This guide breaks down the differences and best use cases for KVM switches and serial consoles, with advice on how to choose the right option.
Data Center Management
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Out-of-Band Monitoring: What it is and Why You Need It
Out-of-band monitoring improves network resilience. Read this post to see how it brings a proactive approach to management.
The Future of Data Centers: Overcoming the Challenges of Lights-Out Operations
Read why we need data centers to be built cheaper and faster, and why lights-out operations are key to bringing this vision to life.
Why Out-of-Band Management Is Critical to AI Infrastructure
Out-of-band management makes AI infrastructure resilient and efficient. Read our post and download our whitepaper to see how it works.
Out-of-Band Deployment Guide
This guide describes two out-of-band deployment types and highlights three key best practices to maximize network resilience.
Opengear Lighthouse Appliances: Alternative Options
This guide highlights four Nodegrid models that serve as direct replacements for – or alternatives to – Opengear Lighthouse appliances.
What is FIPS 140-3, and Why Does it Matter?
This post explains FIPS 140-3 security certification, and why it matters to organizations and their customers.
7 Security Benefits of Implementing FIPS 140-3 for Out-of-Band Management
This post covers the 7 security benefits of implementing FIPS 140-3 for out-of-band management networks.
Terminal Server Alternative for Simple Break/Fix Use Cases
This guide compares five terminal server alternatives that give teams reliable remote management access without unnecessary complications.
End of Row vs Top of Rack Deployments
Learn the difference between end-of-row vs. top-of-rack data center architectures and how to make either deployment more resilient.
Zombie Servers: The Hidden Energy Drainers in Data Centers
Zombie servers drain energy and cost billions of dollars per year. Here’s how to stop this nightmare from lurking in your data center.
Data Center Environmental Sensors: Everything You Need to Know
This blog explains how data center environmental sensors work and describes the ideal environmental monitoring solution for minimizing outages.
American Water Cyberattack: Another Wake-Up Call for Critical Infrastructure
The American Water cyberattack shows why resilience is key to critical services. Here’s how the attack unfolded and how to stop it.
Using Isolated Management Infrastructure to Access the Debug Port of Open Compute Project (OCP) Devices in AI Deployments
ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid is the only out-of-band management built for OCP cards. Here’s how to strengthen AI deployments using Nodegrid.
Top 5 Data Center Mistakes and How To Avoid Them
Don’t make these five common data center mistakes. This article walks you through the pitfalls and how to avoid them along the way.
Perle Console Server Replacement Options
Perle console server replacement options from Nodegrid are vendor-neutral to provide a fully integrated infrastructure orchestration experience.
How Oxidized Network Backups Improve Resilience
Learn how Oxidized network backups improve resilience by mitigating human error and streamlining recovery efforts.
Serial Console Redirection Guide
Serial console redirection allows sysadmins to remotely control and troubleshoot servers even when the OS isn’t available. Learn why this matters.
What is Passive Optical Networking?
Passive optical networking (PON) is a high-speed broadband technology that enables the delivery of multiple services over a single fiber optic cable.
Comparing Console Server Hardware
Console server hardware can vary significantly across different vendors and use cases. Learn how to find the right solution for your deployment.
Data Center Scalability Tips & Best Practices
This blog describes various methods for achieving data center scalability before providing tips and best practices to make scalability easier and more cost-effective to implement.
Understanding Serial Console Interfaces
This blog defines serial console interfaces and describes their technological evolution before discussing the benefits of using a modern serial console solution.
AI Data Center Infrastructure
This post describes the key components of AI data center infrastructure before providing advice for overcoming common pitfalls to improve the efficiency of AI deployments.
Why Securing IT Means Replacing End-of-Life Console Servers
Rene Neumann, Director of Solution Engineering, discusses why it’s crucial to replace end-of-life console servers to protect IT.
Critical Entities Resilience Directive
With limited time to demonstrate compliance with the Critical Entities Resilience Directive, organizations should begin preparing now.
PCI DSS 4.0 Requirements
This guide summarizes all twelve PCI DSS 4.0 requirements across six categories and describes the best practices for maintaining compliance.
Automated Infrastructure Management for Network Resilience
A discussion of how automated infrastructure management improves network resilience by mitigating human error, accelerating recovery, and more.
Cyberthreats are Soaring: ZPE Systems Urges Immediate Action with Gen 3 Console Servers to Thwart Breaches
Organizations using discontinued console servers can secure their infrastructure using ZPE’s new comprehensive solution. Get details here.
DORA Act: 5 Takeaways For The Financial Sector
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA Act) outlines significant resilience changes for the financial sector. See how to comply here.
