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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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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Enterprise networks are huge and complex, with infrastructure hosted in many different facilities across a wide geographic area. Though most network infrastructure isn’t housed in the same location as the core business, it’s still vital to the business’s continual operation. Remote site monitoring gives network admins a virtual presence in remote sites like data centers, manufacturing facilities, electrical substations, water treatment plants, and oil pipelines.

Most organizations already have some form of remote infrastructure monitoring, but traditional solutions come with major limitations that make it difficult for networking teams to maintain 24/7 uptime. In this blog, we’ll discuss the importance of remote site monitoring, analyze the limitations of traditional solutions, and explain how the ideal remote monitoring platform improves network resilience.

The importance of remote site monitoring

Many organizations have reduced their IT staff due to the economic recession, leaving networking and infrastructure teams stretched too thin. When there aren’t enough eyes on remote infrastructure, enterprise networks are more vulnerable to breaches, hardware failures, and other major causes of network outages. With the average cost of downtime rising above $100k in 2022, and cyberattacks causing major disruptions to oil pipelines in recent years, this is a problem that’s too expensive to ignore.

The limitations of traditional remote site monitoring solutions

Many organizations rely on remote site monitoring solutions that are fragmented and vendor-specific. Admins have to log in to one platform to view monitoring data for a remote site’s wireless access points, for example, and a different platform to monitor IoT devices in the warehouse. These complex and repetitive tasks can lead to fatigue and negligence, especially for overworked and understaffed networking teams. At an even higher level, this makes it difficult to see the relationships between different systems and solutions or get a complete picture of the overall health of the enterprise network.

Another limitation of traditional solutions is that they’re often affected by the same issues as the infrastructure they’re monitoring. For example, if the LAN goes down in a remote office and the on-premises security appliance can’t get an IP address, then admins won’t be able to remotely access that appliance to view the monitoring logs. This can significantly delay or even prevent remote diagnostic and recovery efforts, leading to expensive truck rolls.

The problem gets even worse if the remote site is inaccessible due to natural disasters, conflicts, or other external factors. Network teams need a way to get eyes on the problem, diagnose the root cause, and deploy fixes without physically seeing or touching the affected infrastructure.

The ideal remote site monitoring solution

To avoid these limitations and ensure network resilience, the ideal remote site monitoring solution should consider the following factors:

Vendor-neutral and centralized

A vendor-neutral monitoring platform can collect and analyze logs from every component of your infrastructure. This gives admins complete coverage, so nothing falls between the cracks.

Another benefit of vendor neutrality is that it enables unified, centralized monitoring. That means networking teams only need to log in to a single portal to observe the entire distributed enterprise architecture.

Out-of-band

Deploying remote site monitoring on an out-of-band (OOB) network means that it won’t rely on production LAN, WAN, or ISP infrastructure. This ensures that admins always have access to vital monitoring data even during an outage, making it easier to remotely diagnose the issue.

Plus, using an OOB management solution for monitoring improves network resilience even further by giving admins a direct connection to remote infrastructure that doesn’t require an IP address. That means they can still access and fix remote devices during an outage.

Automated

Automated monitoring solutions help to ensure that admins are quickly notified of potential issues and that possible remediation steps are taken even if nobody is available right away. Some solutions can, for example, automatically refresh DHCP on a device that lost its IP address or re-direct traffic to a secondary resource when the primary server stops responding.

Automated monitoring solutions help to reduce the workload on understaffed networking teams without sacrificing resilience.

Building network resilience with ZPE Systems

A centralized, vendor-neutral remote site monitoring solution with out-of-band management and automation support helps to ensure network resilience even when IT staff is reduced or remote sites become inaccessible. The Network Automation Blueprint from ZPE Systems provides a reference architecture for achieving network resilience with OOB, automation, monitoring, and more.

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To learn more about remote site monitoring and network resilience, contact ZPE Systems today.

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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?

