Dual Power Reliability at Remote Sites

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Critical infrastructure in the data centre is typically equipped with two power supplies, using redundancy to ensure it continues to run in the event of a disruption to power distribution (due to power malfunction, equipment failure, user error or for maintenance).

Dual power is a standard requirement for infrastructure being installed in modern data centres, for example the Opengear IM4200 rack mount console servers have two internal AC or DC power supplies for highly available DCIM.

However we have also had various customers seeking power feed failover/backup for much smaller RIM site applications – and were able to provide solutions that met their need based on the industrial ACM5xxx products. These ACM5004-2-I, ACM5004-2-G-I, ACM5508-2-I and ACM5504-5-G-I RIM gateways all have dual power inputs that are diode isolated.

So they can be powered by either:

  1. Connecting +9V to 30 VDC to DC PWR and GND on the green screw terminal block, or
  2. Connecting 12VDC from an external AC/DC power supply (supplied with product) – or connecting an external 9 to 24 VAC source – to the PWR socket

Alternately the RIM gateway can have both power feeds connected to provide redundancy.  There’s no load sharing, as the individual power feed with the slightly higher output voltage would get to carry all the load. So the two power feeds don’t share the load.  However it is a “hot standby” solution so if one feed drops or fails ACM stays powered.

Specific customers who were seeking such RIM solutions included a telco looking looking for remote generator monitoring and fuel level at their edge POP sites, and required all on-site equipment to have redundant power feeds from the dual 48V DC on site battery supply. They connected the ACMs using two SDC48-12V external DC power adapters.

Another customer had a network of road-side monitoring locations – and used ACM cellular connections for local camera feed and status monitoring. While the sites all had mains power feeds, there was a desire for power backup. So the on-site ACMs were also connected to a small solar recharged battery.

Big Business Opportunity for MSPs

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Opengear recently exhibited our solutions to a crowd of thousands of IT professionals at MSPAlliance MSPWorld™: “The World’s Premier Managed Services and Cloud Computing Event.”  Our products and features were well received by both the MSP (Managed Services Providers) audience as well as the collocated ITEXPO conference attendees.  We witnessed in person, what the leading industry analysts firms have been reporting; that there is a huge opportunity out there for the next generation of MSP’s to expand their IT services businesses (e.g., Network, Servers, Applications, Storage) and to include OT (Operational Technology) services (e.g., Physical Environment, Power, Security, SCADA and M2M).  The fundamental requirements are the same for both OT and IT: real-time monitoring & management, access control, security, compliance enforcement, maintaining service levels, helpdesk ticketing, asset management, configuration management, green initiatives, and increasing their operational efficiency.

For MSPs to survive and prosper in the future, they will need to expand their service offerings and solutions to include the marriage of IT and OT areas, as well as, being able to penetrate the broader market opportunities where OT and IT service gaps intersect.  Recent Gartner Research studies report that addressing OT regulations will be the fastest-growing area of company spending by 2015.  Additionally, cross-industry OT security investments in 2015 will be twice as much as the investments made in 2011 due to regulatory requirements, new laws, as well as, the major security breaches that are inevitably going to happen.  Strategic growth opportunities from the emerging convergence of IT and OT will produce immediate service needs that MSPs can fulfill.OFFERING MANAGED SERVICES WITH OPENGEAR REMOTE MONITORING AND MANAGEMENT GATEWAYS

The opportunistic MSPs that have embraced the emerging convergence of IT and OT will have more complete solution offerings and a better differentiated service platform that aid them against their competition and will lead the way for them into newer and expanded opportunities.

One area ripe for MSPs is to deploy secure Remote Monitoring and Management gateways (hardware agents) to their customersʼ sites and environments. These RMM hardware agents will act as a “virtual technician” gathering vital data, generating alerts and reports for centralized management software and most importantly, performing automated actions in response to varying pre-set conditions.  By deploying the secure RMM solutions, MSPs will be able to provide higher levels of service and support to their customers, without the need to have a larger technical staff – that would need to travel to customer locations thereby reducing a lot of unneeded expenses (being “virtually there”) thereby increasing the MSP’s profit potential.  A podcast recorded during MSPWorld gives an overview of our new range of products focused on MSPs.

