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Zero touch provisioning: 3 drawbacks you need to know

by | Aug 30, 2021 | Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

It’s Friday morning, and you’re bringing a new site online with zero touch provisioning. Your remote branch devices arrived the night before, and all you want the store manager to do is plug them in. A few minutes later, your job is finished and you’ve still got your entire day left. What are you going to do with all your free time?

This is the picture that’s commonly painted of zero touch provisioning. And why not? When compared to manual provisioning, zero touch brings drastic improvements and efficiency to deploying networks. Its biggest benefits include:

  • Helping you deploy sites fast, because it’s a plug ‘n play solution
  • Reducing manual work and errors, because it’s automatic
  • Supporting on-demand scaling without bogging down your resources

Business person using laptop connected to network users and services.

With zero touch, you don’t have to be on site for days or weeks manually configuring individual devices. You also shrink the risk of human error that can unwind all your deployment progress and force you to start over. And when it comes to scaling, it eliminates so many of the shipping costs and technician expenses, and instead lets you spin up new sites in a single day.

So what’s the problem with zero touch provisioning?

The trouble with zero touch provisioning is that it usually comes with hidden obstacles that vendors don’t tell you about. Zero touch promises to make deployments quick and easy, but these obstacles can eat up your time savings and make you vulnerable to attacks.

Here are 3 big drawbacks you need to know about zero touch provisioning.

Drawback: Zero touch provisioning is limited to one vendor

Imagine you’re on location setting up a plethora of devices from different vendors. You plug in your zero touch solution, but you still have to manually configure three other vendor devices that make up your stack. This is the first major drawback to zero touch provisioning.

For the most part, zero touch is limited to one vendor’s solutions and doesn’t extend to devices or solutions from other providers. This is usually to encourage purchasing multiple solutions from or standardizing on one vendor.

Why is this a drawback? This is just another approach to vendor lock-in. It limits your freedom when trying to leverage zero touch provisioning, which can be a major drawback especially in custom, multi-vendor environments. When you’re choosing a zero touch solution, consider how much of your stack it can actually automate and how much time you’ll still have to spend on manual provisioning.

Drawback: Zero touch provisioning isn’t secure

What happens if you set up your site with zero touch provisioning, only to discover that your network is already under attack? You wonder how it could have happened, but then you remember all of the preconfiguring required to make zero touch possible. This is another major drawback.

Most solutions do live up to the promise of being ‘zero touch,’ but only after you’ve performed extensive preconfiguring of your devices. This is a major security concern because you’re loading up your stack with sensitive information about your network. Recent reports show that ransomware claimed a victim every 10 seconds in 2020.

Why is this a drawback? With your network attack surface more distributed now, especially during the pandemic, it’s critical to minimize your exposure to threats. But having to preconfigure your devices for zero touch provisioning makes it easier for you to become a victim. Even if you can keep careful watch over your devices to ensure no physical attacks occur, hackers can easily exploit your systems through something like an open port that one of your employees forgot to close. In a nutshell, preconfiguring puts you at unnecessary risk.

Drawback: Zero touch provisioning limits orchestration

The ultimate goal of using zero touch provisioning is to add convenience to deployments and management. You want to save time and effort all around by eliminating manual work. But another major drawback to zero touch is that it puts a limit on how much and how many of your processes you can orchestrate.

Automation is when you can automate simple tasks, while orchestration is when you can automate entire processes and workloads. Most zero touch solutions allow you to implement a little bit of both automation and orchestration, but limit or simply lack support for orchestrating across devices and environments.

Why is this a drawback? The more manual work you have to perform, the less value you get out of zero touch provisioning. And most solutions require you to manually bootstrap VMs, activate service licenses, run Docker apps, and even update device firmware as new patches are released. Though zero touch might save you time and effort on initial setup, consider how these savings might evaporate in the long run.

Can you avoid these drawbacks?

