Data Center Geeks Hub

What can safely be described as the end of an era is unfolding right before our eyes. The EOL of CentOS as we all know it. The news of this unlooked-for farewell that shocked the entire community triggers a rather obvious question: "What to do now?" To make answering a bit easier for you, we are today delivering our latest brainchild - EasyDCIM v1.7.4 kitted up with three entirely new system templates going hand in hand with a major bonus for IPMI proxy servers. As for April 28th, 2021, CentOS Linux is actively used by 4.7% of all the websites whose operating system is known to public. However, that level is doomed to drop radically in the months to come, all because of the latest Red Hat announcement about shifting focus exclusively to CentOS Stream. CentOS under the microscope CentOS, which stands for the Community Enterprise Operating System, is a 100% rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. While RHEL is a paid product, CentOS has always had a definite advantage over it due to being a free community-inspired Linux distro. Developers and companies with first-hand experience in Linux in most cases have opted for CentOS to kill two birds with one stone - that is, to save money, and work with enterprise-class software at the same time. But the free ride is over. What’s next? Even with the support for CentOS Linux 8 being maintained up until the end of 2021, many people are already considering replacement - and who could blame them? To spare you the research, we are sharing what we found to be among the no. 1 alternatives on the market. 1. AlmaLinux, created by CloudLinux and launched with the code-name Project Lenix, is a community-driven, free and open-source Linux operating system, self-proclaimed to be the perfect replacement for CentOS 8. The first stable version of AlmaLinux was released just a month ago, on March 30th, 2021. ✓ When asked "Why Alma?", Igor Seletskiy, CEO & Founder of CloudLinux explained: "At CloudLinux, we have benefited from the dedicated, nourishing efforts of the Linux community - just like everyone else that relies on a Linux-powered OS. This community is the soul of Linux – and in the spirit of a dedicated community, we decided to call our new distribution Alma: a Latin-language word for soul." ✓ Some others say AlmaLinux may owe its name to the goal of capturing the soul of CentOS. ✓ AlmaLinux created a non-profit organization called AlmaLinux Open Source Foundation meant to take over managing the future project development. ✓ CloudLinux granted a $1 million annual endowment to support AlmaLinux until at least 2029. 2. CloudLinux, the origins of which reach as far back as 2010, needs no special introduction. It is a community-supported Linux operating system known for delivering advanced management of resources, strengthened security and a high-quality performance tailored specifically towards the multi-tenant hosting ecosystem. 3. CentOS Stream is a logical and interesting alternative. It is a rolling-release distro, serving as the upstream development branch of RHEL. It has been brought into being as an initiative to bridge the gap between the surging Fedora and the latest stable release of CentOS.  // t = Math.floor(new Date().getTime() / 1000000); js=d.createElement(s); js.id=id; js.async=1; js.src=u+'?'+t; sjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, sjs); }(document, 'script', 'os-widget-jssdk', 'https://www.opinionstage.com/assets/loader.js')); // ]]> The above analysis of the emerging trends in the data center space laid the groundwork for what has become a prime addition to the OS Installation For EasyDCIM extension. Updated vastly into the 1.9.2 version, it now features three entirely new system templates to ease the installation process of: AlmaLinux 8 CloudLinux 8 CentOS Stream 8 With so many alternatives available for immediate use, the demise of CentOS doesn’t sound so terrifying anymore, does it?   A new face of IPMI proxy servers We wouldn't be ourselves if we didn't introduce at least one more enhancement to the brand-new release. And here it is! You probably think: "But IPMI proxy is hardly news". Technically yes, but to make it work properly so far you had to configure an additional physical server, which in a way was a needless waste of the resources. Upon promoting the IPMI Integration For EasyDCIM extension to the 1.4.0 version, IPMI proxy servers have been moved to remote agents. Now all you need to do is configure a proxy server, and specify in the settings which remote agent should use it. No additional data to connect, no additional servers. Easy and resource-friendly! Among the other new IPMI proxy-related features that made it into EasyDCIM you will spot: three predefined JAVA versions to choose from in place of just one an all-new possibility to change the JAVA version for a proxy server downloading JAVA KVM applets now taking place on the remote agent instead of on the EasyDCIM main server to avoid problems with network configuration   How did you take the news of the CentOS project coming to a close? Even if you consider the Red Hat’s decision to be a somewhat controversial move, you have no other choice but to face its consequences. But you do not have to shoot in the dark, luckily. Spare an extra minute to scroll through the rest of changes in EasyDCIM v1.7.4, and make it your most trusted business partner! View the Changelog!

