This article was co-authored by James Cabe, CISSP, a 30-year cybersecurity expert who’s helped major companies including Microsoft and Fortinet.

Enterprise networks are like air. When they’re running smoothly, it’s easy to take them for granted, as business users and customers are able to go about their normal activities. But when customer service reps are suddenly cut off from their ticketing system, or family movie night turns into a game of “Is it my router, or the network?”, everyone notices. This is why network resilience is critical.

But, what exactly does resilience mean today? Let’s find out by looking at some recent real-world examples, the history of network architectures, and why network resilience doesn’t mean what it did 20 years ago.

Why does network resilience matter?

There’s no shortage of real-world examples showing why network resilience matters. The takeaway is that network resilience is directly tied to business, which means that it impacts revenue, costs, and risks. Here is a brief list of resilience-related incidents that occurred in 2023 alone:

• FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) – An overworked contractor unintentionally deleted files, which delayed flights nationwide for an entire day.
• Southwest Airlines – A firewall configuration change caused 16,000 flight cancellations and cost the company about $1 billion.
• MOVEit FTP exploit – Thousands of global organizations fell victim to a MOVEit vulnerability, which allowed attackers to steal personal data for millions.
• MGM Resorts – A human exploit and lack of recovery systems let an attack persist for weeks, causing millions in losses per day.
• Ragnar Locker attacks – Several large organizations were locked out of IT systems for days, which slowed or halted customer operations worldwide.

What does network resilience mean?

Based on the examples above, it might seem that network resilience could mean different things. It might mean having backups of golden configs that you could easily restore in case of a mistake. It might mean beefing up your security and/or replacing outdated systems. It might mean having recovery processes in place.

So, which is it?

The answer is, it’s all of these and more.

Donald Firesmith (Carnegie Mellon) defines resilience this way: “A system is resilient if it continues to carry out its mission in the face of adversity (i.e., if it provides required capabilities despite excessive stresses that can cause disruptions).”

Network resilience means having a network that continues to serve its essential functions despite adversity. Adversity can stem from human error, system outages, cyberattacks, and even natural disasters that threaten to degrade or completely halt normal network operations. Achieving network resilience requires the ability to quickly address issues ranging from device failures and misconfigurations, to full-blown ISP outages and ransomware attacks.

The problem is, this is now much more difficult than it used to be.

How did network resilience become so complicated?

Twenty years ago, IT teams managed a centralized architecture. The data center was able to serve end-users and customers with the minimal services they needed. Being “constantly connected” wasn’t a concern for most people. For the business, achieving resilience was as simple as going on-site or remoting-in via serial console to fix issues at the data center.

Then in the mid-2000s, the advent of the cloud changed everything. Infrastructure, data, and computing became decentralized into a distributed mix of on-prem and cloud solutions. Users could connect from anywhere, and on-demand services allowed people to be plugged in around-the-clock. Services for work, school, and entertainment could be delivered anytime, no matter where users were.

Behind the scenes, this explosion of architecture created three problems for achieving network resilience, which a simple serial could no longer fix:

Too Much Work

Infrastructure, data, and computing are widely distributed. Systems inevitably break and require work, but teams don’t have the staff to keep up.

Too Much Complexity

Pairing cloud and box-based stacks creates complex networks. Teams leave systems outdated, because they don’t want to break this delicate architecture.

Too Much Risk

Unpatched, outdated systems are prime targets for packaged attacks that move at machine speed. Defense requires recovery tools that teams don’t have.

Enabling businesses to be resilient in the modern age requires an approach that’s different than simply deploying a serial console for remote troubleshooting. Gen 1 and 2 serial consoles, which have dominated the market for 20 years, were designed to solve basic issues by offering limited remote access and some automation. The problem is, these still leave teams lacking the confidence to answer questions like:

• “How can we guarantee access to fix stuff that breaks, without rolling trucks?”
• “Can we automate change management, without fear of breaking the network?”
• “Attacks are inevitable — How do we stop hackers from cutting off our access?”

Hyperscalers, Internet Service Providers, Big Tech, and even the military have a resilience model that they’ve proven over the last decade. Their approach involves fully isolating command and control from data and user environments. This allows them to not only gain low-level remote access to maintain and fix systems, but also to “defend the hill” and maintain control if systems are compromised or destroyed.

This approach uses something called Isolated Management Infrastructure (IMI).

Isolated Management Infrastructure is the best practice for network resilience

Isolated Management Infrastructure is the practice of creating a management network that is completely separate from the production network. Most IT teams are familiar with out-of-band management as this network; IMI, however, provides many capabilities that can’t be hosted on a traditional serial console or OOB network. And with increasing vulnerabilities, CISA issued a binding directive specifically calling for organizations to implement IMI.

Isolated Management Infrastructure using Gen 3 serial consoles, like ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid devices, provides more than simple remote access and automation. Similar to a proper out-of-band network, IMI is completely isolated from production assets. This means there are no dependencies on production devices or connections, and management interfaces are not exposed to the internet or production gear. In the event of an outage or attack, teams retain management access, and this is just the beginning of the benefits of having IMI.

IMI includes more than nine functions that are required for teams to fully service their production assets. These include:

• Low-level access to all management interfaces, including serial, Ethernet, USB, IPMI, and others, to guarantee remote access to the entire environment
• Open, edge-native automation to ensure services can continue operating in the event of outages or change errors
• Computing, storage, and jumpbox capabilities that can natively host the apps and tools to deploy an IRE, to ensure fast, effective recovery from attacks

Get the guide to build IMI

ZPE Systems has worked alongside Big Tech to fulfill their requirements for IMI. In doing so, we created the Network Automation blueprint as a technical guide to help any organization build their own Isolated Management Infrastructure. Download the blueprint now to get started.

The DevOps methodology combines the software development and IT operations teams into a highly collaborative unit. In a DevOps environment, team members work simultaneously on the same code base, using automation and source control to accelerate releases. The transformation from a traditional, siloed organizational structure to a streamlined, fast-paced DevOps company is rewarding yet challenging. That’s why it’s important to have the right strategy, and in this guide to collaboration in DevOps, you’ll discover tips and best practices for a smooth transition.

Collaboration in DevOps: Strategies and best practices

A successful DevOps implementation results in a tightly interwoven team of software and infrastructure specialists working together to release high-quality applications as quickly as possible. This transition tends to be easier for developers, who are already used to working with software code, source control tools, and automation. Infrastructure teams, on the other hand, sometimes struggle to work at the velocity needed to support DevOps software projects and lack experience with automation technologies, causing a lot of frustration and delaying DevOps initiatives. The following strategies and best practices will help bring Dev and Ops together while minimizing friction.