Imagine you’re setting up a new network. Your environment is tailored specifically to your needs, which includes a custom-built monitoring application, Palo Alto NGFW, data thinning workloads, and a host of other solutions meant to optimize operations. And the best part is, you don’t have to worry about vendor lock-in, security gaps, or limited orchestration. All you need to do is plug in your devices, and the entire environment will build itself in just a matter of hours. Everything just works so you don’t have to.

That is what true zero touch provisioning feels like, and it’s something we’re passionate about at ZPE Systems. That’s why we’ve spent years building zero touch convenience features into our Nodegrid solutions. You don’t have to put up with these major drawbacks any longer.

Nodegrid’s zero touch provisioning extends across vendor solutions, even to devices that don’t support automation. This means that you can automate and push configurations to whatever you connect to Nodegrid — including legacy switches, routers, and other equipment.

Nodegrid’s zero touch provisioning also eliminates the need to preconfigure devices. ZPE Cloud serves as your repository for configuration files and allows you to remotely push these files to 100% factory-default devices. Physical attacks no longer pose a threat, while built-in security features and alerts automatically block and pinpoint attacks.

Because Nodegrid OS is Linux-based, it gives you the freedom to orchestrate across devices and environments, with a rich API library and your choice of tools like Ansible, Chef, Puppet, and REST. You can save time and effort on deployments and ongoing management. This means that you can implement a zero touch provisioning solution that automatically spins up VMs, deploys Docker containers, activates service licenses and configures service chaining, updates firmware, and carries out any number of workloads you need.

Get free resources to help you deploy zero touch provisioning

When you’re choosing a zero touch solution, carefully consider how these drawbacks will impact your deployment and management efforts. To help you, download The Definitive Guide to Zero Touch Provisioning, and when you’re ready to implement your solution, use our 4-Step Checklist for Setting Up Zero Touch Provisioning.

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3 Ways Your Critical Remote Infrastructure Is Costing You

by | Jul 8, 2021 | Pillar 2 - Critical Remote, SD-WAN, Videos, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

It’s easy to imagine all the ways that downtime can throw a wrench into your critical remote infrastructure operations. Things like scaling, service outages, and tedious management are just part of the job. No matter how much these stand in the way of business, there’s not much that you can do about them, right?

Not quite. In this post, we’ll explore three reasons your complex critical remote infrastructure is costing you, and how Nodegrid is the simple solution that helps you save.

If you’re short on time, here’s a two-minute video explaining how you can cut through the complexity of managing your network.

Deploying critical remote infrastructure

You’re probably familiar with long deployment times for your critical remote infrastructure. Manually provisioning and setting up networks consumes a lot of time and resources. The obvious costs here are the staff wages and device shipping expenses; however, the not-so-obvious cost is the business opportunity that you miss. The longer it takes you to deploy, the longer your location goes without meeting demand or generating revenue.

How can you minimize this cost? By using zero touch provisioning.

Zero touch provisioning uses automation to automatically configure and build your networks. Instead of putting staff on site to manually set up each device in your stack, you can instruct even unskilled staff to simply plug in and boot your devices. Zero touch provisioning does the rest of the work and can bring you online in hours.

Not all zero touch provisioning is the same, though. Most vendors only allow you to use it for their devices or products, which means unless you standardize on their offerings, you’re going to be limited in terms of what systems and services you can automatically deploy. On top of this, you still need to pre-configure devices and put sensitive info at risk, as well as perform manual orchestration and firmware updates.

This is where Nodegrid sets itself apart. Because it features the vendor-neutral Nodegrid OS, it allows you to use your choice of automation tools as well as build custom scripts to orchestrate across devices and environments. This means you can use true zero touch provisioning that extends to every part of your infrastructure — from configuring end devices from different vendors, to bootstrapping VMs, activating service licenses, and setting up your entire network. It offers airtight security as well, because you can completely provision bare-metal devices via ZPE Cloud.

When it comes to your critical remote infrastructure, Nodegrid is your go-to solution for fast, complete, and secure network deployments.

Keeping critical remote infrastructure online

How often does your critical remote infrastructure go offline? When it does, you can suffer losses at a rate of $5,000 or more per minute, according to Gartner. And this only covers the monetary portion. You also need to consider the reputation damage, degradation of trust, and decreased customer satisfaction that result from sudden outages.

