Cisco Live 2025 – ZPE Systems Presents Gen 3 Out of Band Management
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Yes, You Can Have A Complete Out-of-Band Management Solution In One Device!
Out-of-Band (OOB) management used to be a last resort, a ‘break glass’ tool for gaining access to failed IT. But many organizations are now realizing that out-of-band is a strategic weapon that can do much more than get them out of a jam. It can help patch systems within 48 hours, test config changes and firmware updates, and monitor infrastructure health to prevent failures and stay proactive.
But there’s one big problem that stops teams from putting together an out-of-band infrastructure: there are too many devices to piece together and manage.
Traditionally, teams have built OOB environments using multiple devices from different vendors:
- Routers provided secure connectivity and routing logic.
- WAN routers served as modular access points.
- Cellular devices offered LTE/5G backup and remote cellular access when wired networks failed.
- Serial console servers were added to gain terminal-level access to switches, firewalls, and other appliances.
- Firewalls or VPN concentrators (for security-conscious teams) were deployed to secure management plane access through encrypted tunnels.
And this handful of infrastructure provides only basic remote access for troubleshooting or recovery. For teams who want to become proactive, they need additional devices like automation servers, Ethernet switches, computing, and storage. This stitched-together model is unsustainable in modern IT environments because it adds complexity that teams can’t manage.
The Complexity of Multi-Device OOB Environments
For teams managing a few sites, juggling devices may be feasible. But when there are dozens, hundreds, or thousands of locations, the cracks begin to show:
1. Operational Complexity
Every device has its own OS, firmware, and configuration syntax. Pushing a global policy change like updating SSH access rules or hardening TLS settings requires custom playbooks for each platform. Over time, this increases the risk of misconfigurations and creates blind spots in security audits.
2. Troubleshooting Bottlenecks
When a site goes dark, support teams need rapid access to console ports, environmental telemetry, and WAN connectivity diagnostics. But a fragmented toolset makes root-cause analysis a game of guesswork – Did the router fail? Does the modem have signal? Is the serial port offline?
3. Inefficient Use of Space and Power
Remote cabinets and edge environments have very limited (if any) rack space. You might have 1RU or less of space, but three devices that need to be installed. Even if you get crafty and manage to squeeze them in, having multiple devices increases power draw, thermal output, and points of failure. This isn’t scalable, especially in cramped environments like cell towers, retail stores, or substations.
4. Increased Procurement and Support Costs
Assembling out-of-band networks from multiple vendor devices simply makes more work for procurement teams, who face long lead times and inconsistent licensing models. But that’s just the beginning. Costs pile up when you need to maintain this infrastructure. It’s extremely expensive to have a separate contract for each cellular device at every location, for example, which can easily add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Or, having third-party maintenance contracts for existing devices that have gone EOL.
Why Teams Dream of a Single-Box Solution
Remember when the smartphone hit the market? Rather, when it became commonplace and developers started making an app for everything? There were so many single-function devices and items that you didn’t need anymore – phone, alarm clock, digital camera, calculator, notepad, mp3 player, flashlight – the list goes on.
Networking and IT teams are dreaming of something similar for their infrastructure. At every expo and conference in recent years, we talked with thousands of people who said that out-of-band adds too much extra equipment (and work) that they don’t want to deal with.
So, what do they want? Something that “just works,” according to those we talked to recently at RSA Conference 2025. They want to be able to deploy one box that securely comes online, can be configured remotely/automatically, and doesn’t require a bunch of other devices for automation or computing or cellular. Here are some popular wish-list use cases:
- Remote Sites & Branch Offices: A single appliance that can offer serial access to critical equipment, cellular WAN failover, and environmental monitoring in space-constrained sites.
- Colocation Data Centers: One platform that combines console access, VPN tunneling, and rack telemetry to reduce hardware costs and footprints.
- Industrial & OT Environments: Ruggedized devices with extended temperature ranges, shock resistance, and power redundancy ideal for energy, utilities, and manufacturing.
