{"id":455,"date":"2009-01-04T21:51:20","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T02:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/index.php\/?p=455"},"modified":"2009-01-05T13:45:39","modified_gmt":"2009-01-05T18:45:39","slug":"kvm-battle-part-ii-raritan-vs-avocent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/2009\/01\/04\/kvm-battle-part-ii-raritan-vs-avocent\/","title":{"rendered":"KVM Battle Part II – Raritan vs. Avocent"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve had so many email requests regarding the outcome of the KVM testing at the American Kennel Club (see: Part 1<\/a>) that I decided to post a follow-up to detail the conclusion of the testing and selection.<\/p>\n

To cut to the chase in the end we went with Avocent and here’s why: We needed to support remote power cycling to 3-phase 208V power distribution units.\u00a0 Raritan did not have a 3-phase 208V PDU that could be controlled to the individual outlet level through their web based “Command Center” interface.\u00a0 Once again the “Command Center” is actually a 1U server appliance that must be purchased seperately for the environment.\u00a0 Avocents DSVie3 is a licensed and installed service based component.\u00a0 We spun up a 2003 server on ESX to host it.<\/p>\n

Avocent Cyclades PDU’s were originally Server Technology PDU’s (and were OEM’ed that way by Avocent before the application of the Cyclades brand) and therefore Avocents DSView3 was immediately compaitble with the Server Tech serial interfaces which can be daisy chained three PDU’s deep.\u00a0 We daisy chained two Server Tech 208V PDU’s per rack to the Avocent serial switches and tied per outler outlet interfaces to the Avocent IP switch ports specific to each server. \u00a0 This gave us the ability to remotely power cycle A or B power to any server remotely.<\/p>\n

In Raritan’s defense their Command Center does support individual PDU outlet to server association.\u00a0 It also supports power cycling to individual outlets.\u00a0 What they do not support well is 208V PDU’s which is quickly becoming the standard of data centers everywhere.\u00a0 My guess is they will have this fixed soon.<\/p>\n

Raritans Command Center also did not support as many types of authentication to the Command Center gateway.\u00a0 AD and LDAP are supported if that’s all you want.\u00a0 We were impressed that Avocent DSView3 supported RSA Secure ID token based authentication which we were already running for VPN access.\u00a0 There is a bit more licensing involved with Avocent than Raritan and it can get frustrating to configure and activate on-line.\u00a0 If you’re someone without the 208V power requirements and hate the act of on-line licensing you may find Raritan is in line with your requirements except for one thing….<\/p>\n

The mouse latency.\u00a0 This is where you will hear most complaints about IP KVM remote consoles.\u00a0 Both manufacturers supported ALOM ports for SUN, and IP serial interfaces where required.\u00a0 Where Raritan really fell short in out opinion was the cursor control during remote sessions through the Command Center gateway.\u00a0 It was better to go to each switch individually where the latency controls made the cursor usable but not exciting.\u00a0 With DSView3 we did not have such a horrifying experience.\u00a0 There was latency but it was tolerable and fairly adjustable.\u00a0 Raritans Command Center fell short on performance as far as we were concerned.\u00a0 Now take in to account that we were working under the “cost be damned” project control doctrine. \u00a0\u00a0 If cost is a factor you’ll find yourself taking a much harder look at Raritan.\u00a0 Neither of these units would serve well as a day-to-day remote administration tool.\u00a0 MS Remote Desktop, Citrix sessions and PuTTY will not be replaced any time soon by any IP KVM on the market today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve had so many email requests regarding the outcome of the KVM testing at the American Kennel Club (see: Part 1) that I decided to post a follow-up to detail the conclusion of the testing and selection. To cut to the chase in the end we went with Avocent and here’s why: We needed to … Continue reading KVM Battle Part II – Raritan vs. Avocent<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddsingleton.net\/chronicle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}