In every story there is always an unsung hero, the one who does a great deal of job and pushes the course of action forward but remains unnoticed and receives little or no recognition. Would you agree that in the data center world the role of such a gray eminence is performed by PDU devices? The EasyDCIM v1.7.3 release that we have the genuine pleasure to trumpet today, places the PDU devices much in the foreground and widens the selection of PDU drivers you now have the full convenience to choose from. New PDU drivers suite Here's a quick reminder on what the PDU is for those who need their memory refreshed: PDU stands for Power Distribution Unit, and simply put, is a device for distributing and managing large amounts of electricity within a data center environment. PDU Management For EasyDCIM v1.1.0 received a solid update to include drivers to such two intelligent PDU devices. One of them is Sentry Switched PDU which offers SNMP traps delivering automated alerts for power and environmental conditions via Syslog and email as well as the possibility to add extra outlets under one IP address. The second one is PowerAlert PDU which, thanks to free NMS software, aims at reducing troubleshooting time by providing a color-coded alarm history in an easy-to-read list format. PDU devices under close guard The red-hot 1.7.3 version of EasyDCIM has a much wider repertoire of novelties in the realm of PDU management. It grants you the power to handle the status of power outlets and control the electricity supply just with the use of these no-sweat actions: Outlet On, Outlet Off and Outlet Reboot. Feeling a shiver of excitement down your spine already? Sit down comfortably in the armchair and watch carefully for more because the Auto-Discovering process will automatically detect devices which are connected to the network. That is still not enough because the PDU Management extension is at the ready mode to present you with a whole lot of information about the detected devices. It may give you a sense of being a data bank or a sort of a fact file for a while when the Auto-Discovering process will reveal the type, model, series number, label and producer of the piece of hardware it has just detected. And know what? There are still more experiences that come with the just-out EasyDCIM 1.7.3 because the freshly added feature will not let you guess the levels of power usage during the device's polling process as it collects the information automatically for you. API-based PowerDNS 4 support The special requests of our clients encouraged us to stretch the list of available DNS submodules. DNS Management For EasyDCIM v1.4.0 has been tuned to connect with PowerDNS 4 via API, and this substantial change brings about a wide range of handy tools to you. They are meant not only to import the existing DNS zones, but also add and later on edit them whenever the need arises - without leaving the device view. The creation of rDNS records can be performed just as easily. To work up your curiosity for more, let's also give a mention to new advanced filtering options that are now available in the extension's tables to facilitate the search of DNS zones and records.   Although the extent of improvements waiting to be discovered is much larger than what can possibly be covered here, there is one last feature deserving a spotlight - KVM console support for Dell PowerEdge C6100 and C6220 devices introduced to IPMI Integration For EasyDCIM v1.3.1. But not to spoil you the fun of exploring the remaining details of EasyDCIM v1.7.3, you are more than warmly invited to treat yourself to the full changelog! Let’s dive right in!

For web hosting providers the future has never been more exciting, nor more challenging. On the one hand, the demand for great infrastructure is growing faster than ever before. On the other, competition is fierce, and acquiring even a single customer can feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. Savvy hosting providers understand that success is a combination of offering quality web hosting services, excellent support, and strong business management. Thriving hosting providers share some common traits regardless of where they are on their business journey. One of those traits is offering solutions that fit customer needs while also adapting to the customer’s own growth goals. Think of it this way: if infrastructure needs to grow relative to business growth, then it stands to reason that a business will have very different needs as it grows in size. What works for a solo-practitioner starting a law firm is unlikely to be sufficient when the practice has grown to a dozen partners, paralegals, and support staff. As a result, your web hosting company should offer dedicated servers to customers. In this post, we will explore four key benefits of offering dedicated servers to both new and existing customers. 1. Dedicated servers widen your potential customer base Offering dedicated servers to the market creates a great opportunity to expand your customer base. Even with the rise of the public cloud, dedicated servers and private clouds are still used by businesses the world over. Some applications cannot run in the cloud. Some industries have privacy and compliance requirements that make such servers the only option. And some organizations simply want to be in complete control of their infrastructure. By offering dedicated servers, this entire segment of customers can start to consider your web hosting business as their infrastructure partner. 