Technology Institutes monitored over network

Pro

1 April 2005

The Institute of Technology at Tallaght has taken delivery of a suite of digital connectivity systems from Avocent to provide improved network monitoring capability.

The Tallaght facility serves as the National Services Management Centre for all other Institutes of Technology in Ireland (ITNet). It performs network operations for close to 40,000 end-users throughout the country.

All of the Institutes are connected directly to the Institute of Technology at Tallaght—most via 4Mbit links and some using 6Mbit/s leased lines. The need for increased network capacity means that some of these connections will be upgraded to 34Mbit/s in the near future. The Tallaght facility has an onward connection to the Internet of 55Mbit/s, supplied by HEAnet.  

ITNet’s central IT position has significantly increased the role and importance of network monitoring, rapid incident response and overview command, particularly if any systems on the network go down.

ITNet is using a suite of Avocent products including the CPS800, DSR1161, and DSView, to provide greater uptime, scalability and ease of use.  The installation was performed by Avocent’s Irish distributor, Enterprise Solutions, which is also providing post-sales support.

‘The overriding issue for us has been systems visibility,’ said Martin McCarrick, network operations manager for ITNet. ‘We need to be able to see into the other Institutes and know for certain that individual devices are functioning correctly. In terms of troubleshooting, it enables us to instantly identify where a problem lies, and in most cases to fix it remotely—a factor that is particularly helpful when key IT staff may not be available to respond in person for some time. Direct intervention “on the ground” has really become a thing of the past.’

CPS, an appliance-like Telnet server, is fitted with a 100BaseT port for network attachment and eight serial ports for attachment to console ports of devices including servers and routers.

Network administrators in ITNet use the device to manage serial-based devices centrally via local or remote IP connections.

‘With Avocent’s CPS serial solution we have completely separate access to our core routing devices across the entire operation,’ said McCarrick. ‘We can now troubleshoot the entire network remotely by dialling up into a serial device even if external connectivity is down. This enables us to check servers directly, bring them back on line if they’ve been down and protect overall network functions nationwide.’

Simultaneous Control of Remote Servers

The DSR1161 network appliance controls as many as 16 connected servers per device at the same time. Server access and control is available at the rack or over standard IP connections. The appliance runs DSView, a Windows application that offers point-and-click control of any connected device using TCP/IP (Ethernet) connections and DES encryption.

‘DSView has a simple GUI that shows a list of available servers we can connect to,’ said McCarrick. ‘Selecting a server sets up a connection between DSView and the appropriate port in the DS1161. All we have to do is take control of the targeted machine by moving the mouse within the window, and we can look at multiple external systems simultaneously.’

Administrators at the Tallaght Institute currently use the Avocent systems to control ten servers running a variety of operating systems including Linux, Novell, NT and Windows 2000. It also monitors a range of IT-related functions such as general internal traffic, external communications, videoconferencing, rich data transfer, DNS and statistical monitoring.

Since last year, students at Tallaght were provided with e-mail for life, which means that their mailboxes will never be deleted. In effect, this means that as many as 9,000 new users are added to the network at the start of each college year.

‘The DSR plays an important role in keeping these services up and running,’ McCarrick concluded. ‘It also saves us a lot of space as we do not need a whole load of monitors to see what’s going on across the network.’

Read More:


Back to Top ↑

TechCentral.ie