[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk server with remote monitoring capabilities

[Max W Blackmer Jr]

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk server with remote monitoring
> capabilities
> From: beonice <beonice at yahoo.com>
> Date: Thu, June 23, 2005 7:52 pm

> --- Michael Welter <mike at introspect.com> wrote:
>
> > William Boehlke wrote:
> > > Dell sells a remote management card for under $400
> > that enables remote
> > > reboots. I know there are others out there but
> > have no experience with them.
> > >
> > >
> > > William Boehlke
> > > Signate
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
> > > [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com]
> > On Behalf Of beonice
> > >
> > > I'm tired of having to drive out to the colocation
> > facility each time my
> > > dedicated asterisk server craps out, just to press
> > the button to do a hard
> > > reboot.
> > > (I'm running 1.05 stable at present, no telephony
> > hardware, as this is
> > > mainly a system that receives calls, no dial-out
> > ability is needed.)
> > >
> > APC makes a power strip with a web server.  Each
> > socket has its own IP
> > address.  All you have to do to power cycle is
> > access the IP address
> > from your web browser and give the power cycle
> > command.  It is sooo cool.
>
> Thanks for your responses, folks.
>
> Okay, so what makes more sense:
>   1) a remote management card that will let me
> actually log in to the machine to monitor it as well
> as to reboot it
>     vs.
>   2) a remote-accessible powerstrip that will allow me
> to remotely reboot the server?


A little note. make sure your server motherboard/bios supports power on
after power loss to use the remote control power strip. Secondly make
sure the power strip control uses SSH and NOT telnet to control it.
Telnet is too insecure because passwords are sent plain text.

Another possibility is to write a reboot script and set up a cron job to
automatically reboot every night until you solve the bigger problem of
why is the server having problems?

With Linux their is little need to reboot Linux. There is only one time
that you have to reboot Linux. When you upgrade the kernel or its
modules. Kernel modules do not always need a reboot. Kernel module that
do require a reboot are critical to operation of your system for example
RAID# .

The best way is to have a script that uses the init script to restart
the applications that are questionable on a cron job schedule for low
usage.  With a good script you could also check on the status of the
service and perform functional test of the service. Then the script
would perform the necessary tasks to recover from application failure. 
This wont help with a total system failure as the script will not work.
Some of the remote monitoring cards can detect a system lockup and
preform a system reboot automatically.  When all of these fail you can
use remote control power strips or a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) over IP
to remotely control the hardware as if you are there.  Cyclades
(www.cyclades.com) sells both KVM and Remote Power management solutions
that are secure. They even have RSA authentication tokens and a
Biometric/RSA token authentications for secure management of the remote
locations.


Cheers,

Max W. Blackmer, Jr.
Consultant, Knowledge Power IT