Out-of-Band Management: What It Is and Why You Need It
This guide to out-of-band management answers critical questions about what this technology is, why you need it, and how to choose the right solution.
Network Resilience Doesn’t Mean What it Did 20 Years Ago
Network resilience requirements have changed. James Cabe discusses why the new standard is Isolated Management Infrastructure.
IT Infrastructure Management Best Practices
This guide discusses IT infrastructure management best practices for creating and maintaining more resilient enterprise networks.
Collaboration in DevOps: Strategies and Best Practices
This guide to collaboration in DevOps provides tips and best practices to bring Dev and Ops together while minimizing friction for maximum operational efficiency.
Terminal Servers: Uses, Benefits, and Examples
This guide answers all your questions about terminal servers, discussing their uses and benefits before describing what to look for in the best terminal server solution.
What is a Hyperscale Data Center?
This blog defines a hyperscale data center deployment before discussing the unique challenges involved in managing and supporting such an architecture.
Data Center Migration Checklist
This data center migration checklist will help guide your planning and ensure you’re asking the right questions and preparing for any potential problems.
Network Automation Cost Savings Calculator
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.
Cisco 2900 EOL: Replacement Options
In this guide, we’ll compare migration options for the Cisco ISR 2900 EOL models to help you select a solution that suits your business use case, deployment size, and future growth.
Defusing Cisco SD-WAN Time-bomb requires out-of-band access
Viptela SD-WAN devices are used at large enterprise branches all around the world. The success of SD-WAN replaced dedicated service provider managed MPLS with customer managed boxes that used commodity internet connectivity giving more options and power to leadership...
Zero Touch Deployment Cheat Sheet
This post provides a “cheat sheet” of solutions to the most common zero touch deployment challenges to help organizations streamline their automatic device provisioning.
Streamlining Remote Data Center Management
Learn how to streamline remote data center management using technologies like OOB management, automation, orchestration, and AIOps to ensure network resiliency.
Building an IoT Device Management System
An IoT device management system is meant to simplify and streamline the management of remote, hard-to-reach, and complex IoT devices and infrastructure.
Key Automation Infrastructure Components That Enable End-to-End Network Automation
As part of a resilient network automation framework, the most important automation infrastructure components include OOBM, SD-WAN, monitoring, IaC, and immutable infrastructure.
How an IT/OT Convergence Strategy Accelerates Network Automation
An IT/OT convergence strategy brings information technology and operational technology together under one management umbrella to create a unified, efficient, and resilient network infrastructure.
What Is Edge Computing for Machine Learning?
Edge computing for machine learning places ML applications closer to remote sources of data, such as IoT devices, “smart” industrial systems, and remote healthcare systems.
Comparing Cellular Failover Router, Gateway & Bridge for Business Continuity
Cellular failover routers, bridges, and gateways offer similar capabilities, so here’s what you need to know about all three to find the best option for your business continuity.
The Importance of Out-of-Band Data Center Connectivity
Here we dig into the causes and effects of data center outages according to the Uptime Institute report and discuss how OOB data center connectivity can help
Network Engineers: 5 Must-Have Tools During a Slow Economy
Network engineers need to make the most of their tools during a slow economy. Read on for five must-have tools for keeping services online.
Upgrade Network Infrastructure With Minimal Business Interruption
Vendor-neutral management devices, platforms, and ZTP allow you to upgrade network infrastructure with minimal business interruption.
Creating the Future of Network Automation
Data center management best practices like IaC, automation, orchestration, and environmental monitoring contribute to NetDevOps. success.
Data Center Management Best Practices for NetDevOps Transformation
Data center management best practices like IaC, automation, orchestration, and environmental monitoring contribute to NetDevOps. success.
Data Center Colocation Services: Best Practices for Managing Remote Infrastructure
Manage data center colocation services more efficiently through solutions like environmental monitoring and OOB serial consoles.
ZPE Systems Featured in L’Informaticien Magazine
ZPE Systems is featured in L’Informaticien Magazine. Read the translation here and check out the original source content.
Data Center Orchestration with Gen 3 OOB for Digital Services Providers
Here’s how data center orchestration with Gen 3 OOB management helps digital service providers achieve the reliability their customers demand.
Comparing In-Band Management VS OOB Management
We answer all your questions about In-band management vs Out-of-band management and more in our 2nd blog Reddit Response series.
What is a Serial Console’s Role in Modern Enterprise Networks?
What is a serial console’s role in modern enterprise networks? Gen 3 serial consoles provide greater control, security, and end-to-end automation.