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Secure Access Service Edge, or SASE, is a cloud-based service that combines software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) with critical network security technologies like CASB, ZTNA, SWG, and FWaaS. SASE technology connects remote, branch office, and edge computing resources directly to web and cloud services, reducing the load on the main firewall while extending enterprise security policies and controls to protect this traffic. In this article, we’ll dive into the specific technology that SASE uses to defend your network edge.

How SASE technology defends your network edge

SASE protects network edge traffic by rolling up an entire network security technology stack into a single, cloud-delivered service. The key security components of a SASE solution include CASB, ZTNA, SWG, and FWaaS.

CASB

A cloud access security broker, or CASB, is a software service that sits between your main enterprise network and your cloud-based infrastructure. A CASB allows you to extend your enterprise security policies to the traffic flowing between your WAN and the cloud so you can ensure consistent protection. A CASB is actually a collection of multiple security technologies, such as:

• User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) – Monitors the behavior of users and devices on the network to detect suspicious activity and enforce security policies.
• Cloud application discovery – Identifies all cloud applications and services in use by the organization and analyzes relative risk levels.
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP) – Applies data governance policies to prevent the exfiltration of sensitive and proprietary information.
• Adaptive access control – Uses session context (e.g., originating location, time, behavior) to determine whether to grant access.
• Malware detection – Scans traffic between the enterprise and the cloud to detect and block viruses and other malware.

ZTNA

Zero trust network access, or ZTNA, connects remote users and devices to enterprise network resources, similar to a VPN. Unlike a VPN, however, ZTNA creates a direct connection to the specific resources requested by the user, rather than granting full access to the network. This prevents remote users from seeing or interacting with any network resources outside of the specific service they’ve explicitly authenticated to.

ZTNA follows the zero trust motto of “never trust, always verify.” It uses technologies like context and role-based identity verification and two-factor authentication (2FA) to prevent unauthorized access. And, since users need to re-authenticate to every enterprise resource, ZTNA is able to prevent malicious actors from discovering valuable systems and data or moving laterally on the enterprise network.

SWG

A secure web gateway, or SWG, is a service that sits between your enterprise network and the public internet. All web-destined traffic passes through the SWG, where enterprise web filtering and application control policies are applied. Traditionally, an SWG is a hardware device that sits in the data center, which means all remote, branch, and edge traffic needs to be backhauled through a single appliance. As part of a SASE solution, an SWG sits in the cloud instead, so remote traffic doesn’t need to pass through the data center. This improves overall network performance, reduces or eliminates bottlenecks, and ensures consistent application of acceptable use policies and application security controls.

FWaaS

Firewall-as-a-Service, or FWaaS, delivers next-generation firewall technology as a cloud-based service. That means remote and cloud-destined traffic can bypass the firewall in your data center, reducing bottlenecks and performance issues. At the same time, FWaaS provides the same level of security and protection as an NGFW, including features like URL filtering, intrusion detection and prevention, and deep packet inspection (DPI). FWaaS gives SASE solutions the ability to protect remote, edge, and cloud-destined traffic with the same policies and controls as the main enterprise network to ensure consistent security and optimal performance.

SASE technology uses CASB, ZTNA, SWG, and FWaaS to defend your network edge. However, you still need a way to direct remote, branch office, and edge traffic to your SASE security stack. That’s where SD-WAN technology comes in.

Accessing SASE technology with SD-WAN

While it’s possible to use standard WAN architectures to connect to SASE technology, the most reliable and efficient way to access SASE is with SD-WAN. SD-WAN uses software abstraction to create a virtual overlay management network on top of your WAN hardware. This virtual management network enables the use of automation and orchestration to manage the remote network traffic.

In a SASE deployment, SD-WAN uses intelligent routing to separate all remote traffic that’s destined for the cloud. Instead of backhauling this traffic through the enterprise firewall, SD-WAN routes it through the SASE technology stack, significantly reducing the load on your data center infrastructure. This improves network and application performance for your entire enterprise without sacrificing security.

