I manage IT operations for about 15 industrial facilities in New York City, where our team is often not physically present. The sites have blue-collar operations staff, including engineers, but no dedicated IT staff on hand. We've been facing an issue where the staff runs generator load tests without informing the IT department, causing power drops that throw our network equipment out of whack. Normally, we have to send someone to restart these devices, which is a hassle given the travel time involved.
While we're also revamping our UPS systems, we need a temporary solution to enable remote power cycling of our network devices. I'm looking for options that allow centralized management from headquarters, support 1 to 5 devices per site, ideally operate over Ethernet (though cellular is an option), and are rugged enough to handle the industrial environment. Bonus points for features like alerting, logging, scripting, or API integration, all while sticking to a budget due to public sector constraints. I would love to hear any real-world recommendations on hardware like PDUs, smart relays, IoT devices, etc. Thanks for your help!
3 Answers
You might want to consider the Unifi USP-PDU-HD or USP-PDU-Pro; they have remote reset capabilities on the outlets, but keep in mind you’ll need internet access for the controller. I used something similar by connecting the PDU directly to a firewall on its own virtual interface, which worked well for me.
If you still have internet access during those outages, I’d recommend looking into smart PDUs like those from APC. They let you control individual ports for a remote power cycle—super handy. For home use, I even have Wyze smart plugs to reboot my cameras without climbing up. If internet is down, you’d need something that can connect via cellular, like a router with 4G failover for those remote locations.
Check out WattBox; it’s a solid option for remote management control of your devices.
Thanks! That sounds promising, I’ll look into how to connect it correctly.