Integrating Power control equipment

Hi,

I am currently in the process of designing/deciding what to buy with
respect to one of our networks. One issue I have is power control,
partly with respect to clustering.

This network consists of NT and Linux hosts, both of which we want to be
able to remotely reboot. I figure a WTI NPS230 or RPB+230 would do
nicely here. 

The catch is however that I foresee that although the current hosts dont
do stonith clustering (they really should..), in the future this will
change and more and more we will be implementing linux Failsafe or
heartbeat clusters which will need access to some power control
device(s) to do their stonith. However I dont want to buy (a lot) of
power control equipment now only to have to discard it later. Also I
would prefer not having dozens of RPS10's lying around (the more
equipment you have the sooner one fails.., plus it would mean having
multiple access points for power management complicating maintenance).


So, I've been tinkering a bit in my head and have come up with the
following:

the power inlets of all hosts and routers etc are connected to multiple
NPS-230's (or RPB+230's). The console ports of the nps's are connected
to a WTI CPM-6400. The hosts are also connected (serial) to this
CPM-6400. This (or these) CPM-6400 could then also be used as access
point for maintenance(with other ports connected to equipment console
ports).

Apart from the obvious problem of the CPM-6400 failing, would this
actually have any chance of working? I know part of this question is if
the hardware could cope (if anyone has any experience with them please
advice, i havent). Equally important though is whether
Failsafe/heartbeat would be able to use such a setup effectively.

comments?


Esger

PS. i'm not stuck to WTI, so if anyone knows other hardware to solve
this i'm all ears ;)

-- 

NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.

http://neomail.sourceforge.net