Avocent broadens its horizons

Avocent will expand its product’s capabilities in the next few months, giving it the ability to manage a variety of IT resources in data centers. The company will first focus on keyboard-video-mouse switching and serial digital desktop services. Avocent then plans to focus on environmental server room monitoring.

The company this week plans to announce a new version of its DSView management software, which monitors and discovers data center devices. DSView 2.1 includes a number of new features: the ability to power off servers from within the console, support for servers with multiple power supplies, termination of local port sessions and audit log enhancements. In addition, DSView has been enhanced to detail failed authentication attempts, power state changes on servers, SNMP alerts and traps.

In addition, Avocent has added the ability to communicate with its Console Port Server (CPS) via any telnet client. Previously, an Avocent telnet client was needed. The CPS is a telnet server that provides administrators with access to the serially managed devices in their networks. The CPS has a 100Base-T Ethernet port and eight to 16 serial ports for attachment to managed devices.

In the fourth quarter, the company plans to announce the EVR1500, an environmental monitoring product that contains four sensors to monitor temperature, air flow, humidity and audio. It will have the ability to hook in eight analog or eight additional digital sensors, and the capability to connect a USB camera to monitor data center doors, for example.

Further, Avocent has added a local port to the DSR4010, which replaces the DSR4150. The DSR4010 supports up to three remote users and one local user.