SD-WAN solutions may sit on top of traditional WAN infrastructure, or they may replace that hardware entirely, using SD-WAN routers provided by the vendor. However, rather than investing in specialized vendor hardware, an even better approach is to use vendor-neutral network management devices that can host or integrate with every piece of your SASE and SD-WAN technology stack.

For example, the Nodegrid line of vendor-neutral serial consoles and network edge routers are the perfect on-ramp for your SASE solution. Nodegrid can directly host or integrate with third-party SD-WAN solutions like Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma SD-WAN, or you can use ZPE Cloud’s SD-WAN app. Nodegrid also supports seamless integrations with your choice of SASE provider, giving you a unified, centralized SD-WAN and SASE orchestration platform.

SASE learning center:

★   Understanding Key SASE Components & Benefits
★   SASE Implementation: A Step-by-Step Guide for Businesses
★   The SASE Model: Key Use Cases & Benefits

Want to find out more about accessing SASE technology with Nodegrid SD-WAN?

Contact ZPE Systems today!

The future of network management will focus heavily on automation. While many organizations already employ network automation in some form or another, full implementation still lags far behind other areas of IT such as development and infrastructure (server) management.

The current network automation landscape

Currently, network automation focuses on individual tasks and suffers from several limitations that prevent networking teams from using it effectively.

Automating individual network administration workflows

Typical network automation solutions are designed to solve specific challenges by automating individual tasks or workflows. For example, network automation tools, such as Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP), allow administrators to automatically deploy new device configurations over the network. Automatic device configurations both speed up the provisioning process and decrease the risk of human error.

ZTP automates one individual workflow to solve a specific problem, but it does not eliminate the need for human intervention. Someone still needs to create the configuration script, monitor for deployment errors, and, if necessary, manually troubleshoot failures and other issues. With any network administration workflow, the more a human gets involved in the process, the higher the chances of mistakes, which increases the risk of an outage. Currently, most network solutions don’t allow for enough automation to remove the human element entirely.

Lagging behind infrastructure and software automation

Thanks in part to the popularity of the DevOps methodology, automation has made great leaps forward in the realms of IT infrastructure management, software development, and software testing. For example, technologies like immutable infrastructure and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) make it possible to automate almost every aspect of deploying, managing, scaling, monitoring, and troubleshooting servers and development environments. However, on the networking side of operations, automation is still lagging behind.

There are a few reasons for this delay. First, network architectures still tend to rely on legacy, hardware-based solutions which may not support software-defined networking, immutable principles, or automation paradigms. Second, there’s a network automation skills gap, which means network engineers and administrators don’t have the training or experience needed to work with software-defined networking code and other automation technologies. And third, many network solutions are still closed ecosystems which makes it difficult or impossible to integrate third-party automation and orchestration tools.

The future of network automation will be focused on reducing human intervention, extending virtualization to legacy devices, bridging the network automation skills gap, and eliminating vendor lock-in.

Looking into the future of network automation

In the future, network automation solutions will need to address the above challenges to keep up with the speed, performance, and reliability required for modern business operations. Creating the future of network automation will involve network hyperautomation, legacy modernization, low-code network automation, and vendor agnostic solutions.

Network hyperautomation

Hyperautomation is the practice of automating all (or most) network management workflows to eliminate human intervention. That means every workflow and process needed to achieve a certain outcome is automated, including error correction and other troubleshooting if a particular step fails. Hyperautomation is only achievable with an orchestration platform, which essentially automates your automation. A network orchestration platform gives you a centralized, big-picture overview of your entire network architecture and every automated workflow. This allows you to monitor your hyperautomation processes and, if necessary, manually intervene to fix problems or update workflows. Hyperautomation significantly reduces manual work, which decreases the chances of human error.

Legacy modernization

Obviously, the easiest way to modernize your infrastructure is to simply replace all your legacy hardware with virtualized, cloud-based solutions, but this is unrealistic for most organizations. It’s much less expensive, time-consuming, and disruptive to slowly upgrade your infrastructure over time, but that means you need a way to integrate automated processes with your legacy hardware. A legacy modernization solution (such as ZPE’s Nodegrid Serial Console R-Series) acts as a bridge between your old network hardware and your modern network automation platform.

