Groundhog Day for network configuration

Every year, on February 2nd, crowds in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania gather at dawn to witness a rodent pass judgment on just how much longer winter weather will torment the country. The Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day combined the weirdness of this 127-year tradition with a time loop/karma story where an unpleasant TV weatherman relives the same [...]

Even if it ain’t broke, you might fix it

Some of the famous last words in IT are, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." They define the two sides of a coin toss: one side keeps idle hands from causing problems messing with things that should be left alone, while the other side can often perpetuate ______ (software, hardware, processes...) that end up [...]

Don’t fight the power, manage it

Power management is a critical part of network IT and has two main components: managing and monitoring power throughout the infrastructure, and having the ability to control outlets and groups of outlets. For Uplogix, managing power to devices is a key component of Local Management. Some of the key functionality includes: Power utilization monitoring | [...]

Wrapping up, looking forward

It's that time of year - people are publishing their year-end recaps and prognostications for the year to come, office junk is being collected and wrapped for white elephant exchanges, and (some) folks are burning off vacation before the end of the calendar year.  We'll cover each of these topics in this post. You can [...]

What’s in the new LMS v4.7 release?

The newest release of the Uplogix Local Management Software (LMS) is now available, delivering support for a DC version of the Uplogix 5000 targeted at data center applications, new hardware support and several new advanced drivers for third-party products. The DC-powered Uplogix 5000 Local Manager (LM) has dual 48V DC power supplies, but otherwise has [...]

M2M Management Case Study: ATMs

Increasingly, automated teller machines are the “brick and mortar” point of contact for customers with their bank. For decades, these M2M systems have been popular with customers and increasingly reliable as the technology has advanced, but also complicated and expensive to support. One Uplogix customer has an aggressive plan to deploy ATMs and chose to [...]

Amazon’s PrimeAir faces the automation checklist

In a 60 Minutes interview that relatively few people actually saw, but many are now reading about, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos showed off a couple of Amazon delivery drones. The idea is that at some point in the future, one of these eight-rotor robots would fly a <5 lb. Amazon purchase to you in 30 [...]

Internet on the high seas a requirement for cruise line

Uplogix provides automated device control and recoverythat is especially useful for maintaining satelliteconnectivity and network uptime aboard cruise ships. Spanish cruise line Pullmantur Cruises recently signed a new deal with Uplogix customer MTN Communications to enhance connectivity options for passengers ad crew onboard its fleet of ships. The expansion of broadband satellite services is just [...]

That’s our point, entirely

Incremental improvements to traditional network monitoring tools would really be like putting lipstick on a pig - you would still have a flawed solution.  A recent article on The Register entitled "What's wrong with network monitoring tools? Where do I start..." was all about incremental improvements to traditional network management methods. These improvements just point out [...]

DARPA Grand Challenge targets automated cyber security

A view of some of the sensing hardware on an autonomously piloted vehicle in the DARPA Grand Challenge. DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) announced the next focus area in their series of Grand Challenges that have included autonomously driven vehicles, humanoid robotics and now automated network defenses. The Cyber Grand Challenge seeks to [...]