Telecom Reseller publisher Doug Green speaks with Bob Waldie, Founder of Opengear

Manage Dell Force10 Switches remotely using RS232 Console Port

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Dell Force 10 Serial Console Port Pinout

Even the most current next generation line of datacenter products still relies on the RS232 serial console port for remote access.  Dell’s new Force10 Z9000 line of enterprise class switches rely on USB or Serial RS232 console ports for troubleshooting and configuration. Having the USB option is a nice feature, if you are standing in front of the device with a laptop and 3 foot USB cord.  Not always is it feasible to be physically at the rack with a laptop, this is why the RS232 serial console port is still the most trusted way of gaining remote access to networking equipment and servers.

What if?
What if your automated bare metal provisioning failed?  How will you access the switch remotely? What if DHCP is not permitted?  How can you bare metal provision the Force10 switch without DHCP?  What is the backup plan?

The RS232 serial console port.Easily connect to your Dell Force 10 Zeta 9000 RS232 Serial Consol Port

We provide rock solid remote access In-Band or Out-Of-Band using a variety of connectivity options include secure wireless 3G access.  Our solutions have been designed to reduce MTTR to and allow enterprise customers and partners to meet SLA’s.

Cabling the Dell Force 10 Serial Console Port
We designed our RJ45 ports on our console servers to connect directly to the Dell Force10 RS232 console port using a straight through CAT5 cable.  We have enough experience with sys admins to know decoding serial pinouts and keeping track of dongles is not fun. So, we made it brilliantly easy to install and attach cabling.

Access to this system console port during outages is absolutely vital and is the most direct method of diagnosing or fixing problems that will lead to quick recovery. Opengear console servers provide secure access to the Dell Force10 serial console port both In-Band and Out-Of-Band using built in modem, wireless 3G, or redundant path. Our connectivity solutions are tailored for both the datacenter and the remote branch office.

Automated Remote Management and Support
Proactively heal your Dell network infrastructure using our Auto Response feature. Auto Response strengthens existing network & systems management with a unique ability to not only alert, but to take immediate local action to remedy network issues.
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Cellular Out-Of-Band Connections

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Wireless Access to your IT Infrastructure from anywhere in the world
Managing distributed IT infrastructure is hard enough. Why make it more complex and expensive by having to buy, deploy and manage multi-vendor proprietary management tools? An integrated out-of-band management solution should be a flexible solution that deploys quickly, begins working immediately, is simple to use and manage, and integrates seamlessly with existing IT management systems.

The Opengear ACM5000 and IM4200-X2 families support internal and external cellular modems. These modems will need to be provisioned by the cellular carrier for a data plan. Once provisioned, the Opengear devices can than be configured to operate in variety of modes for cellular connectivity.

Our cellular enabled devices can answer out-of-band connections that are initiated remotely, or they can be configured to initiate the out bound connection from the remote site. Within each available modes available there are some options to include security such as IP Sec VPN and secure SSH tunneling.

Data plans are available from major carriers for as low as $5.00 per month.
M2M plans from major carriers offer private APN and pooled data plans that allow for secure remote wireless connectivity for as little as $5.00 per site, per month.

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Opengear Sponsors InteropNET NOC 2011

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Our products were selected to monitor and manage the worlds largest temporary NOC at the InteropNET NOC.

InteropNET 2011 was a great success and enabled Opengear the opportunity to demonstrate our ARMS (Automated Remote Management and Support) feature to thousands of IT Directors and decision makers.  Our products provided vital connectivity to core network infrastructure including; Cisco, F5, ServerTech, Vyatta and more. We also had the chance to integrate with cutting edge routing technology from OpenFlow Labs.