If you’re familiar with redundant solutions, you know that these can be a life saver — but on the other hand, they come with two times the number of solutions that you need to purchase, deploy, and manage.

You typically need to deploy two boxes for each function you wish to add redundancy to, and connect them in a high availability configuration. In other words, two firewalls, two routers, two SD-WAN boxes, etc. All this means the initial and ongoing burden of redundancy can be…off-putting.

However, Nodegrid devices feature a powerful hypervisor that allows you to deploy virtualized network functions (VNFs). The onboard, multi-core Intel CPU and Linux-based Nodegrid OS provide you with enough resources to spin up VMs, guest operating systems, applications, and Docker containers directly on Nodegrid appliances. Instead of spending tons of money on more devices that clutter your infrastructure and management efforts, you can host firewalls, virtual routers, SD-WAN solutions, and custom and third-party solutions on one box. You can easily shrink a redundant setup of six devices into two Nodegrid boxes.

Beyond covering your network services with redundancy, Nodegrid also gives you built-in 5G/4G LTE connectivity available via two and four SIM cards, respectively. You don’t have to worry about a main line outage taking down an entire office or store location. Nodegrid automatically switches to your backup cellular connections, so you can keep critical remote infrastructure online and operations running.

Responding to critical remote infrastructure problems

It can be difficult to manage critical remote infrastructure because it’s, well, remote. You may have store locations that are very far away from any skilled IT staff. Or you may operate in an industry such as utilities or oil and gas, where you have critical components distributed across power grids or offshore drilling platforms.

Unless you have a robust remote management tool in place, you’re losing time and money responding to problems. This also means the user experience suffers and is difficult to optimize.

For your business, the losses can start to pile up even before an issue is reported. Your efforts are pulled into managing and dispatching IT teams for on-site support, while users and customers put up with poor network performance or even complete outages.

But when you use Nodegrid and ZPE Cloud, you gain in-depth management capabilities that allow you to fully support your network from a distance. You can save significantly on operational costs by reducing or eliminating the need to roll support trucks. That’s because ZPE Cloud gives you a complete view of your distributed infrastructure, and gives you convenient remote access to manage all your solutions. Use your browser to securely connect without a VPN. You can instantly troubleshoot issues and even reboot devices from thousands of miles away.

Want more tactics to help you reduce downtime?

Watch our free webinar to see how you can cut downtime 50% or more using a Fortune 500 strategy.

Shifting Gears: How Network Automation Drove an Auto Company to the Cloud

by | Apr 19, 2021 | Case Studies, Pillar 1 - Data Center Infrastructure Management, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

Case Study – Moving Data Center to the Cloud
Download the Case Study

Network automation and zero touch provisioning are more than luxuries. They’re quickly becoming the powertrain of business, helping you meet growth demands and keep up with important opportunities. These technologies also prove invaluable to making sure everyday tasks don’t hold you back, regardless of the environment you’re using.

By adopting automation, you can quickly realize its time- and cost-saving benefits that transform your networking capabilities — whether you’re using a traditional client-server architecture, or a cloud-based configuration.

In this blog entry, you’ll see how Nodegrid accelerated one car company’s drive to the cloud, and how network automation helped them seamlessly shift gears.

But first, here’s a recap of network automation.

Network automation employs software to help eliminate manual management tasks. This can help with routine work, such as device discovery or firmware updates, to more in-depth processes that are part of configuration management jobs. Automation helps with every aspect of networking, including improving the test lab environment, streamlining deployments, and reducing the workload for ongoing support and maintenance.

The beauty of automation is that you can use it at any scale you like. This can mean implementing something as simple as a few workflow commands that assist with device discovery and mapping, or as extensive as automating configuration tasks for a zero touch provisioning approach.

Why are companies racing to adopt network automation?

Network automation improves business in the same way that engines improve transportation. This simple analogy highlights the benefits of automated network tasks and processes, so let’s break it down.