2. Dedicated servers provide an upsell opportunity and a path to customer growth While shared hosting and VPS offerings are a great and relatively cost-effective way to start a web hosting business, you’re missing out on high-value upsells by not offering dedicated servers. As your customers grow their needs will change. Small shared accounts work for scores of users, but many of those same users will eventually grow to need more robust infrastructure and grow to a VPS. But what happens when those using VPS need to graduate to a dedicated server? If that isn’t something you offer then those customers will leave for a competitor that does. What’s worse, some potential customers that anticipate future growth may not give you a chance to win their business in the first place if they see that you won’t be able to provide what they need in the future. 3. Dedicated servers increase customer retention Did you know that customers choosing a VPS are likely to keep that VPS twice as long as a shared account customer keeps a shared account? If not, then surely you don’t realize that customers who choose dedicated servers are likely to remain customers THREE times as long as traditional shared hosting customers keep their shared accounts. When you factor in a higher price point, the life-time value (LTV) of customers purchasing dedicated servers is significantly higher than any other type of hosting customer. The reasons for this customer stickiness are numerous, but one prominent theory is that businesses and mission-critical applications favor more robust infrastructure compared to a lightweight shared account. Whatever the reason, dedicated servers don’t just mean more revenue, they mean longer-term customers as well. 4. Dedicated servers increase company revenue For many web hosting companies, the best reason to offer dedicated servers is for the revenue opportunity presented. A dedicated server typically starts at a price point in the hundreds of dollars. In many cases, dedicated servers cost customers ten, twenty, or even thirty times as much as shared hosting accounts! True, the margin percentages aren’t exactly the same, but dedicated servers can be great sources of profit, especially if you’re grinding out only a few dollars per month from each shared account. Conclusion The benefits of offering dedicated servers should be quite clear. Both customers and your business benefit in a variety of ways. From doing a better job supporting customer needs and initiatives to opening new avenues of growth for your web hosting company, dedicated servers are the key to securing your future with your best clients. With the public cloud and other competitors offering robust infrastructure solutions, it is critical that your web hosting business keep up. The good news is that managing dedicated servers has never been easier. From keeping an accurate inventory to simplifying provisioning to allowing customers to restart servers on their own (and many other features), EasyDCIM provides a full dedicated server management suite for web hosting companies like yours. If you’re curious how EasyDCIM can help you grow your web hosting business with dedicated servers, learn more about our mission. We would be excited to discuss how dedicated servers can help your web hosting company reach new heights. Get in touch!

There’s no denying that we always aim at surpassing our own expectations, and defining ever higher standards in development of EasyDCIM. Could we resist sharing with you another ambitious goal accomplished in the platform’s 1.7.2 version that just saw the light of day? Of course not. We just can’t hold the excitement in as we announce that one of the features most frequently asked for is now a part of EasyDCIM! Before we show you around the variety of advantages that the spanking new VLAN Management is about to fit into your business, let’s get back to basics for a minute. What is a VLAN? A VLAN stands for Virtual Local Area Network, and is meant to gather a set of network ports on a switching device into a single broadcast domain. In a VLAN, computers, servers, and other network devices are logically connected so they can freely communicate with each other, regardless of their physical location. Created as a response to specific problems that may occur in switched environments, VLANs provide increased operational capacities, and allow effortless segmentation of the network. VLANs Management As from the 1.7.2 version, EasyDCIM is equipped with a brilliantly inventive mechanism of VLAN Management that supports Juniper devices with JUNOS 12.3R12-S12. A diverse range of functionalities aimed at handling VLANs has been introduced into Switch Management For EasyDCIM v1.3.0 module, and consists of such actions as: integration with the NETCONF protocol, automatic detection of VLANs during the process of a device polling, adding VLANs, assigning a single or multiple VLANs to a network port of a switch. [gallery link="file" size="medium" ids="2849,2847,2846,2850,2848"] Provisioning VLANs One very important detail of the whole release is advanced support for VLANs during the provisioning process of your device. This profound feature extends the purpose of IP Address Management For EasyDCIM 1.8.0 module by creating the possibility to mark VLANs of a switch as provisioning