Imagine their surprise when we say, “That’s our box. We do what nobody else can.”
ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid is Single-Box Out-of-Band Management and More
ZPE Systems developed this all-in-one capability and offers devices in a variety of sizes, up to 1RU. This platform is called Nodegrid and it combines the many functions we discussed, plus the ability to host third-party apps/tools, run Ansible and custom automation, and provide centralized management via on-prem deployment or ZPE Cloud connection.
All-in-One Capabilities
One Nodegrid device handles all the functions of traditional, dedicated devices, including:
- Serial console server (for direct access to routers, switches, firewalls)
- Cellular modem (LTE/5G with dual SIM failover)
- Ethernet routing and switching
- Secure VPN or SD-WAN capability
- USB out-of-band storage or keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) options
On top of these, Nodegrid runs VMs, Docker containers, apps, and automation solutions. It replaces up to nine traditional devices and fits neatly in 1RU or less of space.
Here’s how our customer Vapor IO used Nodegrid to free up 5RU and automate their deployments. Read Vapor IO case study .
Centralized Management and Policy Enforcement
Administrators can deploy and manage thousands of units through a single orchestration platform, via Nodegrid Manager (on-prem) or ZPE Cloud (SaaS). This lets them easily enforce access policies, audit activity, and automate firmware updates without relying on disparate interfaces.
Isolated Management Infrastructure Best Practices
Nodegrid provides what is called Isolated Management Infrastructure (IMI), which is an industry best practice for maintaining resilience. Unlike traditional out-of-band, which relies in part on production systems, IMI creates a completely separate management network that remains accessible and online even if the production network completely fails. This lets teams access and recover their systems during an active cyberattack or outage. IMI has been used by hyperscalers for more than a decade and is now being written into new laws around the world.
Hardened Security
The Nodegrid and ZPE Cloud platform have the industry’s highest security. You can read the full security assurance document that covers the hardware, software, and cloud security features, as well as the third-party certifications. Here are some of the highlights: secure boot, signed OS, self-encrypted disk, three Synopsys validations, ISO27001, FIPS 140-3, SOC 2 Type 2.
Automation-Ready
Nodegrid integrates with Ansible, Terraform, and Python APIs, enabling Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) workflows and automated responses to network incidents. Automation can run natively on the Nodegrid device, or stored in ZPE Cloud and pushed down where needed.
Schedule a Demo
The days of piecing together out-of-band solutions are coming to a close. The overhead, security gaps, and physical constraints are driving a clear trend: simplify the edge, secure the core, and consolidate the tools.
ZPE Systems helps you do all three of these. To get hands-on with our products or chat with an engineer about your specific use case, schedule a demo at the link below.
See Nodegrid in Action!
Senior Sales Engineer Marcel van Zwienen put together this 20-minute video giving you a first-hand look at Nodegrid’s interface. He shows you how ZPE Cloud makes it easy to monitor, troubleshoot, and update devices even if they’re thousands of miles away. Don’t miss it!
“That’s So Obvious Now…” – 3 Real Lessons in Network Resilience
3 Real Lessons in Network Resilience
By Ahmed Algam
Failure is a necessary part of life. It shines a light on things that you didn’t give enough attention to, so you can learn and grow. The same goes for life in IT. We do a lot of planning to prevent failure, but it inevitably shows up and reveals the flaws in our plans. We don’t like failure, but we kind of need it.
Over the past few months, I’ve seen many real-world examples of this. These incidents drove home a hard truth about architecting for network resilience:
Out-of-Band (OOB) access isn’t optional. It’s essential.
Here are three short but very real stories that made this point crystal clear.
1. The Power Outage That Didn’t Stop Us
Our Fremont office went dark. Completely dark. There was a power outage and our provider failed to give us a heads-up, so it took us by surprise.
No power meant routers, ESXi hosts, Proxmox servers, backup systems, and even Wi-Fi were knocked offline. It was a total blackout.
But we weren’t scrambling. We had architected a true out-of-band path using LTE. Even with the production network down, we still had a way in.