The Benefits of Vendor Agnostic Platforms in Network Management
There are two basic approaches to choosing a network management platform: you can stick with a single vendor’s ecosystem of supported products, or go with a vendor agnostic platform. In this post, we’ll explain what a vendor agnostic platform is and how this approach...
Why You Need a Next-Gen OOB Console Server
An OOB (out-of-band) console server is a fundamental data center tool that allows you to view, manage, and troubleshoot critical remote infrastructure on a dedicated network connection. While the functionality of generation 1 console servers is limited, generation 2...
Network Disaster Recovery Plan Checklist
Your organization may feel secure now, but a disaster could occur at any moment. For example, the war in Ukraine took the world by surprise and left many organizations scrambling to protect and recover critical infrastructure, applications, and data from Ukrainian...
Top Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Trends of 2022
Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) keeps evolving to address enterprises' changing goals, requirements, and concerns. We spoke with DCIM sales engineers to find out which pain points are on their customer’s minds, and which emerging technologies their...
Automating Your Network Operations Does Not Have to Be Difficult
The importance of network automation is clear—you can reduce human error, create more efficient workflows, and streamline operations. However, many enterprises delay their automation efforts because of how challenging the process can be. Fortunately, automating your...
How to Achieve Network Security: 4 Essential Steps for IT Professionals
How critical is network security today?. According to IBM, the cost of a data breach rose to $4.24 million in 2021, and that figure continues to rise. In this blog, we’ll describe how to achieve network security through micro-segmentation, zero trust principles,...
Data Center Temperature & Humidity Best Practices: A Complete Checklist
Temperature and humidity have a significant impact on your data center infrastructure. High temperatures can cause devices to overheat, whereas extreme low temperatures can cause mechanical and electrical failures. High humidity can lead to moisture build-up,...
Customer strategies in Ukraine to protect privacy and IP
How autonomous decommissioning via out-of-band has become essential to disaster recovery for edge deployments in uncertain geographies To say there’s instability in Eastern Europe would be a drastic understatement. Russia continues its attacks on many fronts in...
Data Center Environmental Risks & Practical Solutions That Can Save You Millions
Today, many businesses are completely unable to operate without their data center infrastructure, so data center downtime is getting more and more expensive. According to Uptime Institute’s 2021 Global Data Center Survey, over 60% of respondents lost more than...
What Makes a Gen 3 Serial Console?
The Gen 3 serial console is the latest innovation in out-of-band management.But what exactly is it, and where did it come from? In this post, we’ll briefly cover the basics of serial consoles and why you need them, and then dive into the evolving needs that brought...
Data Center Environmental Monitoring: How to Stop Disaster Before It Strikes
Environmental threats—such as heat, moisture, power, smoke, and tampering—constitute a significant cause of data center downtime. According to a recent ITIC survey, a single hour of downtime could cost over $300,000 in lost business, which means you can’t afford to...
Q&A With a 20-Year DCIM Expert
Data center infrastructure management, or DCIM, involves monitoring and controlling the infrastructure within a data center. That means supporting the appliances and the underlying infrastructure—everything from servers and switches to power and HVAC systems. Though...
Data Center Environmental Monitoring: How to Stop Disaster Before It Strikes
Environmental threats—such as heat, moisture, power, smoke, and tampering—constitute a significant cause of data center downtime. According to a recent ITIC survey, a single hour of downtime could cost over $300,000 in lost business, which means you can’t afford to...
Why Choose Nodegrid as Your Data Center Orchestration Tool
Managing and orchestrating remote data centers presents a number of challenges, which is why you need the right tools for the job. Nodegrid as a data center orchestration tool is a family of hardware and software solutions that address these unique challenges. Let’s...
How to Reduce Data Center Carbon Footprints
Data centers face a uniquely modern challenge when it comes to climate. Government estimates place data center energy consumption at 10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a normal commercial building. These estimates are further complicated by tenuous...
What Is a Colocation Data Center? Benefits and Best Practices
The colocation data center market saw huge growth during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching a value of $76.8 billion in 2023 and showing no signs of slowing down. Companies continue to move away from on-premises deployment strategies due to the expense and...
3 Data Center Management Challenges—and How to Solve Them for Good
Data center infrastructure adds an extra layer of complexity to enterprise networks since you need to remotely manage hardware at scale. The network perimeter needs to extend across a geographical distance—which could be several miles or several continents—while...
Data Center Modernization Strategy: How to Streamline Your Legacy Environment
The rapid development of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools leaves most software quickly becoming outdated. Consequently, it is replaced by the next trend on the market, after a short time. The use of such software following its “expiration” creates...