VLANs. EasyDCIM will from now on come as supremely helpful in a situation when a switch has a few VLANs, and you need to select one that shall be used during the installation of operating system on dedicated servers. This way, before launching the process, a given port of a switch will be transferred to the provisioning VLAN. Once the installation is complete, the previous VLAN for this network port will be restored. Let’s dispel any possible doubts with this quick example: Your dedicated server has a network interface that is connected to the switch port ge-0/0/3. This switch port is located in the appropriate VLAN destined for this server, that is "VLANServer10". Now, the IP Address Management module allows you to decide that "VLANProvisioning" is intended for the operating system installation of this switch. Once you run the installation on a dedicated server, EasyDCIM will automatically transfer the network port of the switch ge-0/0/3 to the VLAN "VLANProvisioning". As soon as the process has been finished, the previous VLAN "VLANServer10" will be restored. SNMP Auto-Discovering We pulled out all the stops to supply the Auto-Discovering process with ultra-competitive functionalities that will raise the performance bar of EasyDCIM a notch further. As a result, the whole mechanism of automatic device detection has been transferred to the servers of Remote Agents. Not only will it bring relief to the platform’s main server that no longer needs to have access to SNMP dedicated servers or switches, but also tighten up network security, as well as enhance the efficiency of the process from A to Z. Debian Non-Free Drivers It comes as no surprise that Debian is one of the most powerful Linux distributions given how widely appreciated it is for security, stability as well as an excellent system of package management that has proven to be very supportive when coming across certain dependency issues. The current stable distribution is Debian Buster which is the development codename for Debian 10. It is a well-deserved follower of the previous Debian Stretch that stands for the development of Debian 9. During the installation of the operating system, the installer detects the appropriate devices, and adjusts the drivers for these devices. Unfortunately, the installer has only standard built-in drivers with limited support for some types of devices. In some cases the installer may detect the need to use a non-free driver, and a user is asked to provide the firmware to complete the installation process successfully. Such a situation commonly occurs with wireless network cards which require non-free firmware to work properly. EasyDCIM v1.7.2 delivers a perfect solution to this bothersome problem. Now, the administrator is empowered to indicate the appropriate URL that contains the driver package for devices that previously fell outside the scope of support.   Rest assured that the above rundown through EasyDCIM v1.7.2 is nowhere near to being complete, and many more substantial upgrades are not to be missed - all listed neatly in the changelog! View The Changelog!

There is quite a number of factors to be considered when pondering the question of what has a direct bearing on the pace of EasyDCIM's functional growth. One such facet of particular importance are the modules dedicated explicitly to making this control panel even more of an intelligent solution. Guided by this conclusion, we have decided to foreground the modules' updated choice of features in this spanking new release of EasyDCIM. Sit back and relax as we have the pleasure of walking you through the quality-filled confines of EasyDCIM v1.7.1. Another layer of data fetching automation To whet your appetite, we begin the exploration with the most valuable addition - the "Detect Hardware Information" system template brought by the OS Installation For EasyDCIM v1.9.0 module. The template is meant to be run on a given server so as to detect its specification, and then complete all the essential information automatically in EasyDCIM, that being: Quantity, model, and type of processor Quantity, model, and size of hard drives Quantity, model, and size of RAM Quantity and type of network interfaces Mainboard name and model Device serial number Device label Device manufacturer Hassle-free handling of admin sessions The Two-Factor Auth For EasyDCIM module has been developed further into the 1.1.0 version that brings about substantial improvement to the security of the entire back-end section owing to the innovative mechanism for managing administrator login sessions. The new formula grants you the possibility to delete the no longer relevant sessions, as well as automatically remove sessions that exceed the exact duration you have yourself previously defined. Sounds neat, doesn’t it? Device transfer on 24-hour watch This landmark release also features 5 new conditions implemented into the 1.1.0 version of Advanced Monitoring For EasyDCIM module, designed to measure the device traffic in the following time frames: Last Hour Traffic Last Day Traffic Last Week Traffic Last Month Traffic Current Month Traffic With these newly supplied tools, you are empowered to configure the preferred transfer limits for devices according to which custom email or Slack notifications will be sent. For instance, if you would like to email your customers once their monthly transfer exceeds the allowed 1 TB, you simply add the suitable settings to the Last Month Traffic condition, and define the corresponding contents of the message. Then, when the condition is fulfilled, your clients will receive an email saying: "Hold your horses! The limit has been reached." *   We got down to brass tacks so that you have a good grasp on EasyDCIM v1.7.1, but there surely is more to it than meets the eye. Take this general overview of new possibilities as a cordial invitation to explore the release in full depth! View The Changelog! * ...or any other note you see fit. :D