From miles away, we diagnosed the problem, rebooted critical infrastructure, and got things running again before most people even noticed.
Lesson: Your recovery plan is only as good as your last mile. If your failover path isn’t truly independent, it’s not a plan – it’s wishful thinking.
2. The Engineer Who Locked Himself Out
A partner’s network went down during a routine change. Not uncommon. What was uncommon? The fact that they had no access to fix it.
All their management traffic – SSH, APIs, everything – was routed through the same production network that had just failed. When that network died, so did their ability to reach any routers or switches. The team was flying blind.
We got the call, helped them recover, and discussed IMI best practices afterward.
Lesson: Never mix management and user traffic. You need a control plane that exists outside your data plane, especially when uptime is mission-critical.
3. “That’s So Obvious Now…” – The Failover Fail
A customer had the right idea: install a 4G modem as a failover path. This is common, and it’s a great way to gain access in case the main path goes down.
But the modem was physically wired into their primary Cisco router.
When that router failed (power surge), so did the modem. To make things worse, their monitoring agent was running in-band. So when the network collapsed, their monitoring did, too. No visibility, no access, no control.
We pointed out this problem. Then we suggested running the agent on dedicated OOB gear instead. Their response?
“That’s so obvious now…but I didn’t even think about it.”
Lesson: Monitoring doesn’t help if it goes down with everything else. Build it into your OOB infrastructure. Make it resilient, not just present.
What I Want You To Take Away From These Stories
Resilience isn’t just about having backup tools or extra hardware. It’s about designing for failure.
It’s about building your architecture so that even if the core goes dark, you still have eyes and hands on the network.
Out-of-Band isn’t a Luxury. It’s your Lifeline. Make sure to Architect it like one.
Here Are Resources to Help Build Your OOB Lifeline
- Rollback Gone Wrong: How Out-of-Band Saved Our Engineering Backbone
- After The Firewall Fails: How Gen 3 Out-of-Band Cuts the Ransomware Killchain
- Out-of-Band Deployment Guide
- The CrowdStrike Outage: How to Recover Fast and Avoid the Next Outage
Get Hands-On Help From Our Engineers
My colleagues have years of experience architecting these resilience practices. Please use the form to send us a message and get help with your specific use case.
After The Firewall Fails: How Gen 3 Out-of-Band Cuts the Ransomware Killchain
It’s always frustrating for me to hear about another breach that goes deep. Not because attacks happen (they will), but because so many of them spiral out of control for the same reason: no access, no visibility, no plan that uses the best tools available
Leadership feels reassured when they spend top dollar on prevention. But they overlook the most important part of resilience: mitigation. You can’t build a resilient network with defense alone. You need a plan for when that defense fails. There’s no shortage of high-profile reminders of this
- UnitedHealth spent nearly $2.5 billion recovering from a Feb 2024 attack
- MGM lost $100 million in revenue after a September 2023 attack
- CDK Global’s customers lost $1 billion during a two-week outage in June 2024
Imagine a submarine breach. Cold water rushes in. The crew is trained, alert, and ready to respond. But when they open the repair locker, all they find is duct tape, a flashlight, and hope. That’s what most IT teams face in a cyberattack.
Without the right tools in place, even the best trained teams can be rendered powerless by a breach. Gen 3 Out-of-Band changes that. It’s your pressure control, isolation chamber, and emergency patch kit that works when everything else doesn’t
Let’s look at a reality-based scenario of how these attacks play out…and how the results can be completely different.
The Breach And The Catastrophe That Follows
The attack begins quietly in the early morning hours. It’s 4:19AM when a sleeper process hidden in the network core activates. Within seconds, systems begin to go offline. At first, it looks like a glitch. But it’s not. It’s ransomware – coordinated, efficient, and already moving laterally.
Dashboards light up, but the core infrastructure is already compromised. Your monitoring tools freeze. VPNs fail. DNS is offline. Something’s wrong, but you can’t see how bad it is. And worse, you can’t do anything about it.
