Going strictly hands-off: Managing your data centre from afar

Power

Remote-control power bars are your friend. Not only that, but they're a relatively inexpensive friend. The ability to power-cycle a server or router remotely is something you're unlikely to use all that often, but it's super-useful when you do have to do it.

Most of them allow you to name the power sockets in the GUI, so that although you know the mail server's plugged into socket 5 there's something reassuring about the GUI telling you that socket 5 is called “DC-MAILSVR-A” or such like.

Server management

It's very unusual these days to come across a decent server that doesn't have a “lights out” management card, though it's often an optional extra, so make sure you include it when you order. These adaptors enable you to start the server from cold (they run independently of the system motherboard) and forcibly power-cycle the servers.

They will generally provide VNC-style connectivity to the server OS as well. They can also report system status – CPU load, internal temperatures and the like – which are useful for monitoring the general health of the installation.

KVM

KVM stands for “Keyboard, video, mouse” and unless you only have one server in the data centre (unlikely) you'll always want one because you'll have a single keyboard, monitor and mouse controlling multiple servers. Always get an IP-connected KVM so you can access servers from afar just as if you were standing in front of the cabinet.

They tend to be a bit sluggish to use so you won't actually control your servers very much with them, but the benefit of the IP-connected KVM is that you can do pre-boot functions such as hitting F2 (or whatever) to go into the BIOS settings of the server.

While the lights-out management adaptor provides an element of remote control, this often relies on the server OS being up and will often not give you the ability to go into the BIOS remotely.

Serial connections

If you're a network person like what I am, you'll also want to be able to do low-level stuff on your switches, routers, firewalls and other network devices.

This generally means serial connectivity, so you can get to the console port of each device: you can't do things like software upgrades without serial connectivity because if you connect over the network, at some point you'll saw off the branch you're sitting on, connection-wise.

Serial connectivity is a lifesaver if you've just dropped the uplink port into the wrong VLAN or set its speed such that it can't talk to the network any more, or if you've rebooted the switch and it's decided not to bring up some important LAN ports.

The answer's a console server. This has a LAN port (so you can connect to it over the network) and a number of serial ports that connect into the console connectors of your network devices. Get a console server that has enough serial ports to connect to absolutely every device in your installation, and take the time to spec and purchase the right cables.

Stuff from popular vendors such as Cisco and Juniper is easy as the console server vendor will be able to sell you the right cables, but if you have some wacky serial pin-outs on the funkier bits of infrastructure kit you'll probably need to get the soldering iron out or pay someone to make up a cable or two.