Remote power cycle recommendations

Mon Apr 30 16:19:38 UTC 2018

On 4/30/2018 9:46 AM, Stephen Satchell wrote:
> I've worked with APC, Synaccess, and a couple other brands of power 
> controllers.  One constant:  the IP stack implementations tend to be a 
> bit fragile.  This is not restricted to power controllers; I have a GPS 
> NTP appliance that is affected by the same sorts of things.
> 
> I'll stick with APC and Synaccess, because I currently work with those. 
> You want to avoid presenting these conditions to the embedded stack:
> 
> 1.  ARP storms
> 2.  Lots of layer 2 and layer 3 broadcast traffic
> 3.  Probes for ports not implemented in the stack
> 4.  Too much traffic (SNMP in particular)
> 
> I like keeping all such devices on a single management VLAN dedicated to 
> embedded-stack devices.  The Ethernet hardware tends to be competent at 
> filtering packets not intended for the device, so you don't have to go 
> overboard with VLANs.  It's the software behind the hardware that is 
> easy to overwhelm if you throw too many packets at it.
> 
> (But you knew this already)

In particular, if at all possible, do not use the AP9606 era cards with 
the APCs.  They are 10BaseT and take fragile to a whole new level.  I 
usually have to manually force the port to 10 on the switch or put it on 
a cheap dumb older switch.

The 961X series is 100BaseT and somewhat less temperamental.

-- 
Brielle Bruns
The Summit Open Source Development Group
http://www.sosdg.org    /     http://www.ahbl.org