| The Remote Management of
Rack Servers |
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| The globalization of the retail industry brings with it the challenge of devising
a reasonable global management strategy that is both practical and scalable.
In this case, "practical" means that the solution does not require the implementation
of new and expensive software packages, and "scalable" means
that as new stores are added to the chain, the only noticeable change is the
addition of related data to the management system. You can imagine the
following situation. A retail store begins with one location in the United
States, expands to another site in the same state, finds it has a great
organization, and then continues to expand into other states. As it expands,
the business develops a centralized management system that uses modems
and regular telephone lines, or for some connections, leased lines. However,
expanding into other continents involves much higher telephone and leased
line costs. |
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| The intelligent way of handling this problem is to make
use of the Internet, since it reaches onto every continent
of the world and associated access
charges are "local," in the sense that each Internet
access point requires a minimal fee, but long distance telephone
and leased line charges can be
avoided. As illustrated in the above figure, serial device
servers can also play a central role in this global management
solution. Each location makes use of
one or more rack servers that are managed via a serial
console port. By connecting the rack server's serial port
to a serial
device server, which is then connected to the Internet, a
manager stationed in the United States
has immediate access to any of the chain store's rack servers,
regardless of location. This greatly reduces overall management
costs and keeps losses at a minimum
due to downtime. |
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