Things that keep us from reaching 100% uptime: Power Grid Outages

The mission of our company is to build products and services to help system administrators reach 100% uptime for their networks. We all know that it becomes harder and harder to reach 100% the closer you come to your goal, it’s like trying to reach the speed of light.

One of the limitations that system administrators can’t do much about is the reliability (or failure rate) of the electrical power grids they have to rely on. In a data center it is pretty easy to get around this problem by installing uninterruptible power supplies (ups): using a generator you can run a data center off-the-grid for days.

But what about the on-site networks that you serve with that data-center, the people in the offices and factory buildings. Your ups won’t help. When the power grid fails, your computer-using colleagues will twiddle their thumbs until power is coming back again.

Continue reading “Things that keep us from reaching 100% uptime: Power Grid Outages”

Setting up a PRTG Remote Probe in my living room

…in less than 15 minutes on a €169 Mini-PC

When you need a cheap and simple system to run a remote probe for PRTG Network Monitor there are a neat option: Buy a €169 Mini-PC that comes with a Windows 10 Home license! Setting up a Probe takes only minutes and with the latest PRTG version it is almost completely automated. Over the weekend I did exactly this at home in my living room and filmed it.

Continue reading “Setting up a PRTG Remote Probe in my living room”