A large ICT infrastructure provider needed a flexible and secure server identification solution to maximise equipment intervention and audit efficiency, while maintaining physical server location flexibility. In addition, both in-house professionals and external partners needed to be able to identify specific servers to various degrees.
Solution: on-metal NFC labels printable on site
Brady proposed on-metal RFID labels with embedded Near Field Communication (NFC) chips and a print & program solution with custom developed Brady software.
The on-metal RFID NFC labels can enable Near Field Communication (NFC) with the latest smartphones or tablets in close proximity, even when applied on metal surfaces. Brady pre-programmed the chips to include two layers of information. A top layer is accessible to in-house professionals, as well as external contractors, and a deep security layer remains hidden to all, except in-house administrators. Only professionals who are performing relevant maintenance interventions can read any of the label chip layers with RFID pens linked to their user set-up. In addition, Brady printed a human readable code on every NFC label.
Brady wrote a custom Windows 10 touch screen software app for the customer’s tablets to enable relevant chip reading with RFID pens. The customer can easily set up a user or admin, and provide them with the tablet and pen to perform a server intervention, all while safeguarding identification data security on other servers in the same rack or data centre room.
Brady also provided a print & program solution to easily create additional labels in the data centre, or to rewrite any label chips in the event of physical server relocations. Label chip rewrites require an administrator user access, the tablet, and the pen, and they are limited to predefined data sets needed to facilitate physical server relocation.
Results: double layered, secured flexible rack identification
Intervention efficiency and security in the customer’s data centres has been optimised with on-metal RFID NFC labels. Labels can easily be printed and programmed at the data centre, or reprogrammed when physical servers need relocation. Each label offers a human readable code, and a secured and layered NFC signal that can be read with preprogrammed tablets and RFID pens, which can be linked to a user or admin profile.