What Is the Network Edge, and How Do You Manage It? Watch Our Webinar
What is the network edge? The network edge consists of systems that are not part of the data center. Think of a typical enterprise network: the data center is at the core, and then there are locations distributed across a market, area, or region, or even across the...
Webinar: Managing the Network Edge: Why your best practices need out-of-band management
Not at Cisco Live? Join our free webinar Setting up POPs, colocations, and remote networks is a lot of work, and ongoing maintenance sinks your resources. But out-of-band management and converged solutions give you on-demand control of your edge. Don't worry about...
What is FCAPS?
What is FCAPS? Successful businesses rely heavily on their network infrastructure to keep up with demand and to allow work to flow smoothly. When outages occur, whole operations can come to a standstill which equates to wasted time & money, and most importantly,...
Webinar: Deploying Smart Edges to Support Modern Applications
About the Webinar: The advent of AR/VR, autonomous cars, smart everything, IoT, and other 5G applications requires processing of data at the edge of the network to shave off response times, manage core bandwidth, and improve security. This drives the requirement for...
Serial Console Servers: 5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs Them
Today, businesses depend highly on IT, and they cannot afford to experience downtime. That’s why they need robust IT infrastructure. Robust IT infrastructure can ensure businesses do not experience downtime and prevent financial losses resulting from the inability to...
Managing a Remote Team
It Happened Overnight. One day it was business as usual. The next, we were scrambling to set up our home offices. COVID-19 meant even the largest companies had to figure out remote work. And they had to adjust fast, not only to stay afloat and maintain business...
3 Reasons Why Your Business Needs Out-of-Band Management
Out-of-band management is an essential tool that should be part of your business continuity strategy. But What Exactly is Out-of-Band, or OOB? Your network is comprised of many devices and solutions, and it allows your organization to carry out normal operations. To...
How Network Automation Improves Out-of-Band Management
Business Continuity: Why Better Networking Helps you Weather the Storm Even with an adequate out-of-band (OOB) management path established, managing your network infrastructure can still leave you wanting more efficiency across the board. The good news is, network...
Make Management More Secure and Easy with Single Sign-On
Managing many network devices and applications can be a chore, and a lot of this stems from having to manually authenticate with each. You typically need to keep a spreadsheet containing your different credentials (or run the risk associated with having one set of...
10 Things to Consider when Choosing an Edge Solution
The edge is changing; CAPEX & OPEX costs, scalability, the number of devices and tools that make up the environment, and the speed of deployment, all need to be taken into consideration for the evolving EDGE. Many of these devices and tools are outdated, sit in...
How Nodegrid Serial Console / Nodegrid Services Router can improve the Test Lab with Automation
Are you in a test lab that needs automation? Are you in a test lab that has automation, but you need to get more out of it? We can help. This situation seems to be quite common from what we’ve seen. Lab managers either have an “automation” solution that’s limited in...
Data Logging, Alert Notifications and Actionable Data
When you’re the one responsible for critical infrastructure assets within the data center, you’ve got to be quick to respond and readily available to take care of any issues that might surface. What if something goes wrong? Without Nodegrid’s Data Logging features,...
CAPEX and OPEX… Are you Making the Right Considerations on Your Out-of-Band Expenditure?
When considering your new infrastructure management solution, your organization’s primary focus may be on Capital Expenditure (CAPEX), which refers to the initial cost to deploy a solution. Rarely is Operational Expenditure (OPEX), the operational cost to maintain...
The Case For Nodegrid Clustering
Background / Problem: A fortune 500 organization reached out to ZPE with a problem many organizations face when growing. They had multiple data centers around the world and were looking to "upgrade" their sites. They needed an out-of-band management tool...
Supporting The Financial Industry With Enhanced Out-of-Band Management
Problem A Fortune 250 multinational financial services institution needed a replacement for their Cisco Integrated Service Routers that were reaching End of Life (EOL). The customer wanted an Infrastructure Management solution that would replace the Cisco ISR’s while...
Take OOBI and OOBM to New Heights
Take Your Legacy OOBI and OOBM Solutions to New Heights - Simply, Quickly, and Cost Effectively Are you ready to bridge the management gap between legacy, current, and future IT infrastructures? If so, Nodegrid Open Infrastructure Management™ makes it easy. Upgrade...
Reducing Downtime and Saving Money with a Well-orchestrated Out-of-Band Infrastructure
A well-orchestrated Out-of-Band infrastructure (OOBI), or Remote Access and Control solution (as it’s sometimes called) is a vital component in the fight against downtime and lost revenue. Every second a network, server, Virtual Machine, or storage device is down, not...