These solutions directly connect to both your legacy hardware and your upgraded infrastructure, which allows you to manage both from a unified control panel. They also integrate with modern network orchestration platforms, so you can extend automation technology like software-defined networking and hyperautomation playbooks to your legacy devices. This will make it possible to increase your network automation efforts to stay ahead of evolving business requirements and DevOps initiatives.

Low-code network automation

Network automation typically involves software abstraction, which means turning configurations and workflows into software code. Unfortunately, many network administrators and engineers lack programming experience (beyond CLI scripts), which prevents organizations from moving forward with network automation initiatives.

Low-code network automation seeks to bridge the skills gap by reducing the need for manual coding. Low code solutions hide most of the underlying programming behind GUIs (graphical user interfaces) which administrators use to create and manipulate software-defined networking code and automation playbooks. At the same time, engineers who do have programming experience can still access that underlying code to supplement the capabilities of the GUI for more advanced workflows.

Low-code solutions represent a way into the future of network automation for organizations that currently suffer from a lack of resources and expertise. This future is made possible thanks to low code network automation pioneers like Gluware and Anuta ATOM.

Vendor-agnostic solutions

The future of network automation is vendor agnostic (also known as vendor neutral). Current network solutions with closed ecosystems provide some built-in automation capabilities but make it difficult to integrate third-party automation scripts, low code tools, and orchestration platforms. A vendor-agnostic network solution includes open hardware, Linux-based operating systems, and an orchestration platform that supports integrations with your choice of third-party tools and software. Vendor-agnostic solutions make it possible to automate and orchestrate your entire network from one centralized control panel without any gaps in coverage.

Vendor-agnostic platforms also give you the freedom to adopt new network automation solutions without needing to purchase additional proprietary hardware to host them. For instance, AIOps is an emerging technology which uses advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to detect, prevent, and even predict new cybersecurity threats. This network automation technology is better at identifying novel malware and advanced persistent threats than traditional intrusion prevention systems because AI is able to extrapolate and predict new risks based on past data, even if it hasn’t seen that particular attack method before. A vendor-agnostic network platform can host or integrate with third-party AIOps solutions and other cutting edge technology so your organization can stay ahead of the curve.

Creating the future of network automation with ZPE Systems

In the future, network automation will evolve into hyperautomation, legacy devices will be brought under the same management umbrella as modern solutions, low code automation will bridge the skills gap, and vendor-agnostic platforms will make it possible to automate and orchestrate an entire network architecture from one centralized control panel. Luckily, you can create this future now with the help of ZPE Systems.

ZPE’s Nodegrid is a holistic network orchestration platform that helps you overcome network automation challenges with forward-thinking solutions. ZPE Cloud unifies the management of your entire network architecture behind one pane of glass, so you have a complete overview of and control over all your automation. Nodegrid’s vendor-agnostic hardware and software support seamless integrations with your choice of third-party automation workflows, legacy devices, and low-code tools. With Nodegrid, you can accelerate your network automation efforts now and stay ahead of future automation trends.

Network automation learning center:

→   Automating Your Network Operations Does Not Have to Be Difficult
→   Network Automation Best Practices to Implement in 2022
→   The Importance of NetDevOps Automation for Modern Networks

Want to know more about how Nodegrid can create the future of network automation?

Contact ZPE Systems today!

Contact ZPE Systems

The goal of NetDevOps is to take the collaborative, highly efficient processes that work so well in DevOps environments and apply them to networking workflows. The result is a fast, tightly integrated pipeline that delivers high-performance software and services. One of the keys to successful NetDevOps transformation is efficient management of data center and colocation infrastructure, using technologies like Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation, orchestration, and environmental monitoring. Let’s discuss how these data center management best practices contribute to NetDevOps.

Data center management best practices for NetDevOps transformation

These best practices will help you manage your data center infrastructure more efficiently, and they enable the application of DevOps principles and practices.