Turn infrastructure and network configurations into software code

Infrastructure and network teams can’t keep up with the velocity of DevOps software development if they’re manually configuring, deploying, and troubleshooting resources using the GUI (graphical user interface) or CLI (command line interface). The best practice in a DevOps environment is to use software abstraction to turn all configurations and networking logic into code.

Software abstraction helps accelerate resource provisioning, reducing delays and friction between Dev and Ops. It can also be used to bring networking teams into the DevOps fold with automated, software-defined networks, creating what’s known as a NetDevOps environment.

Use common, centralized tools for software source control

Collaboration in DevOps means a whole team of developers or sysadmins may work on the same code base simultaneously. This is highly efficient — but risky. Development teams have used software source control tools like GitHub for years to track and manage code changes and prevent overwriting each other’s work. In a DevOps organization using IaC and SDN, the best practice is to incorporate infrastructure and network code into the same source control system used for software code.

Managing infrastructure configurations using a tool like GitHub ensures that sysadmins can’t make unauthorized changes to critical resources. For example, administrators initiate many ransomware attacks and other major outages by directly changing infrastructure configurations without testing or approval. This happened in a high-profile MGM cyberattack when an IT staff member fell victim to social engineering and granted elevated Okta privileges to an attacker without having to get approval from a second pair of eyes.

Using DevOps source control, all infrastructure changes must be reviewed and approved by a second party in the IT department to ensure they don’t introduce vulnerabilities or malicious code into production. Sysadmins can work quickly and creatively, knowing there’s a safety net to catch mistakes, reducing Ops delays, and fostering a more collaborative environment.

Consolidate and integrate DevOps tools with a vendor-neutral platform

An enterprise DevOps deployment usually involves dozens – if not hundreds – of different tools to automate and streamline the many workflows involved in a software development project. Having so many individual DevOps tools deployed around the enterprise increases the management complexity, which can have the following consequences.

• Human error – The harder it is to stay on top of patch releases, security bulletins, and monitoring logs, the more likely it is that an issue will slip between the cracks until it causes an outage or breach.
• Security complexity – Every additional DevOps tool added to the architecture makes integrating and implementing a consistent security model more complex and challenging, increasing the risk of coverage gaps.
• Spiraling costs – With many different solutions handling individual workflows around the enterprise, the likelihood of buying redundant services or paying for unneeded features increases, which can impact ROI.
• Reduced efficiency – DevOps aims to increase operational efficiency, but having to work across so many disparate tools can slow teams down, especially when those tools don’t interoperate.

The best practice is consolidating your DevOps tools with a centralized, vendor-neutral platform. For example, the Nodegrid Services Delivery Platform from ZPE Systems can host and integrate 3rd-party DevOps tools, unifying them under a single management umbrella. Nodegrid gives IT teams single-pane-of-glass control over the entire DevOps architecture, including the underlying network infrastructure, which reduces management complexity, increases efficiency, and improves ROI.

Maximize DevOps success

DevOps collaboration can improve operational efficiency and allow companies to release software at the velocity required to stay competitive in the market. Using software abstraction, centralized source code control, and vendor-neutral management platforms reduces friction on your DevOps journey. The best practice is to unify your DevOps environment with a vendor-neutral platform like Nodegrid to maximize control, cost-effectiveness, and productivity.

Want to Simplify collaboration in DevOps with the Nodegrid platform?

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DevOps is all about streamlining software development and delivery through automation and collaboration. Many workflows are involved in a DevOps software development lifecycle, but they can be broadly broken down into the following categories: development, resource provisioning and management, integration, testing, deployment, and monitoring. The best DevOps tools streamline and automate these key aspects of the DevOps lifecycle. This blog discusses what role these tools play and highlights the most popular offerings in each category.

The best DevOps tools

DevOps version control

In a DevOps environment, a whole team of developers may work on the same code base simultaneously for maximum efficiency. DevOps version control tools like GitHub allow you to track and manage all the changes made to a code base, providing visibility into who’s making what changes at what time. Version control prevents devs from overwriting each other’s work or making unauthorized changes. For example, a developer may come up with a way to improve the performance of a feature by changing the existing code, but doing so inadvertently creates a vulnerability in the software or interferes with other application functions. DevOps version control prevents unauthorized code changes from integrating with the rest of source code and tracks who’s responsible for making the request, improving the stability and security of the software.

•  Best DevOps version control tool: Github

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) streamlines the Operations side of a DevOps environment by abstracting server, VM, and container configurations as software code. IaC build tools like HashiCorp Terraform allow Ops teams to write infrastructure configurations as declarative or imperative code, which is used to provision resources automatically. With IaC, teams can deploy infrastructure at the velocity required by DevOps development cycles.

An example Terraform configuration for IaC.

•  Best Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool: HashiCorp Terraform

Configuration management

Configuration management involves monitoring infrastructure and network devices to make sure no unauthorized changes are made while systems are in production. Unmonitored changes could introduce security vulnerabilities that the organization is unaware of, especially in a fast-paced DevOps environment. In addition, as systems are patched and updated over time, configuration drift becomes a concern, leading to additional quality and security issues. DevOps configuration management tools like RedHat Ansible automatically monitor configurations and roll back unauthorized modifications. Some IaC build tools, like Terraform, also include configuration management.

•  Best configuration management tool: RedHat Ansible

Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) is a software development methodology that goes hand-in-hand with DevOps. In CI/CD, software code is continuously updated and integrated with the main code base, allowing a continuous delivery of new features and improvements. CI/CD tools like Jenkins automate every step of the CI/CD process, including software building, testing, integrating, and deployment. This allows DevOps organizations to continuously innovate and optimize their products to stay competitive in the market.

•  Best CI/CD tool: Jenkins

Software testing

Not all DevOps teams utilize CI/CD, and even those that do may have additional software testing needs that aren’t addressed by their CI/CD platform. In DevOps, app development is broken up into short sprints so manageable chunks of code can be tested and integrated as quickly as possible. Manual testing is slow and tedious, introducing delays that prevent teams from achieving the rapid delivery schedules required by DevOps organizations. DevOps software testing tools like Selenium automatically validate software to streamline the process and allow testing to occur early and often in the development cycle. That means high-quality apps and features get out to customers sooner, improving the ROI of software projects.