Smart Serial Console Servers Conserve Network Ports
NodeGrid Serial Console (NSC) is able to share network ports with fellow devices, sharply reducing network switch port usage for OOB device management. This new port saving feature is already reliably and securely saving many valuable network switch Ethernet ports,...
Maximizing Retail And Remote Office Uptime
NodeGrid Serial Console™ is not just for data centers. Retail, Remote Office and POD/POP environments normally do not have dedicated IT support staff available. So who will monitor and repair network and server downtime issues? Can your business afford to turn...
One Easy Way To Consolidate Your Out-Of-Band Management – And Save Money
Did you know there's an easy way to consolidate your Out-Of-Band data center management – and save money? For all that IT provides, there is a constant cry from businessmen to cut costs, find cheaper vendors, outsource whatever can be outsourced – and provide better...
NodeGrid With Monitoring And Dashboard Available
Although we imagine you enjoy getting exercise, we want to make sure that you and your crew don't have to walk around manually resetting servers, virtual machines and routers at the data center or NOC on a daily basis. Our Nodegrid family of out-of-band (OOB) hardware...
Learn About the World’s Fastest Serial Console Switch
What moves faster than bottled water in a desert? The world's fastest, smartest serial console! If you’re planning an upgrade, refresh, or new deployment of serial consoles, there’s never been a better time. We designed and built NodeGrid Serial Console using the...
5 Ways to Find Data Center Devices Using NodeGrid Serial Console
How Does Natural Language Search Help Me Find IT Devices in the Data Center? By using NodeGrid Serial Consoles in standalone or cluster configuration, it’s easy to find physical servers, routers and switches, storage and power devices – with one search bar and five...
Why NodeGrid Serial Console has an x86-64 CPU and More Memory Than Traditional Console Servers
ZPE Systems Recently Released the World's First 64-bit x86 CPU Based Serial Console Server with Faster Processing Speeds and More RAM and Storage Than All Legacy Vendors' Consoles. Hip sysadmins and Data Center Operators Know Why. Here's the Skinny on Why we Chose to...
Part 2: Why Build a 96-Port NodeGrid Serial Console?
This is the second of a multi-part series of posts about our new NodeGrid Serial Console product. Why we built it, how we decided on which features to include and why, and more, which we’ll cover in future installments. Part 2: Why Build a 96 Port NodeGrid Serial...
Part 1: Our Motivation Behind NodeGrid Serial Console
This is the first part of a serialized exploration of our new NodeGrid Serial Console™ product. Why we built it, how we decided on which features to include and why, and more, which we’ll cover over the coming weeks. The overall answer is to help data centers better...
Free Yourself from Vendor Lock-in!
Back in the early and mid-2000’s the race was on to implement an out-of-band infrastructure (OOBI) to provide access and control to all your IT assets in the data center via a separate management network. Isolating device management to a separate management network...
The Future of IT Infrastructure Management is Here
You might not know us, but you do. We designed and engineered OOBI appliances that are deployed in the world's largest data centers. We are a group of technologists with more than 100+ years of cumulative experience in the remote console management business, with many...
Avoid Future ShellShock Type Attacks
ShellShock UNIX Bash Bug - Introduction You've heard about the ShellShock Unix Bash "ghost user" exploit at least 13 times by now. This discovery of a hurtful secret within a deep, trusted friendship (ubiquitous reliance upon generally stable Open Source software)...
Are Your Infrastructure Management Practices Still Valid In Today’s Data Center?
I believe we will all agree that when it comes to technology, “Change is Constant”. Nowhere in the history of time has anything changed as fast as technology over a shorter period. As a byproduct of this, we‘ve come to accept and expect computing, networking, storage,...
Data Center IT Challenges
I recently came across a survey of 400+ IT Execs and DC Managers regarding the efficiency of their Data Centers, and what they believe would help them make improvements. In general the survey uncovered some interesting challenges. I’ll focus on two. “Daily...
Five Reasons To Use Software Defined Access Control
Five reasons to consider Nodegrid Manager ™ for Managing Access to Your Organization's Data Center Assets 1. Nodegrid Manager Makes Life Easy You've got a laundry list of virtual and physical multi-vendor assets (of all types) all over the globe and no simple...
Missing Solid Cloud DCIM Access and Control?
Today there are many IT device companies that provide great physical hardware. There are also many good DCIM software tools out there to choose from. But the one piece they’re all missing is a solid DCIM Access and Control solution to their hardware - and other...
Data Center Management
Data Center Management: When Challenges become Opportunities We are experiencing a new wave of data center infrastructure challenges. The introduction of virtual network and storage appliances has changed the traditional hardware-only infrastructure model, demanding...