In this article, you’ll explore some major shortcomings of common OOB, how they interfere with business continuity, and what ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid does to restore your peace of mind.
Challenges Involving the Data Center and Business Continuity
You Need to Stay Close.
For network maintenance and management, traditional out-of-band solutions force you to keep staff close to the data center. Not only is this because you need to perform routine tasks, such as monitoring power or opening shells for customers, but also because you need a reliable response in the event that your network faces major disruption. Otherwise, issues can result in you spending sums of time and money to put staff on-site, sometimes requiring late night wakeup calls and expensive round-trip airfare.
You Need Many Devices.
Rack space and energy consumption are at a premium when it comes to data center computing. But by nature, data centers require many appliances just to handle all necessary functions. Introducing OOB management typically involves adding even more devices, which steals more rack space, power, and money from your business. And with traditional OOB solutions, you usually end up with a rigid and complicated system that makes your job that much more difficult. Resolving most issues involves a lengthy administration protocol due to your enormous stack.
You Need Lots of Time.
When scaling and managing via traditional OOB solutions, time isn’t on your side. To deploy a new location, you need to risk shipping preconfigured devices that contain sensitive configuration data. Once you pass this first hurdle, you then need to put staff on-site to manually set up these devices, which can take weeks. Finally, your ongoing management of data center infrastructure involves juggling many vendor-specific consoles and interfaces. If you need to make quick adjustments or pinpoint a failed device, you’re forced to invest more time navigating a complex stack.
Nodegrid Improves Management of the Data Center and Business Continuity
Restore Uptime From Anywhere.
Nodegrid lets you untether staff from the data center’s physical location, and instead gives them the freedom to perform tasks 100% remotely. When you need to adapt to sudden work-from-home guidelines, or restore connectivity after a 3am outage, Nodegrid lets you thanks to flexible out-of-band management. It uses broadband links and 4G/LTE cellular to provide you with more speed than traditional OOB solutions, and you can even take control fo power management. No more midnight flights just to reboot devices — cycle power remotely and rest easy.
Save space and power
Nodegrid’s consolidated devices address the data center’s need for less — less occupied rack space, and less consumed energy. The all-in-one appliances handle network, compute, storage, and power functions, and also feature a blazing fast x86 64-bit architecture that supports direct third-party application hosting. For out-of-band management, you can connect via many common serial or digital interfaces, and even get a reliable cellular connection for backup. Nodegrid’s efficient devices free up rack space, consume less energy, and help you resolve issues faster.
Scale and manage fast
Nodegrid makes scaling quick and easy. With patented, all-in-one devices, cloud-based flexibility via ZPE Cloud, and Nodegrid Manager software, you can deploy and manage in minutes. Instead of shipping sensitive devices to your new location, you just need to send a bare-metal Nodegrid appliance. Once it’s safely at your new data center, simply plug it in and watch it work. ZPE Cloud delivers zero touch provisioning that’s secure, automatic, and consistent. For ongoing management, use this cloud connectivity coupled with Nodegrid Manager to get a full, in-depth view of your network infrastructure. Alerts and notifications pinpoint potential issues, and you can employ automation tools via Ansible, Puppet, Chef, and others for self-healing and repair.
Nodegrid keeps you secure with two-factor authentication and single sign-on. For added convenience and improved management, Nodegrid also comes with a screen- and session-sharing feature that lets you collaborate with others in real time. You can team up with your experts to find and fix issues fast.
If you want to see Nodegrid’s next gen out-of-band solution for the data center, schedule a demo now.