Avocent DSR2161 Supplementary Manual

Case Study:

eircom combines analogue and digital 
for data centre command and control

eircom is Ireland’s leading communications company, providing a full
portfolio of voice, data and Internet solutions over one of the most
technologically advanced networks in the world.

Offering hosting services to the Irish Market since 1997 from three centres –
Dublin City Centre, Dundrum and the Citywest Business Campus – eircom
offers customers the ideal environment in which to house their business-
critical hardware while providing a range of IT solutions that allows them to
get on with running their business. The company is uniquely positioned to
combine service offerings in Hosting, ISP services and Telecommunications
network services into a single managed solution offering

eircom’s data centre facilities comprise centralised banks of over 400 servers
across multiple platforms including Dell, Compaq and Sun running a mixture
of operating systems including NT, Windows 2000 and various flavours of
Unix. The systems run hundreds of differing applications including exchange
email servers, SQL and Oracle database servers, remedy fault logging
database servers and pumpkin call centre traffic analysis servers.

Each centre has 24/7 monitoring and operates in a highly secure
environment. Constant vigilance is maintained on both an automated and
operator-initiated basis. System-wide checks take place at frequent intervals
including analysis of performance metrics, minesweeper implementations
and firewall monitoring.

To meet its advanced network management needs and to provide scalability
for the future, eircom has combined a range of Avocent’s analogue and digital
KVM switching solutions – the AMX and DS Series. Avocent’s XP range of
modular matrix KVM switching systems are also used extensively and these
are being integrated successfully with the new combined analogue and
digital installation.

eircom implemented the powerful Avocent AMX analogue matrix switching
solution at its Dundrum data centre and Avocent’s DSR™ digital switching
solution at the company’s multimedia data centre at Citywest.

Avocent’s AMX matrix switching solution is designed to support growing
server installations allowing simultaneous control and operation of multiple
servers independently of each other.

It intelligently facilitates multi-user, multi-platform and multi-rack server
environments with end-to-end CAT 5 connectivity for access from the desk to
the server.