surge protector or UPS. It helps to have one of the transceiver boxes on the safe side as well.

Re:X10

[Bitmanhome]

Yah, X10's actually pretty fun, despite the annoying ads. The system is slightly flaky, (my lights will occasionally turn themselves on or off) so you wouldn't wanna put anything critical on it. Maybe you could get creative, and plug the machine into 2 modules in parallel, so the loss of one module wouldn't shut you down.

The appliance module is limited to 500 watts, so don't stuff your computer too full. But if you already have a Linux firewall, you can hang the X10 transmitter off that, and run everything. Protecting the firewall itself is left as an exercise for the reader.

-B

Re:X10

[compwizrd]

haven't had time to check myself, but my friend said his ups ran down really really fast, when he had an x10 receiver sitting on the battery side of it. worth checking out first, i suppose

X10 firecracker & Bottle Rocket software

[Anonymous Coward]

We have such a setup here, though probably not exactly what you had in mind. Our email server runs on a Mac, using a relatively flakey groupware application. It crashes regularly. For $30 you can get a firecracker and a couple power adapters -- the firecracker just plugs into your serial port and you can control everything with with simple command line utilities. Saves the drive into school to reset things.

Roue

Re:Oh my GOD!!

[innocent_white_lamb]

Clever. He's found a way to hide a goatse.cx link such that it appears to Slashcode that it's Yahoo.com. Well, so much for that enhancement to Slash - I'd imagine all of the trolls are busily taking notes right now....

Another option: phone reboot

[embobo]

We have used Teleboots to power cycle outlets using a touch-tone phone. They work well even when you have no network connectivity.

Re:Oh my GOD!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it is a yahoo.com url... that redirects you to goatse.cx

I have sort of started a little project like this.

[Rias]

But I can't get my hardware to boot of my compact flash card... But my sketches for it are here http://stderr.net/cf/

Another remote power switch

[davet]

Bay Tech makes another network connected powerstrip. I've these and the APC MasterSwitches in colo's. They also have a series of remote terminal servers.

baytech

[chuckfee]

Just go to www.baytech.net and lust.

They've got all the remote-power and remote
serial-console stuff you can imagine. We have
three of their DS-9 serial-console --> ethernet
boxes and about 5 of their RPC series power strips.

The power strips can be controlled via a serial
line to one of their serial console boxes or
directly over the ethernet.

This stuff is the reason that I now work from
home instead of commuting 50 miles each way.

--chuck

Re:baytech

[LKH]

I've also used these. They seem to work pretty well. YMMV

We hacked up a Tivoli add-in to control them via SNMP. That gave us point and click control, from a centralised console. You can also script it so that all outlets to a server are turned off - e.g if you have a big box with multiple inlets.

My only real concern with them is security - what would happen if someone else got in?

- Lindsay