In 2015 we saw the smart watch hit mass appeal with the release of the Apple Watch. With it came the ability to keep yourself continuously up to date while on the move or participating in any activity. Whether you are out exercising or driving somewhere in your car you can check notifications with just a quick glance at your wrist as if you were simply checking the time.
For many people this is a must have gadget and also a very stylish fashion accessory. The Apple Watch is offered in various styles including the Apple Watch Sport, Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition. There are two case sizes available 38mm and 42mm and the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition come equipped with a Sapphire Crystal Display. There are multiple styles of strap available which come in a variety of colours and all of which are fully interchangeable, allowing you to make a personal statement, showing off your own individual taste and staying geek chic.
The Apple Watch - A great fashion accessory, or a tool for business?
There are also a variety of other smart watches available such as the Pebble, Samsung gear and Motorola Moto 360 to name a few. All of the smart watches offer very similar functions and applications but vary in style.
They typically have customizable watch faces a which allow you to make changes to the look, feel and fucntionality as regularly as you like - no more staring at the same dial day after day like you would with a standard watch.
A variety of other smart-watches
Smart watches also offer you an easy way to keep up with your emails, check text messages, make and receive phone calls. They can also monitor anything from your health, to stocks and shares even keep track of how overdrawn your bank account is.
Your smart watch can even help you to track a parcel
There may be differing opinions on whether or not the Smart watch is a necessity or simply just another cool gadget but one thing is for sure - if you want to be kept seamlessly updated without having to keep taking out your phone then a smart watch is the way to go.
Here at Boston, we've found a very useful purpose for our smart watches - monitoring our server systems in the datacentre.
If something were to go wrong, such as a system overheating or hardware errors that prevent your systems from performing their very important tasks, it is vital that we, as systems administrators, are made aware of this immediately. Once notified, we can then take the right actions to have any faults rectified as quickly as possible to avoid any unnecessary downtime.
This is where the Supermicro IPMI or Intelligent Platform Management Interface app shows it's worth its salt. Supermicro IPMI is an out of band monitoring system designed to accurately report the status of server hardware, even when the system it protects has crashed or has been shut down. The information reported includes Voltages, Component Temperatures and whether or not a component is detected (such as a power supply).
Sensor data as shown in an IPMI web management interface
IPMI also records detailed event logs to help you to diagnose why a system has failed and identify which component has failed within the system.
Memory errors as shown in an IPM event log
Having an interface that you can log in to, check the status of your systems and review any event logs is extremely useful. But what is even more impressive is to be able to set up notifications that inform you the instant something goes wrong. This can be configured in the IPMI application using something called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). This feature basically tells the IPMI to send out an Email notification to a specified Email address if an event is triggered. Once an event has occurred such as overheating or PSU failure for example, you will receive an email alert to inform you of this.
Typical email alert on a smart watch
Another extremely useful feature of IPMI is the ability to open a full graphical remote console and be able to interact with a server without actually being anywhere near the system in question. Likewise power control can also be managed by IPMI meaning that you can power off, power on or restart a system remotely, as if you were right there in the datacentre. Mounting virtual media too is very handy if you for instance wanted to install an operating system from an ISO or load some software on to a system which you can't physically get to right now.
The iKVM console preview on the IPMI web interface
It is features like this that make IPMI a must have application in the server world as we cannot always be in front of every machine that needs attention, especially as these machines are often in datacentres miles away from your location or even abroad. I think it is safe to say that the recent innovation of technology that allows us to keep track and even arrange our lives whilst on the move is definitely a worthwhile addition to current technologies.
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