Data Center Power

Data Center Power Distribution Company Server Technology Rolls out New Firmware

By Carrie Schmelkin TMCnet Web Editor

When data center power distribution company Server Technology (News - Alert) unveiled its new firmware upgrade Version 7.0 this week, there was one overarching message it hoped to spread to its customers and prospective customers – this is certainly the company’s biggest, and perhaps most exciting, firmware to date.

This is largely due to the fact that the new firmware release is built upon a NetOS7 operating system, a platform that will now allow the company to offer IPv6 and SNMP v3

The new firmware features capabilities for IPv6, currently in beta testing. Simply put, IPv6, short for the term Internet Protocol version 6, is the next generation Internet protocol designed to replace IP version 4, the protocol currently used to direct almost all Internet traffic across the networks. With IPv4 addresses becoming exhausted and World IPv6 day coming up this summer, now was the best time to try to incorporate IPv6 in its firmware, according to Calvin Nicholson, senior director of software and firmware at Server Technology.

Server Technology’s latest firmware also includes SNMP v3.

“There are three levels of SNMP – version 1, 2 and 3 – and a lot of people are running version 2 but when you get into an SNMP v3, it really deals with encryption, authentication of the user and the integrity of the information that is being sent across,” Nicholson said. “A lot of the government agencies and people concerned about security are interested in SNMP v3 and that’s why we added that.”

The decision to allow customers to enjoy SNMP v3 was an easy one to make, according to company officials, as SNMP v3 allows Server Technology customers to enjoy security, authentication and encryption – the three main reasons that individuals switch to version 3 in the first place. The authentication methods supported in that latest release include “None” and “MD5”; the encryption methods are “None” and “DES”; and authentication must be used if encryption is used.  Two SNMP v3 users are supported, one with read-only (RO) access and one with read/write (RW) access.

Other firmware upgrades include: increased speed of Web-interface sessions by significant page and code optimizations; increased speed of HTTPS (SSL/TLS) Web sessions by over 200 percent as a result of increasing the number of concurrent HTTPS and SSL/TLS connections/threads to 24, to account for "connection hungry" Web browsers; and an adjusted the number of concurrent Web user sessions to four total, either HTTP or HTTPS.

With the firmware upgrades rolling out this week, Server Technology customers might be pleasantly surprised to see how seamless it is to get their products up to speed. A company that has been in the industry for over 28 years, Server Technology prides itself on constantly offering new firmware versions with additional features and functionalities. However, one of the best parts of the firmware upgrade process is that if you purchase a Server Technology product, customers can download off of Server Technology’s website the new version for free when the data center power distribution company upgrades the firmware.

Moreover, for those customers that have Sentry Power Manager (SPM), they can automate the upgrades of the firmwares on their CDUs, instead of going to each CDU individually and upgrading the firmware.

So what overarching message does Server Technology hope to spread to the market about its latest firmware upgrade?

“What it really does is show that we are concerned about security and that Server Technology is providing the latest platforms, protocols, features, and functions,” Nicholson said. “We continue to provide features and functions our customers are looking for and need to run their data centers.”