“After working with Opengear at Interop Las Vegas, we knew their Advanced Console Servers and KVMs were ideal for Indiana University’s new SDN/OpenFlow Interoperability Lab,” said Ron Milford, manager of the lab and a network engineer in IU’s GlobalNOC. “Opengear’s generous equipment donation has been a significant help during the lab’s development and we look forward to a continued partnership.”

In addition to this donation to Indiana University’s SDN Interoperability Lab, Opengear donated equipment to the OpenFlow Consortium booth at Interop Las Vegas this year. In this video, Jed Daniels, InteropNet OpenFlow Lab team lead, talks about OpenFlow and Opengear’s donation:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZdjW55jjEc 

“Opengear is very excited about working with Indiana University and the first OpenFlow/SDN network of this scale,” said Todd Rychecky, vice president of sales, Opengear North and South America. “It is a unique opportunity to be an integral part of the first production deployment of OpenFlow technology that will allow academic institutions and researchers to experiment with new Internet architectures and collaborate globally.”

Partnering with Cormant
Interop helped form a new partnership with Cormant, to Increase Security, Visibility, Control and Reporting For Remote Physical Infrastructure.  ”CableSolve and Opengear engineers started working together leading up to this year’s InteropNet in Las Vegas,” said Bob Waldie, CEO of Opengear. “We found that our products complement each other well in providing visibility and control over all the physical assets in edge networks that have hundreds of connections. CableSolve communicates with Opengear console servers to manage all the gear commonly found in remote networks including Cisco, F5 and others.”

More information on CableSolve is available at http://www.cormant.com or you can read “The Solution to Physical Layer Management”.

A short video of Bob Waldie speaking at Interop on new challenges for network edge security is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-oMjprjehY&feature=channel_video_title.

 

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Replace old external modems

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Still using old external modems connected to your infrastructure?  
History shows dial up modems have proven to be a vital asset for accessing equipment in remote locations.  Would you believe there are thousands of companies using old external modems for dial up access?  Trust us, there are more unsecured external modems installed than security experts would like to know about.  A week will not pass before we speak to a new prospective customer looking to replace traditional external modems.

We understand, and we have solutions to bring you into compliance with modern security protocols and standards.
Dial up modems give you access to one device at a remote site, which is not ideal if you are responsible for maintaining the network infrastructure.  At Opengear, we designed the next generation of remote site monitoring and management products for enterprise customers and SMB’s.  We embedded these features in our line of console server products.  We have a flexible open source platform that scales from 1-48 ports in over 150 models.  Our goal is to enable connectivity for all the products at remote locations including:

  • Serial Console Ports
  • Battery Backup Systems (UPS)
  • Power Distribution (PDU)
  • Ethernet Management Ports
  • Environmental Monitoring
We have several connectivity options including Cellular, Redundant Path and secure V.92 modem access.  Opengear devices provide Encryption, AAA, Offline Logs, User access control, full firewall and advanced set of rules for automating remote tasks.
Replace Unsecured Modems at Remote Locations

Scrap the modem, call us for more information on a solution that meets your needs.

Solutions for AVAYA™ Installs

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Current Challenges

Avaya White Paper Customers and Partners of Avaya have been met with challenge to monitor and manage both Avaya equipment and converged devices installed remotely at premise locations.  Converged devices are typically core switches and routers to provide the fabric for network connectivity.  These same installations also rely on UPS systems for battery backup during power outages. If any of these components fail the disruption to produc­tivity can be costly.The current Avaya solution to this problem is the SAL Secure Access Link, a hardware and software solution to manage Avaya devices remotely.  This is a viable solution, however it does not scale to include connectivity to converged devices, UPS systems or out-of-band access. The Avaya solution requires customers to use corporate internet connections to communicate to the SAL Concentrator.Out-of-band access to distributed IT equipment has been crucial for enterprise customers to eliminate the need for onsite remote IT staff or service calls to handle outages.  Not only does this save travel costs, but out-of-band access also reduces recovery time in the event of unplanned outages to ensure remote site productivity.  For partners servicing enterprise customers, there is no substitute for secure out-of-band access. The Avaya SAL architecture will require customers to deploy and manage a server for remote access and expensive monthly subscription services to Avaya. This is both costly and limited in function.Avaya Partners require a reliable remote management solution that would:

