IT Brief New Zealand - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
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Eaton provides business continuity with disaster avoidance application
Mon, 13th Jun 2022
FYI, this story is more than a year old

In today's highly digitised and data-based economy, operational downtime, whether caused by man-made or natural disaster, has a significant impact on businesses. Power outages by natural calamity or grid instability may cause damages to and failure of physical equipment, and the often-overlooked cost from loss of critical data and the time required for data recovery should be a key consideration when identifying strategies to ensure business continuity.

These outages can particularly impact small and medium businesses, where IT services and resources may be limited. Investing in a disaster avoidance application can be one of the best ways to help prevent further problems, as it allows business owners to manage, monitor and proactively determine corrective actions prior to power failure events can help in reducing cost of recovery.

Part of Eaton's Brightlayer Data Center Suite, Eaton's disaster avoidance application - Intelligent Power Manager (IPM), provides the tools needed to monitor and manage power devices in the physical or virtual environment. This innovative software ensures system uptime and data integrity by allowing business owners or IT managers to remotely monitor, manage and control UPS, PDU, servers and other storage devices on the network.

One of the key features of the IPM system is the graceful shutdown setting, which allows SMBs to preserve the functionality of key assets by turning them off when a shutdown occurs, across multiple operating systems. This prevents data from been destroyed and electrical components damaged. With the power capping on demand feature, user can extend the runtime on critical devices during power outages by pre-programming all non-essential devices to power down first. This allows business-critical servers to be operational till back-up system or power are up and running.

“With Eaton IPM, businesses with a hybrid IT environment can easily set up and manage their distributed IT assets via their Eaton power equipment from a central location. This is particularly helpful to ensure quick and safe recovery, where despatching IT personnel on-site may not be possible or cost effective” says Gavin Swadling, Eaton National Sales Manager ANZ, Power Quality division.

Other features of Eaton's IPM:

  • Visualisation of power metrics and constraints
  • Easy to use wizard-based automation
  • Vendor agnostic monitoring
  • Intelligent load shedding
  • Site recovery manager failover
  • Power capping on demand
  • Graceful shutdown within clusters
  • Complex system protection
  • Remote automated protection
  • 3 licensing options to suit different business needs

Critical to a network friendly solution is the ability to integrate seamlessly with industry leading IT management systems and providers. With the IPM software, Eaton invested heavily in ensuring and validating that the software operates seamlessly with its alliance partners such as VMware, Cisco, NetApp, Dell, HPE, Nutanix, Scale Computing and ConnectWise

Cybersecurity is also a top priority for Eaton products, and the IPM system is no exception. The software has been proven to be an inexpensive, highly viable air gap solution offering a cost-effective way to automate everyday IT tasks and schedule cybersecurity air gaps. In turn, this minimises the attack surface area of a business's infrastructure and bolsters overall security.

As an SMB, keeping your power and data systems safe and efficient has never been more crucial. Increased energy and power demand, cyber safety issues and competition have led to the need for better solutions and practices to ensure business continuity. Investing in a cost-effective disaster avoidance application should not be overlooked.

View a demonstration of Eaton's IPM and request for a free version.