Avocent Debuts Entry Remote Management Appliance for SMBs

Published: August 9, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Avocent is probably best known for the KVM switches that it sells to enterprises to help them better manage racks of servers. But the company has done a number of acquisitions in recent years to build out its IT management capabilities. And now it wants to bring tools down to small and medium businesses that have Linux or Windows as their server platforms.

Specifically, at LinuxWorld in San Francisco this week, Avocent is launching a new line of low-cost server management appliances, which are trimmed down versions of the high-end remote management Cyclades Advanced CS consoles that it sells to companies that have hundreds to thousands of servers to manage.

Avocent bought KVM rival Cyclades in February 2006 for $90 million, which had a number of high-end server management products as well as a low-end product that was getting traction among Linux shops. Avocent also paid $416 million to acquire LANdesk Group, the network management software provider that was spun out of Intel a number of years ago.

All of the Cyclades consoles link into the serial ports on servers, routers, PBX phone switches, DSU and CSU telco gear, power distribution units, and other equipment that ends up in data centers and data closets. If it has a serial port, the Cyclades products can monitor and manage it. The consoles can power gear up and down and can get into the BIOS-level of the machinery to patch and troubleshoot devices, all without having to be physically present at the site. The consoles also offer secure Telnet and SSH sessions so admins can log in and then roam the network of devices--or not, if that is how you want to set it up.

The high-end Cyclades ACS consoles span up to 48 ports, which is overkill for a lot of SMBs. Which is why Avocent is launching the 8-port CS 4008 and 16-port CS4016 remote management consoles at LinuxWorld this week. According to Kamini Rupani, product manager for console server products at Avocent, the company has seen a big uptick in Linux usage among small and medium businesses. Rupani cited statistics from AMI-Partners, which did a survey of SMB shops recently and found that 25 percent of companies polled with between 100 and 249 employees have Linux deployed. Of course, Windows has the lion's share of the SMB space at the moment, and large enterprises tend to like Unix.

While the Cyclades consoles are themselves appliances based on a homegrown Linux distribution, they will in fact manage Linux, Windows, and Unix servers. The CS 4008 console costs $825, and the CS 4016 costs $1,295. Both machines ship on August 15, and will be available through Avocent's channel partners, including CDW, Insight, and other distributors. Rupani says that Avocent will eventually offer a 4-port console for SMBs.

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