Without modern machines, we rely entirely on manual input to move from point A to point B. Stamina and endurance are crucial, and so is the ability to think critically in the event that unexpected adversity crosses your path (i.e. storms, injuries, bears). Even if you’re in tip-top shape physically and mentally, relatively short ventures can drag on because your input drives the entire trip. Everything seems like a marathon.

And this is how manual networking feels. Discovering devices, installing security patches, monitoring data usage, updating firmware — all these tasks and more rest on your shoulders, and it’s up to you to carry them to completion. There’s little time, if any, to do anything besides focus on your arduous (non)adventure.

When you introduce engine-driven transportation such as a turbocharged sports car or tuned up off-road vehicle, you can easily go anywhere. Your mechanized chariot of horsepower converts your most minor input into forces that lurch you toward your destination. As for your stamina, endurance, and time, you save it all — even as you power through torrential rains or traverse over rocky mountainsides.

Automation transforms networking in the same way. You no longer have to heavily focus on every task and process, and can instead set your gaze on what’s beyond the horizon.

  • Deployment — Network automation lets you automate configuration tasks and set up zero touch provisioning. This means that you can save a ton of time and money getting new sites configured and online. Instead of having staff perform extensive manual provisioning duties, you can just install your devices and let zero touch provisioning build your network automatically.
  • Support & OPEX — For ongoing network support, automation continues to deliver time and cost savings. You don’t have to manually address every patch installation, firmware upgrade, or other issue. This means fewer truck rolls and more time for staff to focus on critical business needs.
  • Maintenance — Nothing helps you maintain uptime like autonomous networking. With automation, you can set up scripts for a self healing network, and create alerts & notifications that let you know when critical issues occur.

How does Nodegrid supercharge network automation?

Network automation brings you major benefits, and Nodegrid delivers even more. That’s because Nodegrid is an open platform that lets you take advantage of automation, regardless of which vendor solutions you’re currently using. This flexible solution helps you:

  • Customize using third-party automation tools & solutions of your choice, including in-house scripts and software.
  • Extend automation and zero touch provisioning to end devices, even those that don’t support automation.
  • Control devices remotely — from anywhere — no matter which vendors or manufacturers you deploy.

Here’s how Nodegrid put an auto company’s migration on cruise control.

For a major automobile manufacturer, a private cloud network model was necessary to help them meet their business needs. The challenge, however, would be in finding a solution that could integrate with their automation-heavy environment. They also required a solution that could provide reliable and comprehensive out-of-band access to their data centers, along with tools that could support collaboration with their heavily involved NetOps & DevOps teams.

With an already fatigued IT staff, the traditional approach was a roadblock nearly impossible to pass. Manually migrating and provisioning would burn too much time and effort, and pull network personnel away from keeping everyday operations in motion.

But when the company discovered Nodegrid, they realized that they could put deployment and management on cruise control.

By deploying the Nodegrid Serial Console S Series, the auto manufacturer had a powerful engine to drive their private cloud adoption.

Download the full case study below to discover all the benefits

Download the Case Study

Provision Offline with Bluetooth Pairing for Nodegrid

by | Nov 24, 2020 | Network Automation, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

Deployment day is here and it’s time to get your new remote branch up and running. Months of planning and preparation have gone into this project to ensure that everything goes smoothly. All of the vendors have been scheduled and the latest dry run went off without a hitch, so everyone is feeling confident. The phase two team is standing by and ready to move in as soon as the network is up and running. With such strict deadlines, any setbacks will cause a ripple effect that could severely impact the project deadline and cause a loss of revenue.

The Pressure is On

As the deployment is progressing, the tech from your Internet Service Provider ( ISP) seems to be having difficulties bringing up the internet connection. After further troubleshooting, they let you know that there is a problem with the equipment and they won’t be able to complete their portion until the next business day. Without network connectivity the deployment will need to be postponed, thus setting everything back and causing a huge problem for all of the other teams. With so much on the line this simply is not an option, but what can you do without an active internet connection?