•  Best software testing tool: Selenium

Container management

In DevOps, containers are lightweight, virtualized resources used in the development of microservice applications. Microservice applications are extremely agile, breaking up software into individual services that can be developed, deployed, managed, and destroyed without affecting other parts of the app. Docker is the de facto standard for basic container creation and management. Kubernetes takes things a step further by automating the orchestration of large-scale container deployments to enable an extremely efficient and streamlined infrastructure.

•  Best container management tools: Docker and Kubernetes

Monitoring & incident management

Continuous improvement is a core tenet of the DevOps methodology. Software and infrastructure must be monitored so potential issues can be resolved before they affect software performance or availability. Additionally, monitoring data should be analyzed for opportunities to improve the quality, speed, and usability of applications and systems. DevOps monitoring and incident response tools like Cisco’s AppDynamics provide full-stack visibility, automatic alerts, automated incident response and remediation, and in-depth analysis so DevOps teams can make data-driven decisions to improve their products.

•  Best monitoring & incident management tool: Cisco AppDynamics

Deploy the best DevOps tools with Nodegrid

DevOps is all about agility, speed, and efficiency. The best DevOps tools use automation to streamline key workflows so teams can deliver high-quality software faster. With so many individual tools to manage, there’s a real risk of DevOps tech sprawl driving costs up and inhibiting efficiency. One of the best ways to reduce tech sprawl (without giving up all the tools you love) is by using vendor-neutral platforms to consolidate your solutions. For example, the Nodegrid Services Delivery Platform from ZPE Systems can host and integrate 3rd-party DevOps tools, reducing the need to deploy additional virtual or hardware resources for each solution. Nodegrid utilizes integrated services routers, such as the Gate SR or Net SR, to provide branch/edge gateway routing, in-band networking, out-of-band (OOB) management, cellular failover, and more. With a Nodegrid SR, you can combine all your network functions and DevOps tools into a single integrated solution, consolidating your tech stack and streamlining operations.

A major benefit of using Nodegrid is that the Linux-based Nodegrid OS is Synopsys secure, meaning every line of source code is checked during our SDLC. This significantly reduces CVEs and other vulnerabilities that are likely present in other vendors’ software.

Learn more about efficient DevOps management with vendor-neutral solutions

With the vendor-neutral Nodegrid Services Delivery Platform, you can deploy the best DevOps tools while reducing tech sprawl. Watch a free Nodegrid demo to learn more.

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How do you address security across the software development life cycle?

“Security is the cornerstone of ZPE’s infrastructure management solutions,” says Koroush Saraf, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing at ZPE Systems. “Our automation platform touches every aspect of our customers’ critical infrastructure, from networking and firewall gear, to servers, smart PDUs, and everything else in their production network. The ZPE portfolio is architected with the strongest security and implemented with the same level of scrutiny.”

Given the critical nature of enterprise networking, security is paramount to ZPE’s customers.

“The average time taken to apply patches and fix vulnerabilities can be more than 205 days,” says Saraf. “This is due to many reasons: limited resources and time, concerns that something may break, or in some cases, admins don’t even know that a critical patch is available. That’s why ZPE takes on the responsibility for customers. They’re assured that the systems running their infrastructure are running the latest, most secure software. And if a patch fails, our built-in undo button reverts to a safe configuration before any damage can be done.”

Saraf adds, “Like with all modern organizations, ZPE uses a complex mix of proprietary, open source, and third-party software obtained through a variety of sources from the software supply chain. Think third-party libraries, packaged software from ISVs, IoT and embedded firmware, and especially open source components. In fact, studies show that over three-quarters of the code in any given application is likely to be open source.”

“Most third parties won’t provide the source code behind their software,” notes Saraf. “But the question remains whether that supplier is as security-conscious as ZPE. Again, we found the solution with Synopsys, which gives us insight into any third-party software we include without requiring access to the source code.”

The solution: Comprehensive security testing with Synopsys AST

Different security solutions focus on different aspects of vulnerability detection and risk mitigation. By layering multiple solutions such as static analysis, dynamic analysis, and software composition analysis, ZPE covers a wide range of potential vulnerabilities, ensuring that code quality and security issues are identified at various stages during the software development life cycle and across different types of code.

Coverity® provides the speed, ease of use, accuracy, industry standards compliance, and scalability to develop high-quality, secure applications. Coverity identifies critical quality defects and security vulnerabilities as code is written, early in ZPE’s development process when they are easiest to fix. Coverity seamlessly integrates automated security testing into CI/CD pipelines, supports existing development tools and workflows, and can be deployed either on-premises or in the cloud.

WhiteHat Dynamic is a software-as-a-service dynamic application security testing solution that allows businesses to quickly deploy a scalable web security program. No matter how many websites or how often they change, WhiteHat Dynamic can scale to meet any demand. It provides security and development teams with fast, accurate, and continuous vulnerability assessments of applications in QA and production, applying the same techniques hackers use to find weaknesses This enables ZPE to streamline the remediation process, prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity and threat, and focus on remediation and its overall security posture.

Black Duck® helps ZPE identify supply chain security and license risks even when it doesn’t have access to the underlying software’s code. This is a critical security tool for the modern software supply chain. Black Duck Binary Analysis can scan virtually any software, including desktop and mobile applications, third-party libraries, packaged software, and embedded system firmware. It quickly generates a complete Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), which tracks third-party and open source components, and identifies known security vulnerabilities, associated licenses, and code quality risks.

The result: A notable reduction of CVEs

“One of the outcomes from taking a comprehensive, layered approach to security testing has been a notable reduction in CVEs on the systems we deploy,” says Saraf.

“I think a lot of industry players don’t give enough attention to patching CVEs. They wait until after a security incident, or until a customer specifically asks. Unfortunately, it’s normal to see unpatched, outdated software running on critical infrastructure. The Equifax breach of 2017 is just one example that exposed the personal data of millions. It’s a particular problem with IoT and embedded devices—many of those systems get installed and forgotten. But it’s another attack surface, especially if you use the equipment for critical infrastructure automation.”

“ZPE’s goal is to reduce the attack surface of our systems to as close to zero as possible, either by making sure that software vulnerabilities are identified and addressed, and that our software is running the most secure and up-to-date versions. It’s an ongoing process— what is vulnerability-free today won’t necessarily be so tomorrow—which is why ZPE always stays security-conscious. I think the company’s commitment to security has positioned ZPE as a trusted partner for enterprises seeking secure automation solutions for their critical infrastructure needs.

