We have recently been assigned to help with the development of a system that will power non-computer/non-network devices located at various places within a 10,000 square ft facility. Most of these devices will operate on a fairly wide range of DC input power.
The availability of surplus Cat-5 cable and the availability of low cost POE switches has been suggested as a method of powering these devices. There also appears to be some good, low cost installation options for all of the required system elements.
The activity and health of the devices is directly related to their power consumption. Is there a standard CentOS feature or commonly used App that would facilitate monitoring the power being supplied by each of the individual POE switch outputs?
Thanks in advance for any information shared.
On Thursday, June 7, 2018 8:31:35 AM CDT Chris Olson wrote:
We have recently been assigned to help with the development of a system that will power non-computer/non-network devices located at various places within a 10,000 square ft facility. Most of these devices will operate on a fairly wide range of DC input power.
The availability of surplus Cat-5 cable and the availability of low cost POE switches has been suggested as a method of powering these devices. There also appears to be some good, low cost installation options for all of the required system elements.
The activity and health of the devices is directly related to their power consumption. Is there a standard CentOS feature or commonly used App that would facilitate monitoring the power being supplied by each of the individual POE switch outputs?
Thanks in advance for any information shared.
Hi Chris -
Most PoE network switches can report the current consumed by each port. To get this you have to either use the CLI of the switch or SNMP.
I suggest exploring Nagios. It is available for CentOS from standard repositories. It takes a bit of effort to set up, but it can monitor dang near anything that SNMP can report. The secret is to find MIBs for the switches you are using, then finding the MIB entries.
-
Bill Gee -
Chris Olson