Your best engineer tries to log in from home. But, SSH hangs. Remote desktop times out. Someone asks if there’s a different way in. Maybe out-of-band access that is not dependent on VLAN1? There’s a moment of hope. An old console server buried in a rack…
But it was decommissioned years ago. Management called it redundant.
Locked Out And Looking In
Internal chats fill with speculation as the situation deteriorates by the minute. Even the cloud console is inaccessible. Your team is blind. No one knows how wide the blast radius is. You can’t tell which systems are down, which are salvageable, or where the attack might spread to next. Backup jobs that were configured on the same network are silent too.
In a last ditch effort, someone volunteers to drive to the datacenter. But, all that’s waiting for them is a locked building that they can’t get into. The badge reader is on the same compromised system. No remote access. No local access. Just a locked door and a blinking red light.
By 8:00 AM, retail locations are trying to open. Customers are walking through the doors and the IT team can only watch the damage unfold. Sure, trucks are rolling, but the systems are down and social media is lighting up. And while the team knows exactly what’s happening, there’s nothing they can do to stop it.
What Goes Wrong With In-Band Management
The problem isn’t that no one had a plan. It’s that they had no access. Without a resilient, independent management plane, even the best playbook can’t be executed.
- You can’t isolate systems.
- You can’t confirm where the threat is.
- You can’t cycle power, restore backups, or even assess the blast radius.
- You can’t prove you did anything right, because you can’t do anything at all!
When everything depends on a single, fragile production path, any failure becomes total. You’re not just locked out of tools – you’re locked out of the fight.
Image: In-band management is risky because admin access shares the same link as the production network. Any production failure cuts admin access.
The Breach And Fast Recovery With Gen 3 Out-of-Band
Now imagine the same breach, at the same hour. The ransomware behaves the same way. Core systems go down. DNS disappears. Monitoring dies. But this time, the team has something different: ZPE’s Gen 3 Out-of-Band infrastructure.
As the attack unfolds, IT first responders are already inside, connected securely through ZPE’s Nodegrid. It doesn’t matter if DNS is down or the VPN won’t connect. You don’t need the production network at all. Unlike that old console server, this connection is entirely separate, isolated by design, and hardened for moments like this.
Instead of floundering in the dark, the team sees exactly what’s happening. They access routers, switches, and servers directly from wherever they are without relying on the compromised environment. One by one, they identify which systems are clean, which are compromised, and which need to be taken offline.
Image: Gen 3 out-of-band is fully isolated, giving you admin access to isolate, cleanse, and restore systems. This is the only way to cut the ransomware killchain and recover from an attack.
There’s no guesswork, only action. Segments of the network go dark, but intentionally this time. Teams shut down infected zones by port, node, or site. They use ZPE’s devices to restore clean systems from verified backups, remotely power cycle PDUs, and automatically push restore scripts locally. There’s no need for physical access. No one drives to the datacenter. There’s no scramble for access credentials or badge overrides.
The breach is being contained before customers begin to arrive. Core systems are stable. Edge environments are clean. Business resumes without disruption. No social backlash. No ticket surge. No headlines. The fire never reaches the storefront.
How Gen 3 Out-of-Band Makes The Difference
Gen 3 Out-of-Band gives you something most teams don’t have during a crisis: control. Not the illusion of control, but real, operational access no matter what happens to your primary infrastructure.
- You don’t depend on your main network.
- You don’t wait for remote hands.
- You don’t lose time chasing access.
- You take action quickly, securely, and from anywhere.
Image: ZPE’s Gen 3 out-of-band management solution drops into your environment and hosts all the tools and services for cutting the ransomware killchain.
Because when your network goes dark, Gen 3 out-of-band stays lit. That’s the difference between responding to a crisis and becoming one.
Get a Ransomware Recovery Walkthrough
My colleague James Cabe put together this article that walks you through the ransomware recovery process. He explains why you need more than backups, redundancy, and a Disaster Recovery strategy, and gives you practical, open-source tools to deploy an Isolated Recovery Environment. Check it out!