 

Download the document for details about Synopsys and ZPE Systems

How to Fight the latest Ransomware Attacks

Nodegrid plus Synopsys is the most secure platform for Isolated Management Infrastructure (IMI). This architecture is recommended by the FBI and CISA, and allows you to fight back when ransomware strikes. Check out our latest IMI articles from cybersecurity veterans James Cabe and Koroush Saraf, who have helped companies including Fortinet, Microsoft, and Palo Alto Networks.

Various reasons may prompt a move to a new data center, like finding a different provider with lower prices, or the added security of relocating assets from an on-premises location to a colocation facility or private cloud.

Despite the potential benefits, data center migrations are often tough on enterprises, both internally and from the client side of things. Data center managers, systems administrators, and network engineers must cope with the logistical difficulties of planning, executing, and supporting the move. End-users may experience service disruptions and performance issues that make their jobs harder. Migrations also tend to reveal any weaknesses in the actual infrastructure that’s moved, which means systems that once worked perfectly may require extra support during and after the migration.

The best way to limit headaches and business disruptions is to plan every step of a data center migration meticulously. This guide provides a basic data center migration checklist to help with planning and includes additional resources for streamlining your move.

Data center migration checklist

Data center migrations are always complex and unique to each organization, but there are typically two major approaches:

• Lift-and-shift. You physically move infrastructure from one data center to another. In some ways, this is the easiest approach because all components are known, but it can limit your potential benefits if gear remains in racks for easy transport to the new location rather than using the move as an opportunity to improve or upgrade certain parts.

• New build. You replace some or all of your infrastructure with different solutions in a new data center. This approach is more complex because services and dependencies must be migrated to new environments, but it also permits organizations to simultaneously improve operational processes, cut costs, and update existing tech stacks.

The following data center migration checklist will help guide your planning for either approach and ensure you’re asking the right questions to prepare for any potential problems.

1.  Site surveys

The first step is to determine your physical requirements – how much space, power, cooling, cable management, etc., you’ll need in the new data center. Then, conduct site surveys of the new environment to identify existing limitations and available resources. For example, you’ll want to make sure the HVAC system can provide adequate climate control – specific to the new locale – for your incoming hardware. You may need to verify that your power supply can support additional chillers or dehumidifiers, if necessary, to maintain optimal temperature ranges. In addition to physical infrastructure requirements, factors like security and physical accessibility are important considerations for your new location.

2. Infrastructure documentation

At a bare minimum, you need an accurate list of all the physical and virtual infrastructure you’re moving to the new data center. You should also collect any existing documentation on your application and system requirements for storage, compute, networking, and security to ensure you cover all these bases in the migration. If that documentation doesn’t exist, now’s the time to create it. Having as much documentation as possible will streamline many of the following steps in your data center move.

3. Dependencies and ancillary services

Aside from the infrastructure you’re moving, hundreds or thousands of other services will likely be affected by the change. It’s important to map out these dependencies and ancillary services to learn how the migration will affect them and what you can do to smooth the transition. For example, if an application or service relies on a legacy database, you may need to upgrade both the database and its hardware to ensure end-users have uninterrupted access. As an added benefit, creating this map also aids in implementing micro-segmentation for Zero Trust security.

4. Layout and topology

The next step is to plan the physical layout of the new data center infrastructure. Where will network, storage, and power devices sit in the rack and cabinets? How will you handle cable management? Will your planned layout provide enough airflow for cooling? This is also the time to plan the network topology – how traffic will flow to, from, and within the new data center infrastructure.

5. Management access

You must determine how your administrators will deploy and manage the new data center infrastructure. Will you enable remote access? If so, how will you ensure continuous availability during migration or when issues arise? Do you plan to automate your deployment with zero touch provisioning?

• Learn more about enabling 24/7 remote access and end-to-end automation with a Gen 3 out-of-band (OOB) serial console.
• Read the details about how Vapor IO deployed edge data centers in one hour while also providing 24/7 remote access.

6. Network planning

If you didn’t cover this in your infrastructure documentation, you’ll need specific documentation for your data center networking requirements – both WAN (wide area networking) and LAN (local area networking). This is a good time to determine whether you want to exactly replicate your existing network environment or make any network infrastructure upgrades. Then, create a detailed implementation plan covering everything from VLANs to IP address provisioning, DNS migrations, and ordering MPLS circuits.

7. Migration & build planning

Next, plan out each step of the move or build itself – the actions your team will perform immediately before, during, and after the migration. It’s important to include disaster recovery options in case critical services break, or unforeseen changes cause delays. Implementing checkpoints at key stages of the move will help ensure any issues are fixed before they impact subsequent migration steps.

8. Assembling a team

At this stage, you likely have a team responsible for planning the data center migration, but you also need to identify who’s responsible for every aspect of the move itself. It’s critical to do this as early as possible so you have time to set expectations, communicate the plan, and handle any required pre-migration training or support. Additionally, ensure this team includes dedicated support staff who can triage end-user requests if any issues arise during or after the migration.

9. Vendor support

Any experienced sysadmin will tell you that anything that could go wrong with a data center migration probably will, so you should plan for the worst but hope for the best. That means collecting a list of vendor contacts for each hardware and software component you’re migrating so it will be easier to contact support if something goes awry. For especially critical systems, you may even want to alert your vendor POCs prior to the move so they can be on hand (or near their phones) on the day of the move.

10. Lab simulation

This step may not be feasible for every organization, but ideally, you’ll use a lab environment to simulate key stages of the data center migration before you actually move. Running a virtualized simulation can help you identify potential hiccups with connection settings or compatibility issues. It can also highlight gaps in your planning – like forgetting to restore user access and security rules after building new firewalls – so you can address them before they affect production services.

11. Post-migration testing

Finally, you need to create a post-migration testing plan that’s ready to implement as soon as the move is complete. Testing will validate the integrity, performance, and reliability of infrastructure in the new environment, allowing teams to proactively resolve issues instead of waiting for monitoring notifications or end-user complaints.

Streamlining your data center migration

Using this data center migration checklist to create a comprehensive plan will help reduce setbacks on the day of the move. To further streamline the migration process and set yourself up for success in your new environment, consider upgrading to a vendor-neutral data center orchestration platform. Such a platform will provide a unified tool for administrators and engineers to monitor, deploy, and manage modern, multi-vendor, and legacy data center infrastructure. Reducing the number of individual solutions you need to access and manage during migration will decrease complexity and speed up the move, so you can start reaping the benefits of your new environment sooner.