During the course of the last few months, EasyDCIM has been successfully undergoing a set of varied changes, mainly touching upon the offered functionalities and UX. All these alterations had one factor in common, that is the persistent striving to advance our system to consequently let you manage your data center without needless effort. But as you will see for yourself in a few moments, the milestone 1.7.0 release brings this subject to a whole new level! Monitoring – prevent it, before it happens Careful watching over one, even fairly intricate piece of equipment may sound like a demanding but still fairly achievable task. Problems start to build up, however, when your infrastructure expands into a more entangled web of mutual dependencies. Power and connection issues, traffic overload with countless other pressing issues can all cause system failures and lead to downtime. This is even more likely if you cannot afford your staff to spend long hours to perform a daily check of every single part of your inventory. Fortunately, data center owners are no longer left to their own devices, so to speak! Aided by the all-in-one monitoring tool included in the EasyDCIM milestone 1.7.0 edition, you will deal with this enormity of day-to-day supervisory operations in an entirely effortless manner. With our unique solution, you will be always up to speed about the status of all your devices. How exactly? The first step is to create new system monitors, either for devices such as switches, servers, routers, etc., or network ports – all according to your current needs. And in case you would like to use one specific monitor for multiple entities, you can quickly assign it to all of them at once by using tags. When it comes to monitors configuration, you will be enabled to choose suitable variables per each of them such as the device’s IPMI and SNMP connection status, IP and MAC addresses, uptime or network port traffic, and then select proper conditions for each variable to easily access just the piece of information you need. Once everything is set up, you would surely want to see how it all works in practice, wouldn’t you? Great news – conducting a real-time inspection of how your monitor functions will let you oversee whether you set up everything like you wanted or if any other alterations are still required. Re-engineered notification intelligence Voila – you have just established your own system monitor! But this is just the first part of the tool’s genius. Since device monitoring is equally important as receiving proper alerts right on time, we have also taken a closer look to this particular section of our system and given it a substantial boost. Naturally, our newly established monitoring kit covers also the possibility to set up personalized notifications sent via email (either to the defined addresses or directly to the owner of a particular server), through Slack or simply displayed within the system itself, but there is also the possibility to execute the defined URL instead. But there are many more changes in this field. As some of you already know, in previous versions of the system, the majority of notifications was executed only within EasyDCIM itself, only a small portion was delivered via email to the administrator who was not capable of interfering with their settings. Now it all changes! Thanks to the brand-new “Notifications” section, you will be able to: Define when notifications are to be sent and through which channels: email addresses, Slack channels or webhooks. Search through the list of all previously defined system notifications, edit or deactivate any chosen one in case you find it unnecessary. Assign any number of actions you want to be performed when a given notification occurs. New module - Advanced Monitoring For EasyDCIM Before we depart and you throw yourself into exploring all the new opportunities awaiting you in the 1.7.0 version, let us come back for a brief moment to its central part – the monitoring toolkit. Perhaps you feel like we could have still squeezed some more out of it? You had better give a closer look at the newest addition to the EasyDCIM-dedicated modules – Advanced Monitoring For EasyDCIM! Supported by effortless management of all monitors created across the platform, the access to their system logs and the ability to define more than one condition per monitor, you will have just the perfect means to stay well informed about the condition of your business, make effective, data-driven decisions and respond to unexpected events right on time. As you can see, monitoring your devices and managing system notifications in EasyDCIM is as straightforward as it is beneficial to any data center provider. Put it to practice yourself, and reach out for more gripping news on the 1.7.0 edition. It's high time to rediscover your business! Begin Your Monitoring Adventure!

