asterisk users - Jun 2005 - Asterisk server with remote monitoring capabilities

Hello, all.

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.) 

I've been looking at the fancy xeon-based systems
listed on ebay for a couple of hundred dollars, in the
hope that some of them have remote reboot
capabilities, but most of the sellers don't mention
this ability, and by the time I send out email, the
item is already taken anyway. :)

So, to cut the long story short, has anyone used one
of these server-class machines with remote reboot
capability, and does it really help? Are there any
particular configurations to stay away from? 

The wiki doesn't talk specifically about issues
regarding dual-CPU machines, but in following the chat
here on asterisk-users, it seems there are definitely
issues there ... can anyone elaborate? I don't want to
spend money on a fancy system that turns out to be
useless for my purposes.

Thanks for any insight!

Cheers,
Maya



		
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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@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of beonice
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 4:47 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk server with remote monitoring
capabilities

Hello, all.

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.) 

I've been looking at the fancy xeon-based systems listed on ebay for a
couple of hundred dollars, in the hope that some of them have remote reboot
capabilities, but most of the sellers don't mention this ability, and by the
time I send out email, the item is already taken anyway. :)

So, to cut the long story short, has anyone used one of these server-class
machines with remote reboot capability, and does it really help? Are there
any particular configurations to stay away from? 

The wiki doesn't talk specifically about issues regarding dual-CPU machines,
but in following the chat here on asterisk-users, it seems there are
definitely issues there ... can anyone elaborate? I don't want to spend
money on a fancy system that turns out to be useless for my purposes.

Thanks for any insight!

Cheers,
Maya



		
____________________________________________________
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com
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If you want very secure way of login-in and rebooting - install Freesco
firewall on any 486-machine with floppy drive and two network cards.
Install port knocking on a Freesco firewall floppy (if you want absolute
security)
enable ssh and you are set.  
Port knocking will enable you to open the ssh port (only the machine
that issue successful knock will be able to log-in via ssh, so I
consider it secure.
ssh to root and reboot the machine from console.

Maybe you don't need to reboot just restart the asterisk, any how you
can check the status when you log-in as root and do what is needed.

-- 
#Joseph

[snip]
> So, to cut the long story short, has anyone used one
> of these server-class machines with remote reboot
> capability, and does it really help? Are there any
> particular configurations to stay away from? 
> 
> The wiki doesn't talk specifically about issues
> regarding dual-CPU machines, but in following the chat
> here on asterisk-users, it seems there are definitely
> issues there ... can anyone elaborate? I don't want to
> spend money on a fancy system that turns out to be
> useless for my purposes.
> 
> Thanks for any insight!
> 
> Cheers,
> Maya

> 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.) 
Then fix the root-cause. Rebooting a box is not a fix. There
are plenty of uptime examples in the months/years timeframes.

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk server with remote monitoring
> capabilities
> From: beonice <beonice@yahoo.com>
> Date: Thu, June 23, 2005 7:52 pm
> --- Michael Welter <mike@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@lists.digium.com
> > > [mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@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

Maya,

Where are you colocated? Remote reboot is something that we offer our 
customers standard with the rack space.

I have found the Baytech products to be fantastic for remote 
reboot/remote serial access. You might want to look for something like 
this: http://www.baytech.net/products/showprod.php?prod=DS2-RPC 
(DS2-RPC) that offers both power switching and serial control in a 1U 
form factor. It's a must have for remote systems.

-Max

beonice wrote:
> Hello, all.
> 
> 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.) 
> 
> I've been looking at the fancy xeon-based systems
> listed on ebay for a couple of hundred dollars, in the
> hope that some of them have remote reboot
> capabilities, but most of the sellers don't mention
> this ability, and by the time I send out email, the
> item is already taken anyway. :)
> 
> So, to cut the long story short, has anyone used one
> of these server-class machines with remote reboot
> capability, and does it really help? Are there any
> particular configurations to stay away from? 
> 
> The wiki doesn't talk specifically about issues
> regarding dual-CPU machines, but in following the chat
> here on asterisk-users, it seems there are definitely
> issues there ... can anyone elaborate? I don't want to
> spend money on a fancy system that turns out to be
> useless for my purposes.
> 
> Thanks for any insight!
> 
> Cheers,
> Maya
> 
> 
> 
> 		
> ____________________________________________________ 
> Yahoo! Sports 
> Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football 
> http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com
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