remote access APC for my rack

hey guys.
watched jeromy Ciora on cbtnuggets and he suggested ( great idea)
to have an APC for my rack. I do want to remote turn it on when I want
to practice on it say at lunch? and turn it off when done.
so what do you guys recommend to me as a solid technology
I have seen APc stuff but is this stuff solid? my experience with APC is not good. I have seen their stuff as cheap and crappy.

I dont mind paying some money for a nice one $100-500 range
what do you think?

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Comments

BroadcastStorm

Hi, I am using an AP7900 I picked up from Ebay along with solarwinds WOL, it's great to have one since I save alot on electricity bills, it has 8 ports where I am able to remotely power my equipments along with alarms that you can set and a schedule to automatically power your device good for my production blogserver, it offers web/ssh/telnet access to the device, SNMP/Radius Authentication etc.

One of the feature I wish was allowed is the ability to telnet/ssh to other devices.

Hope this helps...

msteinhilber

I have a couple older style WTI RPB+ 5 port remote power switches in the for sale thread. They work solid as long as you don't mind and have the ability to connect them via serial to a PC you can remotely access which wasn't an issue for me since my desktop is always on. You have to go that route though since they do not offer telnet/ssh/web based connectivity - instead think of it as consoling into a router over serial.

That's the end of my shameless plug

That said, I've tried the generic options available on ebay, typically sold in an 8 port model in a fairly generic box labeled "web power switch" for around $175. Had a few clients I did some side work for that wanted a cheap option to remotely reboot devices and only had an issue with one after a few months but the others are still going strong.

zerglings

I've considered this as well when I saw one of the CBT Nuggets videos. It would be cool but adds more money to what I've already invested on my CCIE R&S rack. I don't really want to add anymore money to that rack. I'd rather use the money for IE study materials. Anyway, here's one that is least expensive that I was able to find that will be able to power all the routers and switches that I have. They have other models as well.

pitviper

The APC AP7900 switched PDUs are great! I picked up a couple of the 7901s for my voice lab (paid $75/each shipped). I typically SSH into them to control the outlets, but the web GUI is also pretty nice.

MentholMoose

Another option is to simply use WOL to power on servers. You'll need one PC to stay on so you can connect to it and send the WOL packets to your other machines, though some routers can do it instead (I believe this is a feature of DD-WRT). When done just shutdown the server like normal.

MentholMoose

And by WOL I mean:
Wake-on-LAN - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apparently it is in DD-WRT:
Wake-on-LAN (tutorial) - DD-WRT Wiki

zerglings

Yes, WoL is perfect. I did use it before to power on my HTPC on certain times of the day to record TV shows. Used crontab to schedule it.

itdaddy

thanks guys. yeah it is not for servers, but for IT rack of cisco equipement for my ccnp studies, and ccsp studies.
be nice to be able to remote into when I need them.

and if I am at say a boot camp school, I want to be able to
use my home system for rack time

all setup and able to turn them on remotely would be the ticket