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Missing Solid Cloud DCIM Access and Control?

by | Apr 28, 2014 | Data Center Management

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 vendors’ hardware and all the newfangled Virtual Appliances multiplying like mobile apps!

The good news is, no matter where you are along the journey toward partial or full data center virtualization (private or public cloud), Nodegrid Manager™ provides a comprehensive multi-vendor DCIM Access and Control Solution for both your physical and virtual infrastructure. With Nodegrid Manager, setting up and managing your Software-Defined Data Center IT infrastructure is easy.

Back in the day, our talented team engineered and set the standard in console servers, PDUs and IPMI appliances. Now we’re delivering Access and Control for all your Physical and Virtual IT Assets with the world’s first DCIM ready Access and Control solution. Best of all, Nodegrid Manager™ runs in a Virtual Machine which easily scales with your cloud to meet all your access control needs.

Mulit Vendor

We’ve Got Your Back!

Today’s existing console access tools are becoming obsolete. They’re nearly a decade old with little to no support. They don’t support virtual appliances, and they don’t easily integrate (if at all) with more than one vendor. Contrast that level of support with ours.

We fully support our software. Let ZPE Systems take care of your infrastructure with our brand new DCIM software designed for the increasingly virtual data center. Nodegrid supports console servers, service processors, storage, network and power appliances from multiple hardware vendors with ease. You can count on us to be there if and when you need us.

We’re also burning the midnight oil developing new features and functions to make your DCIM experience even easier and faster.

Schedule a demo today. Take Nodegrid Manager out for a spin – You’ll be glad you did!

New Features in Nodegrid Manager v1.6

  • Nodegrid provides you full MKS, vKVM, SOL, IPMI, Web and CLI access of your physical and virtual data center equipment.
  • Nodegrid offers tunneling capability through firewalls for your end-users
  • Nodegrid installs from a bootable ISO. We supply everything you need in one package.
  • Nodegrid shakes hands with your IT operation’s authentication and authorization systems with full AD/LDAP integration.
Free Time

Hawaii Sweepstakes Winner Announcement!

In case you missed it, we’ve picked a winner for our Aqua Kauai resort sweepstakes. Congratulations to Michael Preble out in Centennial, Colorado! We hope Michael enjoys a well-deserved break from architecting IT solutions.  We all need a break every now and then.

Data Center Management

by | Jan 11, 2014 | 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 new methods of physical and virtual infrastructure deployment. At the same time, data centers employ a mix of servers, storage, network, power and other devices from multiple vendors each with their own methods, protocols and proprietary tools for accessing the device consoles. The need of providing secure and reliable console access and control has increased.

Management of such data center infrastructure must evolve, be vendor neutral and hardware independent. It should make use of the software flexibility to enhance the infrastructure features. A Software Defined Infrastructure – SDI – is the natural way to integrate the physical and virtual worlds of the data center and improve the management experience. SDI creates the flexibility to roll out new deployments and services throughout any private cloud.

The Challenge: Become Vendor Neutral

It is common to find vendors providing a myriad of ways to solve a similar problem. For example, there are many ways to access a device console. Besides, this console itself could take many forms. It could be a virtual serial, SOL or physical serial console. This forces the sysadmin to keep track of all different vendors’ UI commands and protocols in order to access the console of the IT device which could be a physical or virtual server, storage device, networking device or a power unit.

The user experience should be the same regardless the underlying technology.

Rather than having multiple vendors implementing their features in discrepant ways or sometimes having feature gaps among similar solutions, SDI allows the user to redefine those features via software in a consistent way presenting the very same functionality to all managed devices. Also, new features added on the common stack automatically get extended to all devices. This allows bridging of feature gaps while extending the life of the existing infrastructure.

The physical device features can be extended via SDI and become uniform to all vendors.

Figure 1 – Vendor-Neutral solution. It addresses feature gaps and normalizes the user experience. This applies to virtual machines, service processors, serial consoles and power units.
Software Defined Infrastructure
Nodegrid Manager® is the world’s first implementation of a Software Defined Infrastructure solution providing virtualized access and control over major critical infrastructure consoles. It consolidates user interfaces, network protocols and all features in one single easy-to-use solution. This software brings together a standardized user experience, a full management feature set and saves time and resources, while allowing administrators flexibility to deploy different vendor solutions or plan dynamic expansion/replacement of their data centers.