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How to Remote Control Servers

Scott Davies — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:09:00 GMT

Making trips to your equipment at a datacenter can cost a lot of time. Often it is not strictly necessary; there are a variety of methods to control your servers without being physically present. Here we go over everything you need to take control of your infrastructure, anywhere and anytime.

Telnet
Telnet has been around since 1969. While it is very established and a fairly universal method to connect to your servers and other devices, it is unencrypted, meaning that all of your activity is being broadcasted over the internet. This could be used to gain unauthorized access to your machines.

SSH
SSH is the answer to Telnet's insecure design. SSH thoroughly encrypts all traffic, allowing for secure control of remote equipment.

VNC
VNC is a good choice for remotely controlling a server's mouse and keyboard. it is a pretty open standard, supported by virtually every modern operating system in the world. It is also well supported on smartphones, making it easy to remote into servers on-the-go.

RDP
RDP is designed for Windows Servers, it is basically VNC with added features and controls. If your infrastructure is Windows-based, this will be your tool of choice.

ARD
ARD is Apple's remote desktop software. If you are colocating Mac servers this is an excellent route to go. Seamless drag and drop functionality and many controls for Mac servers.

The above methods are great in operating conditions. But in the event of an unstable server, or for instance, if BIOS control is necessary, you will need a highly available method at the hardware level. For instance:

KVM over IP
KVM stands for Keyboard, Video, Mouse. It is a hardware appliance which connects to the ports of your server, allowing you to assume physical access to your equipment. This is a one-size-fits-all approach to remote control of a server.

IPMI
IPMI allows for remote control and system monitoring at the hardware level of your server. It is the holy grail of system management. IPMI lets you monitor temperature and voltages of your CPUs and memory, even fan speed. You can adjust system settings as necessary, including rebooting, shutting down and powering on your server. KVM access also lets you mount virtual media, and detect if the case of your server has been opened.

Volico recommends IPMI to all of our colocation customers. If Volico builds a system for you, it will have IPMI. We make sure to use Supermicro chipsets whenever possible, but HP and Dell offer their own IPMI implementation as well.

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What is A Tier IV Datacenter?

Scott Davies — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:36:00 GMT

How do Datacenters stack up?

When comparing Datacenters, it is common to put facilities in a Tier system. This standard is maintained by the Uptime Institute, detailing requirements of 4 levels to describe the quality and reliability one can expect from a Datacenter. Of course. these levels cannot predict disastrous acts of nature, war, God; regardless they offer a clear look into the care and craftsmanship that went into the construction of the facility.

When shopping for a datacenter, it's critical to look at the levels of advertised service and what they mean. Keep in mind that this standard has been around since 2006; if the construction of a facility predates this year you can assume that it was not built to spec.

Tier 1
Has a single path of service in the infrastructure, meaning there is no backup if a hardware problem occurs with power or networking equipment. This also applies to cooling equipment and other mission-critical infrastructure which requires maintenance. This maintenance is factored into how much downtime you will experience.
Advertised downtime should be around 99.6%
This estimate allows for a day or two of downtime each year, or a couple hours a month. Keep in mind that the nature of this design lends itself well to unforeseen disasters. Without any redundancy for maintenance, it is likely that other corners were cut as well. Not recommended!

Tier 2
This level has a similar infrastructure with some redundancies in place. This is good for planned maintenance, but is still pretty limiting from an engineering perspective. The distribution path of power and networking are still not redundant, meaning that the level of service is not a great deal better.
Advertised downtime should be around 99.741%
Regular downtime persists at this level is minimum 1 day per year, which translates to at least half an hour per week.

Tier 3
This level begins to demonstrate a viable facility for mission critical hosting. Multiple distribution paths for connectivity are present, limiting a single point of failure. This causes maintenance at this facility to be seamless and non-disruptive.
Advertised downtime should be around 99.982%
Downtime is minimal. Less than one hour per year of downtime, meaning about half a minute per month. This sounds great on paper, but there are still serious problems which can arise. Cooling equipment do not have redundant components, which means that during maintenance the facility can become unexpectedly hot, which could cause instability in your infrastructure. Also, power storage and distribution is not fault tolerant in a Tier 3 facility. This can mean power complications that could cause your hardware to power down or even absorb damage.

Tier 4
This is the highest level of service a datacenter can offer. Redundancies are in place to deter any type of outage, including redundant components within redundant appliances for power, networking, and cooling. This allows for absolute minimum downtime, even during a worst-case scenario of an unplanned failure.
Advertised downtime should be around 99.995%
You can expect less than 20 minutes of downtime during an entire year, most likely spread out during non-business hours and barely noticeable.

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Do you have a Disaster Recovery Plan?

Scott Davies — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:59:00 GMT

Business continuity is vital to business success.
How do you determine the continuity and recovery requirements of your business to protect against a disaster? How do you identify your priorities and find suitable protection? Where do you start?

All of these questions are part of developing a business continuity strategy. Business continuity is not as simple as paying for a service and signing a check. It is a process, like many other security measures that a business must undertake. To simplify the process, we have narrowed it down to four steps:

1. Analysis
2. Planning
3. Implement
4. Test.

Volico's facilities in Miami, Deerfield, and Chicago offer geographic redundancy while providing a secure environment for recovery. Our data center disaster recovery plan for business continuity includes:

    Identification of critical services and operational objectives.
    Storage and ranking of assets based on criticality to your business.
    Rank the threats that pose risks to the critical assets.
    Identify the severity of vulnerabilities in infrastructure.
    Prioritize credible disaster threats and existing vulnerabilities.
    Develop strategies that minimize risk of disaster and maximize ROI.

Volico works with you in creating data center disaster recovery plans and providing cost estimates to adapt our facility and technology resources for continuous availability of your business. Specifically:

    Backup and recovery options for local and remote data.
    Disaster recovery site options at our Category 5 Hurricane proof facilities.
    Assessment of the recoverability of mission critical infrastructure.
    Harden the protection of your critical business services.

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Is Cloud Hosting right for you?

Scott Davies — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:18:00 GMT

Almost every hosting company in the world today has a cloud hosting solution. The benefits of using a real cloud hosting plan can be narrowed down to two main points:

1. No hardware failures or maintenance to worry about
2. Services are easily scalable on demand, saving time and money

The world cloud is being tossed around a lot, so make sure to do your homework before considering a cloud hosting company. There are a number of different platforms and methods out there, and to make sense of it all we have narrowed down questions you can ask any cloud host. To quickly gauge what cloud services are right for your business, you should know:

What Operating Systems are Available?
For instance, does the cloud service allow for Microsoft Windows? What about 32 and 64 bit support?

Are clients lumped in the same local network in a NAT configuration?
This question will put a lot of cloud hosts in a hot seat. While this is quite common, it is the cause for a variety of security concerns, as a malicious attacker can exploit the network hierarchy to compromise your systems.

How is my data stored? Are there redundancies beyond a single RAID configuration?
This will be revealing of the performance and reliability you can expect from your cloud host. Make sure that the hardware in place can sustain multiple disk failures. Performance-wise, you can also ask about read and write speed caps.

Do all customer virtual machines share the same processors and memory?
Typically the answer is yes, causing valid security concerns to arise.

To give your comparisons some perspective, here is what Volico offers:

The visual aid above depicts Volico's cloud service, which gives clients their own dedicated network port on a Cisco 7600 series router, dedicated RAM slot, and dedicated CPUs. This promotes security and performance without compromise. Cloud services which do not uphold these standards offer this:

As new cloud services emerge on the marketplace, be sure that your host built the cloud service to benefit the customer, not to save a few dollars by cutting corners.

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