There is no more persuasive way to evaluate your product’s performance on the market that through the firsthand account from the people involved with it daily, is there? Not to mention that by sharing their thought-inspiring stories, we can encourage more and more business owners to take over the reins and improve the effectiveness of their strategies by leaps and bounds. With this thought leading us, we have recently sat down to have a brief conversation with Vincentas Grinius – the Co-founder and CEO at Heficed – about the dynamics of modern data center architectures and how a robust automation strategy to manage them is critical to thrive and succeed. Spoiler alert - our software threw its two cents of worth in there! Past… Today, Heficed is a top server infrastructure and IPv4 lease provider that boasts of having revolutionized the way companies and organizations order, deploy and manage IP addresses. But at the very beginning of their journey over 10 years ago, soon after stepping into the data center market, they quickly came to realize the volume of work they had to confront daily. Vincentas himself admits that with such an extensive infrastructure covering 10 data centers globally come great demands. After having tried a few other solutions and combining them with excel sheets, he quickly had to face the reality: “Most of the solutions we employed before EasyDCIM were really limited. We haven't had hardware stock management. We processed OS installations manually. It was the primary reason we kept looking further and came across EasyDCIM which quickly appeared to fit our needs the most.” …present… From shared hosting provider, through cloud services, to finally arrive at the desired business profile - network engineering and IP management. Now, Heficed automates and speeds up the otherwise time-consuming manual process of managing the large volume of various IP addresses. It cannot go unnoticed that throughout the last year, the company’s growth started gathering speed and since we were really curious, we asked Vincentas whether the fact of deploying EasyDCIM three years ago had something to do with that. “Of course, it helped us a lot. EasyDCIM is a great assistant in managing our hardware assets much more efficiently, and thanks to it we have finally started to provision OS installations automatically.” Having a 360-degree view of the infrastructure at all times is actually the thing most of the companies we interviewed put in the spotlight. But even though, there is still one more thing that Vincentas pointed out as the one that proved of great value to him – statistics on server usage. Still, when we asked about which single chunk of EasyDCIM brought the biggest advantage to his business routine we got yet another different answer. “I would have to say that meta tags are definitely the greatest. Their flexibility and usefulness are best confirmed by our Head of Infrastructure who is responsible for the whole setup, remains in charge of the inventory and to whom meta tags turned out to be irreplaceable in labeling all of the bits and pieces.” Vincentas is in fact among the many people to mention that meta tags appeared as a real life-saver for his company. And since that has been always one of our primary goals to make daily data center duties as swift and effortless as possible, we are genuinely pleased to hear those kind words of approval! …future Customer feedback companies receive may be twofold: sometimes it comes with appraisals, and sometimes – with expectations. For us, it has always been the focal point of software development to brainstorm ideas with clients, hearing them out and finding the most optimal solutions together. There is always room for many more improvements and novel features yet to be implemented. Heficed was more than generous to provide us not only with all the support to our platform but also with a motivation to continue striving for excellence. And it is thanks to the first-hand feedback of such companies that we know what our audience needs and, most of all, whether the changes we actively employ have turned out to be as practical as we planned. So, looking ahead into the future of EasyDCIM, we asked Vincentas Grinius about the upgrades that he is still eager to see in our software. At the top of his list appeared an expanded toolkit related to network aggregation – and since we align ourselves with this prospect, we already cannot wait to get around to it! And we hope you will share this excitement with us! Regardless of whether your adventure with web hosting is just starting or perhaps you have lately found yourself stuck with the mediocrity, let the word of recommendation that Vincentas was so kind as to share with us, lead you straight to EasyDCIM!

Let’s be honest: a centralized data center management structure gives rise to many challenges, the most frightening of which may be the enormity of monitoring and controlling operations each day requires. Since we are literally obsessed with simplifying this experience for you, we never stop asking ourselves: how do we make using EasyDCIM more effortless? It is with this very thought in mind that we are pleased to announce the release of EasyDCIM v1.6.7 which, together with the many enhancements connected mostly to operating system installation and maintenance, take another load of tasks from the administrator’s shoulders. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - a new member of the OS templates family Needless to say that the fully automatic OS installation has been one of the greatest assets of EasyDCIM from the moment it was introduced several versions ago. Since that day we have been keeping close tabs on the availability of operating systems’ updates and adapting the scope of supported system templates to the rapidly advancing market changes. With today’s date, this range has welcomed the spicy addition of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – the very latest long-term support release of the hugely popular Ubuntu Linux OS, backed by an amazing 5 years of ongoing support and updates. What lay in the spotlight of this state-of-the-art system are the many improvements touching upon its security and overall performance. Owing to the smart application of Kernel Self Protection measures, it has reached the top Linux security requirements. Moreover, this template will deliver a solid foundation of novelties like Linux 5.4 kernel with improved hardware support, refreshed