TM
Country
Luxembourg
Sector
Telecommunications
Solution
Avocent® MergePoint® Infrastructure Explorer
software
DSView® 3.7 management software
Avocent Power Management Distribution Unit
(PM PDU) 3000
Avocent PM PDU 10/20
Business Challenge
• Offer clients enhanced services
• Offer IT infrastructure outsourcing services via a dedicated data center
Business Benefit
Avocent solutions enable the company to provide SLAs, keep costs down and at the same time expand its range of services.
As company representatives and marketing materials state, Luxembourg Telecom is much more than a simple telecommunications vendor. The Luxembourg-based company, headquartered in Capellen, is a global business-to-business provider offering a wide range of technology-based services including telephony, innetwork data center security and “à la carte” telecom and IT services.
Because Luxembourg Telecom is a worldwide service provider, IT managers have access to every IT solution available around the globe; when Luxembourg
Telecom data center managers issued a call to vendors to upgrade data center performance, they chose Avocent solutions above all others.
“In practical terms, we have two cold sites, both located in Bettembourg,” explains Vincent Nicolay, Luxembourg Telecom Sales Director. “One of those data centers is dedicated to providing our clients with managed services, utilizing an entirely external IT infrastructure. It is an end-to-end solution right down to the operating system –Unix® [operating system], Linux® [operating system] or [Microsoft],Windows® [family of operating systems].”
“Security is everywhere in this data center. All electrical equipment is kept outside the IT rooms. The infrastructure is based on the redundancy principle and can receive air-conditioned racks on request. The total electrical capacity is
6.3 MVA, with a surface area of 40 square meters,” Nicolay adds.
In order to ensure this security, Luxembourg Telecom sought out remote access solutions and infrastructure and electrical equipment management solutions.
“The site is constantly supervised 24/7, 365 days a year. We needed to be able to operate all types of hardware installed within our data center –not only servers, but also switches, routers and firewalls – while limiting physical access. We know that in a security chain, humans are often the weakest link,” says Nicolay.

TM
“By the same token, we needed to be able to fully manage the entire electrical side of our data center,” Nicolay explains. “Besides being able to remotely restart a piece of equipment from the power source, we ascribe to a 100% electricity commitment in our service agreements; therefore, it is essential to be able to constantly check that everything is working.”
Avocent offers a complete, unified solution. Early last year,
Luxembourg Telecom searched the market for IT management solutions, with initial priority being given to PDU management tools.
“It didn’t take long for us to choose Avocent. The competition seemed less effective from a technical point of view and seemed to offer insufficient support and disappointing sales terms,” says
Nicolay.
“Once we committed to a solution, the cold site was outfitted with
12 PM3000 power distribution units (PDU) for 42U racks. These come with 24 PM10i PDUs for half-racks. Thanks to this equipment we not only control the power supply to remote systems, but we can also measure the amount of power used by the systems right down to the electrical outlet. This is an essential feature for Luxembourg
Telecom because we bill our clients for the amount of electricity they use,” states Nicolay.
By using these PDUs, Luxembourg Telecom is able to provide its clients with real-time views of the amount of energy being used by their equipment. The whole system is connected to Avocent ACS
Advanced Console Servers, which provide IP switching and the console port management functions required for centralized and effective remote management. This equipment is further supported by MergePoint Unity® KVM over IP and serial console switches.
“In the past, we used tools from a variety of server manufacturers.
But the overall result was a mish-mash, very heavy and not very open. It was very difficult for us to imagine having a single console that could manage everything. That’s one of the many other benefits of employing the Avocent solution,” explains Nicolay.
Indeed, while researching PDUs, Luxembourg Telecom discovered other valuable solutions offered by Avocent, such as DSView 3 management software. Thanks to the additional implementation of DSView 3 software, Nicolay muses, “We have total control over data center from our NOC in Capellen. Can you imagine? If there’s a problem with a piece of equipment, we are alerted and are able to perform a remote hard reset. All thanks to DSView 3 software and without having to send in a technician. It’s both a time-saving measure and a real plus for security.”
According to Nicolay, Avocent MergePoint Infrastructure Explorer software is another pleasant discovery. The software maps, manages and monitors heterogeneous environments and provides dynamic data center management.
“MergePoint Infrastructure Explorer software is currently being tested on our racks, but we are already convinced of its value.
It allows us to monitor our entire data center, rack by rack, with an overview of all locations, so we can see where we can install additional hardware, if the power supply is sufficient, if the cooling is effective, etc.,” says Nicolay. “It’s a powerful, dynamic and centralized database which will take the place of our many
[Microsoft] Excel®, [Microsoft] Visio® and [Adobe®] PDF files, which are currently managed by hand.”
Nicolay adds, “From PDUs and switches to the DSView 3 Power
Manager plug-in, our comprehensive Avocent solution gives us a valuable collection of services to offer to our clients. Moving forward, giving clients access to MergePoint Infrastructure Explorer software, they will be able to manage their sites themselves, under the best possible conditions.”
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