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Whether it is for your home lab or a hyperscale data centre, a UPS is critical to any kind of IT infrastructure. Given that a UPS provides you with power conditioning and emergency back-up power, it makes sense to provide it with access to network communications for alerts to any issues and to enable machine-to-machine (M2M) connections to automate the graceful shutdown in the event of a power loss. Most network interface cards (NIC) provide basic monitoring capabilities and alerts, but there a number of factors to consider when it comes to selecting the right network card.
Network management cards are handy additions to UPS products to help provide you with automated battery status and power failure alerts. Our FAQ page will help you understand the basics of network management cards.
Step 1: Prioritise cybersecurity
Connecting your UPS to a network can be a double-edged sword. When selecting the right network card, you'll want to ensure that you are not exposing yourself to any unnecessary risks that could lead to getting hacked. Be sure to tick the following boxes:
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol that encrypts Internet communications and ensures that data is kept private and is secured from tampering. TLS is widely used to encrypt communications such as web applications, email, messaging and Voice over IP (VoIP).
Step 2: Ensure password-enabled connectivity
Will the network card you're considering help you avoid cyber-attacks and take cybersecurity to the next step by enabling password complexity and certificate-based encryption?
Tips for creating a safe password:
Using a server certificate guarantees the identity of the network card and can protect against possible attacks, such as man-in-the-middle attacks, SSL stripping, session hijacking and phishing scams.
Step 3: Check gigabit network compatibility
To make sure that your devices can connect to the network, it's important that the network can communicate on all the standard network speeds, including 1,000 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 10 Mbps.
Step 4: Verify protocol support
It's important that your network card supports protocols that allow it to integrate with your monitoring and management platforms, such as ConnectWise. If not supported, you'll be unable to integrate your UPSs to these platforms for monitoring, notifications, alerts and visualisation.
These protocols include:
Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is an OASIS standard messaging protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is designed as an extremely lightweight publish-and-subscribe messaging transport that is ideal for connecting remote devices with a small code footprint and minimal network bandwidth.
Step 5: Select top quality products
When buying a network card, it's imperative to pick a manufacturer with a reputation for quality and a dedication to security. Without both, your network card could easily break and possibly not be covered under a warranty. In addition, make sure that the manufacturer regularly publishes firmware updates that address ever-increasing security threats. Lastly, pick a device with good processing speeds and a lot of memory to support future capabilities. And always consult the UPS manufacturer to verify specifications.
With the help of a network management card, Eaton 5PX G2 UPSs are now enabled to receive mass firmware upgrades without dropping the load.
