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| Avocent's MergePoint 5200 Management Gateway Appliance Avocent Corporation has announced the MergePoint 5200 management gateway appliance, designed to give enterprises the key to unlock service processor power, unleashing a critical and underutilized resource already deployed within today's complex server environments. The MergePoint 5200 appliance allows enterprises to waken dormant service processor capabilities across heterogeneous systems to securely and efficiently streamline server management. With support for the standards-based command line technology known as Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware Command Line Protocol (SMASH CLP) along with an Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) configuration feature and a secure, centrally managed interface, the MergePoint 5200 simplifies server manageability, increases productivity. Most servers used by today's enterprises and small to medium businesses contain embedded server management technologies also known as service processors. To date service processor functionality has been underutilized. However this existing resource can now help system administrators overcome the challenges of managing thousands of unique servers across complex, high performance and disparate environments. By using service processors to manage servers, system administrators gain critical management functionality, including Power Control, Serial over LAN (SoL) Console Access, Monitoring and Alerting, all through a single interface. The MergePoint 5200 management gateway appliance allows system administrators to securely and efficiently utilize existing service processor technologies - including the standard IPMI, Dell Remote Access Cards (DRAC) and Hewlett-Packard Integrated Lights Out (iLO) - to manage the entire server lifecycle from bare metal provisioning to decommissioning. With support for the new SMASH CLP standard, the MergePoint 5200 allows enterprises to take advantage of standards-based management technologies to streamline servers within heterogeneous environments. Previously, because servers are not SMASH enabled, companies were unable to utilize the standards interface. The MergePoint 5200 creates a common layer between existing servers and SMASH commands by providing translation of SMASH commands to command line protocols used by the various service processors running on servers within the data center. The MergePoint 5200 provides a single syntax and semantics for operations at the server hardware command line, simplifying management and automation as well as training and support. IPMI provisioning and configuration capabilities provided by the MergePoint 5200 ease manageability even further. By discovering embedded IPMI processors and configuring them based on administrator set parameters, the MergePoint 5200 allows system administrators to more efficiently access and utilize available service processor resources. The MergePoint 5200 provides IT professionals with a secure interface to leverage service processor technologies, featuring centrally managed provisions and SSH and HTTPS encryption of service processor packets. Integration with Avocent's DSView 3 management software further consolidates server management by providing a single console for access to embedded management technologies and existing out-of-band interfaces. The MergePoint 5200 appliance complements Avocent's extensive portfolio of manageability solutions that streamline and consolidate IT infrastructure management to improve productivity, reduce costs and optimize resources. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Networking News :: home page |