New Industry Products

MRV Consolidates Remote Power, Device & Sensor Management To Simplify Out-Of-Band Management Of Remote Wireless Sites

June 26, 2008 by Jeff Shepard

MRV Communications, Inc. announced the LX 4108T Remote Site Manager, described as one of the most complete remote-site out-of-band management systems, delivering console, power and sensor management in a single system. The new product further expands MRV’s LX 4000 family of out-of-band networking solutions for enterprises, service providers and carriers.

The LX 4108T Remote Site Manager is a one rack unit high device well suited for wireless network sites, remote telecom locations, branch offices, manufacturing facilities and data centers where space, power and remote management are key issues. When deployed at un-staffed facilities utilizing lights-out management, the 4108T can manage all communications equipment, power sources, physical and environmental conditions from any remote location. The company claims that these capabilities greatly improve system availability while also reducing staffing costs, as on-site technical staff is not required to perform hands-on troubleshooting tasks such as rebooting locked-up equipment.

The device has eight serial ports, providing remote network connectivity to serially attached devices such as switches, routers and servers, via RS-232, Ethernet andor V.92 modem connections. Sensor and alarm management is also integrated into each serial port further consolidating multiple management functions into the device. Power connectivity is provided by four 5-20R outlets with a maximum overall device rating of 20A. Further easing installation tasks, the device includes eight RJ45 10/100 Ethernet switch ports providing connectivity for additional devices and removing the need to install a separate standalone Ethernet device. Leveraging the software features of the LX Series Console Servers, a number of security mechanisms including RADIUS, SecurID, TACACS+, SSHv2, SNMPv3, and SSL are supported ensuring secure communications from any location.

The 4108T provides the ability to enable/disable individual power outlets allowing unresponsive devices to be rebooted without the need to physically access the device. It also provides the ability to monitor temperature, humidity, and moisture which are common causes of outages in remote locations such as environmental vaults, kiosks, and other un-staffed locations.

MRV’s trigger/action capability is able to notify network administrators via cell phone (SMS), pager and/or SNMP traps based on preconfigured events occurring such as a power outage, temperature change, andor network connectivity disruption. In addition to notifications, automated actions can be configured to activate devices such as relays, generators, lights, sirens, etc., in response to any triggering event.

The LX 4108T Remote Network Infrastructure Manager is available immediately at prices starting at $2,180.