Want to learn more about Data Center migration?

For a complete data center migration checklist, including in-depth guidance and best practices for moving day, click here to download our Complete Guide to Data Center Migrations or contact ZPE Systems today to learn more.
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Many organizations feel continuous financial pressure to cut costs and streamline operations due to economic factors like the ongoing threat of a recession and global supply chain interruptions. Network automation can help companies across all industries save money during lean financial times. A recent Cisco and ACG Research study found that network automation can reduce OPEX by 55% by streamlining workflows such as device provisioning and service ticket management. Though they aren’t mentioned in the study, additional savings are generated by using automation to avoid outages and accelerate recovery efforts.

This post discusses how to save money through automation and provides a network automation cost savings calculator for a more customized estimate of your potential ROI.

 

Table of contents

How network automation provides cost savings Reduces OPEX Prevents outages Accelerates recovery Network automation cost savings calculator

How network automation provides cost savings

Network automation reduces costs by streamlining operations, preventing outages, and aiding in backup and recovery workflows.

Network automation saves money by solving problems
Problem: High OPEX	Solution: Automation tackles repetitive tasks like new installs and ticketing operations, which helps you generate revenue sooner and reduce the time and resources spent on maintaining operations.
Problem: Too many outages	Solution: Automation allows teams to be proactive by leveraging critical data to identify potential problems before they cause outages, freeing them from the typical break/fix approach.
Problem: Slow recovery	Solution: Automation speeds up processes like backups, snapshotting, and device re-imaging, which makes networks more resilient by accelerating recovery from outages and ransomware.

Reduces OPEX

The focus of the Cisco/ACG study was the economic benefits of streamlining network operations through automation. For example, the OPEX (operational expenditure) involved in spinning up a new branch is too high because deployments require so much work, time, and staff. Using automation to provision and deploy new resources can significantly reduce the time it takes to spin up a new branch, which means the site could start generating revenue much sooner. Using automation to monitor device health and environmental conditions could extend the life expectancy of critical (and expensive) equipment while reducing the number of on-site staff needed to maintain that equipment.

Network automation reduces OPEX by increasing the efficiency of repetitive or tedious tasks like new installs, incident management, and device monitoring. Crucially, automation does so without reducing the quality of service for end users and often only improves the speed, reliability, and overall experience.

Prevents outages

Network downtime is an expense that cash-strapped businesses can’t afford to bear. According to a recent ITIC survey, a single hour of downtime costs most organizations (91%) over $300,000 in lost business, with 44% of enterprises reporting outage costs exceeding $1 million. However, preventing downtime is difficult when most network teams are caught in a reactive break/fix cycle because they lack the staffing, resources, and technology required to maintain visibility and identify issues before they occur.

Network automation solves this problem using advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze monitoring data and identify potential issues before they cause outages. For example, AIOps (artificial intelligence for IT operations) solutions provide real-time analysis of infrastructure, network, and security logs. AIOps is adept at recognizing patterns and detecting anomalies in data so that it can identify issues before they affect the performance or reliability of the network.

Accelerates recovery

While network automation helps to reduce downtime, it can’t eliminate outages altogether. When outages do occur, recovery is often a long, drawn-out process involving a lot of manual work, during which time revenue and customer faith may be lost. Network resilience is the ability to quickly recover from ransomware, equipment failures, and other causes of downtime with as little impact as possible on end users and business revenue. Automation speeds up recovery efforts in a few critical ways:

• Streamlined backups – Automation makes performing regular backups and snapshots easier, reducing the risk of gaps or inaccuracies.
• Reduced imaging delays – Automatic provisioning ensures that clean systems are spun up quickly so that business can resume as soon as possible.
• Faster failover – Automatic network failover and routing technologies can reroute traffic around downed nodes before a human admin has time to respond, providing a more seamless end-user experience.

Network automation is a direct source of cost savings because it reduces OPEX without negatively impacting the business or customer experience. Automation also indirectly saves money by helping organizations avoid outages through proactive monitoring and maintenance. In addition, network automation technologies make businesses more resilient by speeding up recovery efforts when breaches and failures do occur.

Network automation cost savings calculator

ZPE Systems provides network and infrastructure automation solutions for any use case, pain point, or technological need. ZPE’s vendor-neutral platform allows you to extend automation to every device on your network, including legacy and mixed-vendor solutions, so that you can achieve true end-to-end automation (a.k.a. hyperautomation). For a customized estimation of how much money you can save by automating your network operations with ZPE Systems, check out our network automation cost savings calculator.

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For help with the network automation cost savings calculator or to learn more about automating your network operations, contact ZPE Systems today.

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ZPE Systems’ Services Delivery Platform accelerates time-to-market with any app, anytime, anywhere

IT teams can deliver instant business value with the on-demand services delivery architecture

Fremont, CA, April 25, 2023 — ZPE Systems’ Services Delivery Platform is IT’s ‘easy’ button for delivering instant business value. Instead of deploying dedicated NGFW hardware and Intel® NUCs, ZPE’s Intel-based platform runs 3rd party apps at remote locations delivered via ZPE Cloud app marketplace. This speed and flexibility simplify global service delivery and fleet management for manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and other industries, where any app can be automatically deployed from the cloud.

Why is this important?

Private-cloud and on-prem services must run on dedicated systems, which causes infrastructure sprawl. This complexity pulls IT teams away from generating revenue, recovering from outages, and stopping ransomware attacks. Their job becomes managing low-level infrastructure and inefficient delivery pipelines. The Services Delivery Platform alleviates this by giving them the speed and flexibility to:

• Secure remote locations with cloud-deployed pen test agents & other services
• Segment edge networks regardless of interface type
• Eliminate supply chain risks with hardened devices
• Shrink attack surfaces with swift centralized patch management
• Collapse device stacks into 1RU or less using virtual services

Graphic: ZPE’s Services Delivery Platform is represented as blue blocks. Examples of 3rd-party hosted apps are represented in white blocks under Ecosystem Apps.

The Services Delivery Platform brings to life Gartner’s concept of platform engineering. This platform-as-a-service model allows admins to tailor environments with the right apps for SD-WAN, NGFW, pen testing, and other functions, without battling vendor lock-in or changes in security posture. They also gain a consistent management experience across private-cloud and on-prem solutions.

