Avocent Cyclades PM3000 User manual

A wholly-owned subsidiary of NTT Europe, NTT Europe Online provides managed hosting,
security and application management services to enterprises around the world. With
over 10 years of experience and a proven track record of reliability, NTT Europe Online
provides its customers scalable solutions that enable growth as their businesses evolve,
while giving them the peace of mind that their Web infrastructures are held in a secure and
reliable environment. Key to being able to deliver that secure and reliable environment are
the Cyclades ACS console servers and Cyclades®PM power devices from Avocent that
NTT Europe Online leverages to help manage its globally distributed data centers.
Performance and Economies of Scale in Data Center Management
With data centers in London, Paris, Geneva, Frankfurt and Madrid, NTT Europe Online
needs to be able to: 1) manage its data center operations centrally and remotely in order to
minimize the size of its onsite engineering teams, 2) streamline administrative efficiencies,
and 3) respond faster and with greater effectiveness to the needs of its customers. As a
result, NTT Europe Online uses Avocent Cyclades®ACS console servers to enables its
central support team at its London customer support center (CSC) to perform reliable and
secure data center management of its IT assets distributed across Europe. Likewise, to
enable remote power management and control of its data center servers and equipment, the
hosting provider leverages Avocent power management devices.
“We need to run our data centers on a 24x7 basis,” says Craig Pennington, VP of
European Operations for NTT Europe Online. “However, to run eight data centers with
eight separate support teams would be quite expensive. The Avocent solutions enable
us to run them all from one location, giving us a tremendous financial advantage that also
saves our customers’ money. Our customers can have their solutions spread over two or
three data centers across Europe and with Avocent we can manage them from a single
view at our London CSC. The economies of scale we gain with Avocent not only saves on
costs, but it increases the performance of our team.”
Significant Manpower Savings
The console servers from Avocent give the central support team at NTT Europe Online
a direct serial management connection to any of its geographically distributed data
center servers and equipment. “Once we have servers racked in the data center, the
build engineers, technical architects, and the rest our team can use Avocent to access
them remotely, build them, and manage them as if they were there on the premises,”
Pennington says. “It reduces the number of people required in each datacenter and keeps
them predominantly focused on new builds and physical hardware problems. That alone
probably saves us about £ 900,000 a year.”
Business Needs
Optimize the central administration
and power management of the
devices in its eight data center
located all across Europe.
Solution
• AvocentCyclades®ACS
console servers
• AvocentCyclades®PM intelligent
power distribution units
Business Benefits
• Enjoyasingle,centralized
management view of all of its
distributed data centers
• Save£900,000ayearindata
center IT manpower costs
• Leverageimmediateremote
server troubleshooting and
response
• Minimizedatacenterhotspots
andmoreefcientlymanage
power consumption
“WithAvocentwehavefound
apartnerthatworkswithus,
that can provide us what we
need,whenweneeditandto
aqualitythatmakesourdata
centersperformthewaywe
need.We’reveryhappywith
theAvocentsolution.”
Craig Pennington
VP of European Operations
NTT Europe Online
NTT Europe Online
OptimizedDataCenterManagement,Efciency,andSavings
CaseStudy

“Avocent gives us a fantastic way of diagnosing issues,”
Pennington adds. “It’s as if you are standing in front of the device
with a keyboard and monitor. Avocent lets us see exactly what is
going on, including entire boot cycles. It lets us connect to any
device we need to at any location. It’s immediate, and that greatly
improves our response time to get onto a server and troubleshoot
issues. So, instead of having to create a ticket, gather as much
information as we can, and then pass it on to an onsite data
center technician, we can take care of it centrally in minutes.”
Holistic Power Management
The central management capabilities of the Cyclades®PM
intelligent power distribution units from Avocent give NTT
Europe Online the ability to manage power usage holistically at
all of its different data centers. “The Avocent PM devices help
us understand our power consumption much better,” Pennington
says. “Avocent lets us view power consumption on a pole-by-
pole basis for the data centers. That gives us a much more
accurate map of how equipment in the data center is burning
power, enabling us to make more informed decisions.”
Having a pole-by-pole understanding of its data center power
consumption makes it easier for NTT Europe Online to ensure
that it never overloads any of its circuits. It also simplifies cooling
management requirements to minimize hot spots and more
efficiently manage power consumption. To enhance its power
management capabilities even further, NTT Europe Online
also plans to take advantage of the port-by-port management
capabilities offered by the Avocent PM3000 intelligent power
distribution units.
“The Avocent PM3000 devices will let us know exactly which
pieces of equipment are burning the most power,” Pennington
says. “The port-by-port view that the PM3000 devices will
give us will let us see what is actually being used and then
graph it out for us. That will be very useful in helping us make
calculations on where to position equipment in terms of cooling
requirements. It will also enable us to determine underlying costs
based on how much power it actually burns.”
Rock Solid Data Center Design
In summarizing what NTT Europe Online appreciates most
about the Avocent solutions as a whole, Pennington states, “We
can’t afford to have failures, so reliability is everything to us. The
Avocent power strips are rock solid. You can tell they’ve been
designed and built by someone who understands the needs
inherent to running a data center.”
Pennington adds, “Avocent plays a strategic role in the architecture
of our data center. With Avocent we have found a partner that
works with us, that can provide us what we need, when we need
it and to a quality that makes our data centers perform the way we
need. We’re very happy with the Avocent solution.”
About Avocent Corporation
Avocent is the world’s leading manufacturer of KVM and
management solutions for company data processing centers,
IT service providers and financial institutions. Avocent’s
product range also includes switching, extension, IPMI,
remote access and video display solutions. For more
information, visit: www.avocent.com.
0209-NTTEurope-CS
www.avocent.com/contacts
Avocent, the Avocent logo and Cyclades are registered trademarks of Avocent
Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. All other marks are the
property of their respective owners. Copyright © 2009. Avocent Corporation.