Infrastructure as Code/Network as Code

Often, one of the biggest bottlenecks in a software development pipeline is resource provisioning. Spinning up new VMs or nodes with manual configurations is time-consuming, leaving developers sitting around waiting for new environments before they can begin working. Infrastructure as Code, or IaC, aims to streamline the provisioning process by turning all infrastructure configurations into software code. IaC configurations are stored in a centralized repository and can be deployed over and over again, which saves time and ensures consistent configurations across systems—like development, test, and production environments.

Network as Code uses the same technology to manage network device configurations, such as routers and switches. Probably the most commonly used Network as Code technology is zero touch provisioning (ZTP), which deploys device configuration files over the network and executes them automatically. This enables efficient and remote deployments and updates of large-scale and hyperscale data center networks.

Turning data center configurations into software code makes it easier to integrate these workflows into a DevOps pipeline. It also ensures that networking and operations teams can provision new infrastructure at the velocity needed for fast-paced DevOps release cycles.  

Vendor-neutral automation

Automation is one of the foundational principles of NetDevOps because it speeds up processes while reducing the risk of human error. In the data center, automation tools and scripts are used for device configurations, network and power load balancing, system backups, vulnerability scanning, and more. The challenge is in ensuring all these automated components are compatible with your data center infrastructure, especially in multi-vendor, hybrid, and hyperscale environments.

That’s why vendor-neutrality is a major data center management best practice. Using vendor-neutral hardware will make it easier to deploy your choice of automation tools without modifying your scripts for each device. Even better, a vendor-neutral DCIM (data center infrastructure management) solution provides a unified interface from which to create and deploy automation tools while being able to dig its hooks into every component of your data center infrastructure.

Orchestration

Even in a vendor-neutral environment, keeping track of all your automation workflows can be challenging. Data center orchestration is sometimes defined as “automating your automation,” because it reduces the need for administrators to manually execute automated scripts and workflows. This makes automation even more efficient and reduces the workload for administrators, giving them more time to work on new technology initiatives that bring more business value.

Orchestration solutions can also react to situations in real-time, often much faster than human beings are capable of. For example, DCIM orchestration can monitor for usage spikes and perform automatic load balancing before a network administrator has even had time to read the alert message. Data center orchestration makes it easier to maintain optimal performance and respond to changing network conditions.

Environmental monitoring

The environmental conditions in a data center can have a huge impact on the performance and lifetime of your equipment. However, if your infrastructure is housed in remote colocation facilities, you may not have staff on-site to physically monitor things like temperature, humidity, and air quality. Data center environmental risks can cause system shutdowns, performance issues, and equipment failure, so you need a virtual presence to detect and mitigate these threats.

Environmental monitoring systems use sensors to collect data on temperature, humidity, power, airflow, and other important conditions in the rack. Administrators receive automatic alerts when conditions exceed optimal levels, so they can act quickly to remediate the problem. In addition, some systems include analytics and automated playbooks that make it even easier to optimize data center performance. Environmental monitoring ensures that administrators can keep data center infrastructure performing optimally to support NetDevOps pipelines and services.

How Nodegrid empowers data center management best practices

The Nodegrid DCIM orchestration solution delivers everything you need to follow data center management best practices and achieve NetDevOps transformation. Nodegrid’s vendor-neutral hardware and software can directly host your choice of Infrastructure as Code and Network as Code scripts and supports integrations with any third-party automation solution. ZPE Cloud provides centralized DCIM orchestration that unifies all your automation behind one pane of glass, with the ability to “say yes” to any vendor’s hardware. Plus, with Nodegrid’s cloud-managed environmental sensors, you can keep your infrastructure running at peak efficiency to power your NetDevOps transformation.

Learn more about data center management:

→   Top Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Trends of 2022
→   Data Center Modernization Strategy: How to Streamline Your Legacy Environment
→   Why Choose Nodegrid as Your Data Center Orchestration Tool

Want to find out more about how Nodegrid can help you with these data center management best practices?

Contact ZPE Systems today!

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