Teams typically avoid platform engineering because there are no best practices for creating the proper control plane management network on secure devices.

ZPE Systems worked with Big Tech to define these best practices, which enterprises can now apply to private-cloud colo and edge deployments using the Services Delivery Platform. This establishes the resilient control plane management network and platform engineering component, both on a single, multi-function device connected to the cloud.

Enterprises accelerate revenue generation, reduce outage costs, and stop ransomware attacks using this architecture.

How does it work?

Nodegrid edge routers bring dedicated LAN and WAN links through multiple interface types (serial, ethernet, USB, IPMI). These create a secure control plane — a Double-RingTM management architecture — while eliminating the hardware attack surface with security features including TPM 2.0, encrypted disk, geofencing, and fully-signed Nodegrid OS.

This network is the foundation of the Services Delivery Platform. Along with hosting the management network, Nodegrid devices directly run VMs, containers, and any choice of app using the onboard multi-core Intel CPU and Linux-based Nodegrid OS. This OS also extends automation across environments and devices to give teams end-to-end activation and chaining of SASE, NGFWs, SD-WAN, and any cloud or on-prem solution.

“I’ve been in ops for a long time. Most of your day is spent just figuring out how to get your environments to work right,” says James Cabe, Director, Technical Alliances at ZPE Systems. “The Services Delivery Platform is a game-changer. The whole thing sits right on the Nodegrid box and you can switch or swap out services whenever you need to. Just choose what you want to deploy and go. It’s all done via separate control plane with no attack surface and no exposure to the Internet.”

Where can I find more information?

Go to zpesystems.com/services-delivery-platform to learn more about the Services Delivery Platform.

If you’re attending RSA Conference April 24-27, visit ZPE Systems at booth 4125 between north and south halls and ask for a demo.  Use this code for free RSA expo pass: 52EZPESYSXP

Zero touch deployment is meant to make admins’ lives easier by automatically provisioning new devices. However, many teams find the reality of zero touch deployment much more frustrating than manual device configurations. For example, zero touch deployment isn’t always compatible with legacy systems, can be difficult to scale, and is often error-prone and difficult to remotely troubleshoot. This post provides a “cheat sheet” of solutions to the most common zero touch deployment challenges to help organizations streamline their automatic device provisioning.

Zero touch deployment cheat sheet

Zero touch deployment – also known as zero touch provisioning (ZTP) – uses software scripts or definition files to automatically configure new devices. The goal is for a team to be able to ship a new-in-box device to a remote branch where a non-technical user can plug in the device’s power and network cables, at which point the device automatically downloads its configuration from a centralized repository via the branch DHCP server.

In practice, however, there are a variety of common issues that force admins to intervene in the “zero touch” deployment. This guide discusses these challenges and advises how to overcome them to achieve truly zero touch deployments.

Zero touch deployment challenge:	The solution:
Legacy systems don’t have native support for zero touch	Extending zero touch to legacy systems using a vendor-neutral platform
Deployment errors result in costly truck-rolls	Recovering from errors remotely with Gen 3 out-of-band (OOB) management
Securing remote deployments causes firewall bottlenecks	Moving security to the edge with Zero trust gateways and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
Automating deployments at scale increases management complexity	Maintaining control through centralized, vendor-neutral orchestration with version control

Extend zero touch to legacy systems with a vendor-neutral platform

Challenge

Solution

While many new systems and networking solutions support zero touch deployment, sometimes there’s still a need to repurpose or reconfigure legacy systems that don’t come with native ZTP support. Pre-staging these devices before shipping them to the branch is a security risk because the system could be intercepted in transit; plus, they’re likely already deployed at remote sites and need to be reconfigured in place. Without a way to extend zero touch deployment capabilities to those legacy systems, companies often have to pay for admins to travel to remote branches, negating any cost savings they were hoping to gain from reusing older devices.

One way to extend zero touch to legacy systems is with a vendor-neutral management platform. For example, a vendor-neutral serial console switch with auto-sensing ports can connect to modern and legacy infrastructure solutions in a heterogeneous branch deployment so they can all be managed from a single place. From that unified management platform, admins can write and deploy configuration scripts to connected devices, including legacy systems that don’t support zero touch. Technically, this isn’t zero touch deployment because the system doesn’t automatically download and run its configuration file, but it’s still a way to turn an on-site, manual process into one that’s remotely activated and mostly automated.

Recover from deployment errors with Gen 3 OOB management

Challenge

Solution

A new branch deployment almost never goes completely according to plan, and this is especially true when teams are using zero touch for the first time, or aren’t completely comfortable with software-defined infrastructure and networking. In the best-case scenario, when there’s a configuration error, the zero touch deployment aborts, and an admin is able to correct the problem and restart the process. However, sometimes the deployment hiccup causes the device to hang, freeze, or get stuck in a reboot cycle. Or, even worse, an unnoticed error in the configuration could allow the deployment to finish successfully but then go on to affect other production dependencies and bring the entire branch network down. Either way, organizations must again deal with the expenses involved in sending a tech out to troubleshoot and fix the problem.

The best way to ensure continuous access to remote infrastructure is with out-of-band (OOB) management. An OOB solution, such as a serial console or all-in-one branch gateway, connects to the management ports on infrastructure devices so admins can remotely monitor and control every device from a single place without IP addresses. This creates a separate (out-of-band) network that’s dedicated to management and troubleshooting, making it possible for teams to remotely recover devices that have failed the zero touch deployment process or brought down production LAN dependencies. Plus, the OOB gateway uses independent, redundant network interfaces to ensure admins still have remote access even if the production WAN or ISP link goes down. To ensure full OOB management coverage of a heterogenous, mixed-vendor environment, the out-of-band solution should be completely vendor-neutral. An open OOB device also supports integrations with third-party solutions for automation, orchestration, and security. This kind of out-of-band platform is known as Gen 3 OOB. Gen 3 OOB management ensures that teams can remotely recover from zero touch deployment errors no matter what device is affected or how the production network is impacted.

Secure remote deployments with zero trust gateways and SASE

Challenge

Solution

Organizations need to secure all devices at all remote sites using consistent policies and security controls. However, for smaller branches and IoT sites, it usually isn’t cost-effective to deploy a security appliance in each location. Plus, adding more firewalls also adds more management complexity. That means traffic is usually backhauled through the main data center firewall, creating bottlenecks and causing network latency for the entire enterprise.

