OpenBlockS266 Case Study: Tokyo Electric Power Company

Reliable monitoring hardware for telecommunications network

Mitsuyoshi Koyama, who is in charge of Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco)'s fiber-optic network was looking for a solution to alert him of network problems before user complaints start coming in. He used a special program on his Linux notebook, but this proved to be unreliable. "Power would run out at the worst moment", as he reports. This and other hardware issues convinced him that a real server solution was necessary, one that would work reliably 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Tough and failure free

The OpenMicroServer is designed without fan, harddisk and other moving parts to remove the main source of hardware failures. Heat is dissipated through an aluminum plate and the casing. The sturdy aluminum case also protects against dust and water splash. In combination with a low energy CPU and heat-resistant parts, this raises the ambient operating temperature of the device to 50°C. This has been proved in our long-term high-temperature aging test. With these features, the OpenMicroServer was a perfect fit for what Mr. Koyama was looking for.

Easy development

Mitsuyoshi Koyama

Thanks to an Open Source OS and publicly available hardware information, developing and porting the software to the OpenMicroServer was no issue. The OpenMicroServer comes preinstalled with a dedicated embedded Linux distribution, SSD/Linux. It's a truly open system, users can completely customize the whole system to offer exactly the functionality they need.

Flexible extendability for for future service expansions

The OpenMicroServer has two USB ports. For network monitoring, the previous OpenBlockS266 offered sufficient functionality, but with the USB port the system became scalable and ready for the future.
Japan takes prides in its electricity grid that has the lowest rate of power outages worldwide. The OpenMicroServer, with its proven reliability, system of choice for the Japanese Power company Tepco, completely fulfilled all expectations.