toolchain, faster boot speeds and refined look and feel across the entire system. Getting the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS system template ready is practically unattended since the administrator’s role will come down to sitting down and observing how EasyDCIM automatically performs all the required operations including: Selecting the appropriate time zone and language Performing disk partitioning Creating user account and generating root password Configuring network interfaces Installing extra system packages and post-installation scripts Three novel rescue & diagnostic tools Apart from introducing additional system template, we have also focused on expanding the scope of utility programs left at your disposal. As from the 1.6.7 version, EasyDCIM guarantees flawless support for the following instruments: 1. GParted 1.1.0.1 - with the assistance of this particular rescue template, the management over hard disks and partitions will be a breeze. It offers support for many different types of files and is equipped with its own graphical environment thanks to which you can easily change the organization of partitions in a hard disk while preserving their content. 2. Ultimate Boot CD 5.3.8 - comprises a set of several dozen utility and diagnostic programs which will certainly appear useful when you want to test whether the disk, RAM or processor works properly. It offers all the applications necessary for the maintenance and repair operations such as partitioning tools, boot manager, system restore disks, benchmarking tools, hardware information, a defragmenter, and even an antivirus program. 3. Grml 2018.12 - similarly to the above-described tool, this Debian-based template equipped with a graphical environment brings along an excellent collection of GNU/Linux software packages for sysadmins allowing for installation, deployment and system rescue. A bundle of miscellaneous tweaks and modifications Next to the already-mentioned cornerstones, the EasyDCIM toolkit has been boosted with some other practical features as well: OS Installation For EasyDCIM v1.8.0 - apart from the newly implemented templates, the process of establishing the time zone in Windows systems is now much amplified. An extra button introduced to enable the reloading of the DHCP server configuration on remote agent servers in case that any turbulences occur in the way to its successful configuration. System API now offers the possibility to create a list based on the received results and retrieve all IP addresses assigned to a given device. Lastly, honoring the requests of our clients, from the 1.6.7 version up you can take the opportunity to modify the model’s details straight within the device summary view. Even though you have seen the word “lastly” above, this does not mean the end of surprises our today’s release entails – it is just because we did not want to spoil the fun of a first-hand exploration for you. Let the party continue on the changelog page directly! Explore More!

Maintaining order and keeping control over your data center inventory is one of those demanding, grueling chores that cannot be entirely got rid of, unfortunately. But what can be – and, as you will see in a brief moment, has just been – done is making it as effortless and labor-saving as possible. The EasyDCIM v1.6.6 release we have the pleasure of announcing today is all about it! What stands as a pivotal change introduced on account of this fresh-new update is the feature that exerts a visible influence all across your system and is really simple in its premise, yet unbelievably serviceable in everyday use – the tagging functionality. Tags are like characteristics for a person; the same way you would describe someone as tall or short, in EasyDCIM you can characterize your assets by defining your own custom labels consisting of a name and color. Your current needs and imagination are the only limitations in their creation really. The complete list of supported entities includes: Colocations Devices Items Orders Clients What it means is that you are free to define tags for each of these groups separately, e.g. you can create tags specifically for the “Devices” group that you will later on assign to any chosen devices. Analogously, you can do likewise with all the remaining entities which this functionality is integrated with. All of this will be possible in the newly added “Tags” section, presenting the list of all tags ever created in the system with such details as their name, color, type and number of entities they are attributed to. What is more, you will be enabled to perform there such actions as: Adding new tags and editing them later on. Deleting existing tags and removing them from all assigned entities. Filter the results by a given tag in order to find all elements assigned to it. The scope of introduced changes by no means ends at this point since we have widened the scope of system tags’ influence to cover the most important system tables as well: Servers, Blade Servers, Network, Power, Colocation Services, Search Inventory, Orders and Clients. In each of these, it will be from now on possible to attach multiple tags to a single item such as a device, order or customer. You can also quickly create a new tag there if it suddenly turns out that you need one – without the necessity of moving back to the “Tags” section. We also know that each minute is worth its weight in gold, therefore, you will be enabled to perform mass actions including both assignment and removal of tags. To be more precise, you can select several items in the table and add to them as many tags as you wish or, on the other hand, delete all those that were previously assigned. Some other tweak-ups and cosmetic changes The installation of a remote agent has been further upgraded to allow for a higher level of automation - by making the process of database configuration entirely unattended, no manual actions will be required on your part. Possibility to define which installation templates customers should be enabled to see in the client area and use for system reinstallation. Added ability to display the list of server parts in the client area such as CPU, HDD, SSD or RAM. Looks interesting? Note that this is still not everything! As always, we highlighted the most significant changes of this release right here, therefore we cordially invite you to visit our website and check the complete changelog to discover the full spectrum of modifications. Explore More!