Using zero trust gateways and cloud-based security services, companies can move security to the branch without the cost and complexity of additional firewalls. An all-in-one, zero trust gateway solution combines SD-WAN, gateway routing, and OOB management in a single device. It also supports zero trust authentication technologies like SAML 2.0 and 2FA. A zero trust gateway also needs to support network micro-segmentation, which will allow the use of highly specific security policies and targeted security controls. Plus, by enabling software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), a zero trust gateway facilitates the use of SASE. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a cloud-based service that combines several enterprise security solutions into a single platform. Zero trust gateways use SD-WAN’s intelligent routing capabilities to detect branch traffic that’s destined for the cloud or web. This traffic is directed through the SASE stack for firewall inspection and security policy application, allowing it to bypass the main security appliance entirely. SASE helps reduce the load on the enterprise firewall, reducing bottlenecks and improving performance without sacrificing security.

Scale zero touch deployments with centralized orchestration

Challenge

Solution

Zero touch deployments occur (at least in theory) without any admin intervention, but they still need to be monitored for failures. Keeping track of a handful of automatic deployments may seem easy enough, but as the number and frequency increases, it becomes more challenging. This is especially true when companies kick off large-scale expansions, deploying dozens of devices at once, all of which could be plugged in at any time to begin the automated provisioning process. Plus, different devices need different configuration files, and admins need a way to work together without overwriting each other’s code or duplicating each other’s efforts.

A vendor-neutral orchestration platform provides a central hub for network and infrastructure automation across the entire enterprise. This platform uses the serial consoles and OOB gateways in each remote location to gain control over all the connected devices, so network teams can monitor and deploy all their zero touch configurations from one place. An orchestration platform is the single source of truth for all automation, so it needs to support version control. This ensures that admins can see who created or changed a configuration file and revert to a previous version when there’s a mistake.

Simplifying zero touch deployment with Nodegrid

Zero touch deployment can be a hassle, but using vendor-neutral management systems, Gen 3 OOB management, zero trust gateways, and centralized orchestration can help organizations overcome the most common hurdles. For example, a vendor-neutral Nodegrid branch gateway deployed at each remote site helps you extend automation to legacy systems, provides fast and reliable out-of-band access to recover from issues, enables zero trust security & SASE, and gives you unified orchestration through the Nodegrid Manager (on premises) and ZPE Cloud software.

Ready to learn more about zero touch deployment?

Nodegrid has a solution for every zero touch deployment challenge. Schedule a demo to see how Nodegrid’s vendor-neutral platform can simplify zero touch deployment for your enterprise.

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Outdated network infrastructure poses a significant risk to the security and continuity of business operations. According to NTT’s “2020 Global Network Insights Report,” obsolete devices contain nearly twice as many security vulnerabilities as currently supported solutions. Outdated network hardware is also more likely to fail, and the ability to recover from a failure is severely hampered by a lack of vendor support. However, network upgrades can be highly disruptive, so many organizations delay network upgrades to avoid business interruption. They don’t realize that their outdated devices are like ticking time bombs that could bring down their network at any moment. In this post, we’ll provide advice that helps answer the question: How do I upgrade network infrastructure without disrupting business operations?

Why and when to upgrade network infrastructure

Obsolete network infrastructure no longer receives updates and security patches from the vendor. That means any vulnerabilities that exist on the device will remain open, giving cybercriminals time to find and exploit them. In addition, older network solutions often lack the advanced security features like SSO and MFA, which are required for Zero Trust.

Even supported legacy devices suffer from limitations that can prevent a business from achieving its technological goals. For instance, legacy devices may not support automation, making it difficult to achieve NetDevOps transformation. Plus, as enterprise networks grow more distributed, there’s a need for solutions that support SD-WAN and SD-Branch technology.

Sometimes the solutions themselves aren’t terribly outdated, it’s just that business requirements have changed in such a way that the existing infrastructure can’t support. For example, an organization may migrate some applications and systems to the cloud, so they need networking solutions that support hybrid environments. In addition, the mix of old and new devices and cloud and on-premises resources increases management complexity and prevents teams from effectively leveraging network orchestration.

Obsolete devices, outdated security, limited automation support, and changing business requirements are all important reasons to upgrade network infrastructure. However, these upgrades must be approached with a thoughtful strategy to reduce the impact on the performance and availability of business resources.

How to upgrade network infrastructure with minimal business interruption

Vendor agnostic platforms are the key to smooth network infrastructure upgrades. Vendor agnostic (a.k.a. vendor neutral) network management platforms support integrations with all or most viable and established network solutions, including legacy devices.

Vendor-neutral management devices, such as the Nodegrid Serial Console, support both legacy and modern Cisco pinouts. That means Nodegrid provides a single, unified platform from which to manage all the outdated devices you already have as well as any new solutions you add to your infrastructure. This reduces management complexity for network administrators, giving them more time to focus on optimizing performance and planning future network upgrades.

Additionally, a vendor-neutral network orchestration platform can use that management device to extend modern automation and orchestration to legacy hardware. A truly vendor-agnostic platform, such as Nodegrid Manager (for on-premises and private cloud deployments) or ZPE Cloud (for public cloud and hybrid deployments) can run third-party automation playbooks and custom Python scripts. This gives network administrators the unprecedented ability to implement a fully-automated NetOps environment even while still rolling out infrastructure upgrades.

The final piece of the puzzle is vendor-neutral Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP). ZTP gives you the ability to deploy new devices efficiently and securely in remote data centers, branch offices, and edge compute sites. ZTP devices are provisioned automatically over the network, reducing the need for onsite deployments or pre-staging. A vendor-neutral ZTP solution like Nodegrid can extend ZTP to other vendors’ devices so you can quickly deploy upgraded infrastructure.

Nodegrid delivers vendor-neutral management, orchestration, and ZTP so you can upgrade network infrastructure with minimal business interruption.

Need Help Upgrading Your Network Infrastructure?

Contact ZPE Systems to learn how to upgrade your network infrastructure with Nodegrid.

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With inflation and supply chain issues causing hardware prices to surge, and a winter recession looming on the horizon, every organization is looking for ways to cut technology costs. Though colocation hosting is often much less expensive than building and maintaining an on-premises data center, factors like physical space usage, power and bandwidth consumption, and remote support can cause your monthly colo bill to spiral out of control. This blog examines some of the most common reasons for colocation data center pricing increases and offers advice on how to keep these costs in check.