  • Minimize on-site service calls in response to service disruptions
  • Provide a secure, flexible Out-Of-Band solution to ensure uptime
  • Cost effective and scalable alternative to Avaya SAL 

The Opengear Solution
Working closely with Opengear, Avaya partners discovered they could optimize their service offering by deploying a next generation communication management solution that went beyond the offerings of the Avaya SAL solution. The Opengear solution allowed partners to scale service offerings to converged devices, battery backup units and secure out-of-band connectivity.  Opengear devices alert technicians and pro-actively heal Ayava infrastructure using tools designed for auto-remediation. Having this type of solution in place helps both the IT staff and Avaya partner provide more proactive technical support, reduced on-site visits and enhance management of the communication infrastructure.

Automatic Remote Management and Support
Auto Response monitors and collects data from the network, servers, managed devices and sensors located at remote sites. If an alert condition is raised, the Opengear device will automatically trigger actions and resolve incidents based on pre-approved operations. Continue reading →

Fortify Cisco Installations

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“You put all the features in your console server I have been telling Cisco to do for years”- From a Cisco router product manager at Cisco Live 2011

Secure Out-Of-Band Access to Cisco Console Ports
Cisco devices, like most all core communications equipment are outfitted with a serial RS-232 port for system console access. Access to this system console port during outages is absolutely vital and is the most direct method of diagnosing or fixing problems that will lead to quick recovery. Opengear console servers provide secure remote access to the Cisco serial console port both in band and out of band using built in modem, wireless 3G, or redundant path. Our connectivity solutions are tailored for both the datacenter and the remote branch office.

Automated Remote Management and Support
Proactively heal your Cisco network infrastructure using our Auto Reponse feature. Auto Response strengthens existing network & systems management with a unique ability to not only alert, but to take immediate local action to remedy network issues.
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Simple Cabling
Our IM/IMG/ACM line of advanced console servers are equipped with available Cisco friendly pinouts for easy, quick installation. Our IM/IMG products can be connected to Cisco equipment via Rolled Cable (-01) or Straight RJ 45 cable (-02). Our ACM5000 products can be connected to Cisco equipment via Straight RJ 45 cable.
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USB Flash for tftp server to store Cisco configuration files
Ever made config changes and turned your Cisco device into a brick?
We have, so we developed a solution that allows you to store local copies of configs on our USB flash for disaster recovery. This allows you to make backups of existing Cisco configurations before making changes, that way if you break it you can simply roll back the config. If your IOS has crashed and TFTP is not available you can use Xmodem to load IOS to local Cisco flash over the serial console port using Opengear console servers.
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Offline LogsStore offline logs on our USB flash to provide an audit trail, we log both the serial ports and the available networks to provide syslog, keylogging and a .pcap file for wireshark.
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Pattern Match Alerting
Opengear console servers can help you ensure uptime by proactively scanning the serial stream on the Cisco system console port for specific errors or phrases. We monitor the traffic on the serial port and will watch for user defined patterns or phrases and send alerts via SMS text or email based on pattern match.

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Hotkey Power on RPS/PDU
Imagine yourself having out of band access to a dead communications device that is entirely locked up in a frozen condition, simply hotkey via SSH or telnet to launch our power menu to check power status, power cycle, turn off or on. We have support for thousands of PDU/RPS units, both serial and SNMP connected units.
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Cisco Live 2011

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Cisco Live 2011 proved to be a great opportunity to network with Cisco users and showcase our product line.

This year, the industry’s premier education and training event for IT, networking, and communications professionals made its home in Las Vegas the week of July 10 – July 14, 2011. Thousands of people from around the world were on hand to gain new knowledge, sharpen their skills, and connect with colleagues. The Opengear booth had a steady stream of new and existing customers expressing compliments on our product design. A few memorable quotes – “This thing saved my bacon a few times”, “This box is going to save me a ton of headaches”, “This is going in my budget for next quarter”.