Colocation data center pricing considerations

First, here are four common factors that could cause your colocation data center pricing to increase.

1. Physical space

One of the major elements determining colocation pricing is the amount of physical space being rented. Some facilities charge by the rack unit and others by square footage (i.e., how much floor space is taken up by your racks). Costs for colocation space are typically calculated based on your portion of the facility’s operating expenses, which include things like physical security, building maintenance, and energy for cooling.

2. Power consumption

Power usage also heavily affects colocation data center pricing. While some facilities offer flat-rate power pricing, it’s more common to see pricing based on kilowatt usage. The price of data center power usage depends on many factors, such as electricity costs in the region, how energy-efficient the facility is, and how much energy it takes to cool your equipment.

3. Bandwidth consumption

Bandwidth is another usage-based expense that affects data center pricing. Organizations usually purchase bandwidth from the ISP, not directly from the facility, although some data centers do offer colo packages that also include internet access and bandwidth. That means that bandwidth pricing varies significantly from organization to organization.

4. Remote hands

Though colocation data centers handle many aspects of building and facility maintenance, customers are typically responsible for deploying and maintaining their own equipment. Most organizations do so via remote DCIM (data center infrastructure management) solutions, so they do not need to maintain a physical presence in the colocation facility. However, sometimes hardware failures or other issues make remote troubleshooting impossible, so they need to use on-site managed services, sometimes referred to as “remote hands.” Some colocation facilities include an allotted time for remote hands services in their pricing, but more often this is an added fee that’s paid for as needed.

There are many other factors contributing to the cost of colocation data center hosting—such as the location of the facility, the cost of your hardware, and the uptime promised by the provider. However, these four factors are relatively easy for you to change and control without needing to completely overhaul your infrastructure or move to a different facility.

Four ways to keep colocation data center pricing in check

Now, let’s discuss how to decrease your physical footprint, lower your power and bandwidth consumption, and minimize your reliance on managed support services.

Consolidated devices

Replacing bulky, outdated, single-purpose hardware with consolidated, high-density devices is a great way to reduce your colocation data center footprint without sacrificing functionality or performance. For example, the Nodegrid Serial Console Plus (NSCP) provides out-of-band management, routing, and switching for up to 96 devices in a single, 1U rackmount appliance. The NSCP helps reduce the number of serial consoles, KVM switches, or jump boxes in your colocation data center, allowing you to save money or use the extra space for new equipment.

Another option is the Nodegrid Net Services Router (NSR), a modular appliance that can replace up to six other devices in your rack. The NSR provides routing and switching with network failover and out-of-band management, with expansion modules for Docker & Kubernetes container hosting, Guest OS & VNF hosting, and more. The NSR is an ideal solution for small colocation deployments because it can reduce the number of computing and storage devices in your rack. For example, the NSR can reduce your footprint from 4U to 1U, allowing you to cut costs and reduce the complexity of your remote infrastructure.

Remote DCIM power management

As mentioned above, most organizations use remote DCIM solutions to manage colocation infrastructure. Power management is an important aspect of remote DCIM for keeping colocation data center costs in check. Remote DCIM power management allows you to visualize power consumption, both at the individual device level and at a big-picture level. If you can see where you’re using power inefficiently, you can correct the problem (for instance, by replacing a faulty UPS or simply redistributing the load) before costs spiral out of control.

For power cost savings, you should use remote management DCIM that supports automation, such as Nodegrid Manager. This vendor-neutral platform allows seamless integrations with third-party or self-developed automation tools and scripts. That means you can use Nodegrid to automatically monitor for and correct inefficient power load distribution to ensure consistent usage and prevent overage fees. Plus, Nodegrid supports end-to-end automation for all your network and infrastructure management workflows, helping to reduce the overall manual workload for your administrators.

Software-defined networking

Traditionally, administrators set and monitor bandwidth usage by accessing the CLI (command line interface) or GUI (graphical user interface) on individual, hardware-based network devices like switches and routers. For complex and distributed network architectures using many switches in many locations (including remote colocation facilities), manual bandwidth control is so time-consuming and inefficient that organizations end up with a “set it and forget it” approach. That means bandwidth usage is free to fluctuate as much as it wants within certain thresholds, and organizations just eat the overage costs.

Software-defined networking, or SDN, decouples network routing and management workflows from the underlying hardware. This allows organizations to centrally control and automate their entire network architecture, which includes bandwidth management for remote colocation infrastructure. Centralized SDN management gives administrators a single interface from which to control all the networking devices and workflows, so they don’t need to jump from device to device to monitor and manage bandwidth usage.

The application of SDN technology to WAN management is known as SD-WAN, and when that extends into the remote LAN it’s known as SD-Branch. SDN, SD-WAN, and SD-Branch technology use intelligent routing to ensure efficient bandwidth usage and network load balancing. That means you can keep your colocation data center bandwidth costs in check while significantly reducing the amount of work involved for your network administrators.

Out-of-band management

Out-of-band management, or OOBM, separates your management network from your production network, allowing you to remotely manage, troubleshoot, and orchestrate your colocation data center infrastructure on a dedicated connection. This has numerous benefits, including:

• Resource-intensive network orchestration workflows won’t affect the bandwidth or performance of the production network.
• Administrators can still access remote infrastructure even if the primary ISP link goes down.
• Administrators gain the ability to remotely troubleshoot even when a hardware failure or configuration mistake causes a production network outage.

OOBM can help reduce your reliance on colocation data center managed services because your administrators have an alternative path to critical infrastructure even during an outage. A Gen 3 OOB solution like Nodegrid can further reduce your colocation data center pricing in several ways:

1. OOB management is built into all Nodegrid devices, so you don’t need to purchase any additional hardware (or rent additional rack space) to enable out-of-band management.
2. Nodegrid OOB integrates with the vendor-agnostic Nodegrid Manager platform, which means you’ll have reliable 24/7 remote access to monitor and orchestrate power load distribution to ensure cost-efficiency.
3. Nodegrid OOB devices can directly host your software-defined networking, SD-WAN, and SD-Branch solutions so you don’t need to purchase additional hardware. You can also integrate SDN, SD-WAN, and SD-Branch software with the Nodegrid Manager platform for unified control.

The Nodegrid solution from ZPE Systems can help you keep colocation data center pricing in check through consolidated devices, remote DCIM orchestration, software-defined networking support, and Gen 3 out-of-band management.

Want to find out more about reducing colocation data center pricing with Nodegrid?

Contact ZPE Systems today!