Be the Hero

Planning for the unexpected is crucial for any pre-deployment planning and testing. With so many parties involved and multiple vendors on call, even minor issues can lead to large amounts of wasted time and money. Luckily, you did your homework and chose the solution with a backup plan, so you’re ready to handle anything this deployment can throw at you.

Introducing Bluetooth Pairing for Nodegrid

ZPE System’s Nodegrid comes ready to go right out of the box with no pre-configuration required on the unit itself. Simply unbox the unit and power it on; you don’t even need to connect it to your local network to get started. No local internet connection? No problem!

 

  • Connecting Nodegrid via Bluetooth® to a cell phone is simple: The new Nodegrid device is powered on (no screen or keyboard required)
  • On a cell phone, Nodegrid will show up as an available device within Bluetooth® settings
Bluetooth Tethering 600 x 450
After just a few taps, Nodegrid goes live and automatically connects to the ZPE Cloud. There, all of your saved configurations are ready and waiting to be downloaded to your new device. Once configured, your device is now secure and ready to unlock the full potential of the Nodegrid Platform. Just plug Nodegrid into your network and allow it to serve as a temporary gateway for your other connected devices. Within minutes, your internet connection is established and you’re back on track to finish on time, as expected.

Instant Reset

With Nodegrid, resetting and restarting the process is just a click away. Simply press the factory reset button and start with a clean slate, anytime, at any location. Less worry, more convenience.

As Easy as it Gets

With ZPE Systems Nodegrid, provisioning has never been easier and more reliable. From Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP), to automation via deployment scripts and more, your new remote branch is ready in no time with minimal on-site resources required. Combined with ZPE Cloud, provisioning is fast, secure, and consistent across your entire network. Once up and running, Nodegrid’s 360° network visibility allows your team to monitor and maintain all of your connected devices from one easy to use, vendor neutral platform.

Ready to take your network to the next level?

For more information on ZPE’s full product line, please visit our products page.

Have a specific question or want to experience a live demonstration for yourself?
Reach out to us via our Contact page. We’re here for you!

Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) for IPv4 and IPv6

by | Sep 1, 2020 | Case Studies, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) for IPv4 and IPv6

Background/Problem

Engineers are constantly looking for ways to improve their network infrastructures. These improvements can come in the form of increased efficiency, robust security, infrastructure flexibility, reduced deployment time and elimination of configuration errors. Engineers can accomplish this with the Nodegrid platform and their preferred scripting language.

Automate steps like updating operating systems, deploying patches and bug fixes and pushing configurations to network targets.

  • Deploy Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) over IPv4 and IPv6
  • Use your preferred scripting language like Python, Perl, JSON, Bash, or add your own.
  • Integrate with file transfer protocols such as FTP, FTPS, HTTPS, SCP, etc.

The Solution – Nodegrid and Zero Touch Provisioning

The Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) feature is offered on all ZPE’s out-of-band management devices. These include the Nodegrid Serial Console, Nodegrid Bold and Flex, and our latest hardware Nodegrid Service Router. ZTP works by allowing new ZPE unit to be provisioned and updated automatically without manual intervention. After physically connecting the Nodegrid Serial Console to the network and booting it for the first time, the following steps takes place.

ZPE-ZTP
  1. ZPE sends a request to the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server.
  2. The DHCP server identifies the request is from a ZPE device and sends a set of instructions to the ZPE device.
  3. As instructed ZPE sends a request to the Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server.
  4. ZPE device will download the required files and executes the script commands:
  5. Installation script (Python, Shell, Perl, JSON, etc.)
  6. Latest software version
  7. Configuration files
  8. ZPE device pushes configuration to the network appliances based on the Python script(s).

Benefits of Zero Touch Provisioning

Engineers no longer need to manually login into each device for configurations! With ZPE’s Zero Touch Provisioning, upload the configuration templates and favorate scripts, sit back and watch the network build itself. Here at ZPE we understand that each network infrastructure is unique and designed to meet specific requirements. Give us a call, and with ZPE’s Nodegrid out-of-band management platform and experienced engineers, we can help set up your ZTP processes.

  • Automate the network infrastructure, ZPE supports IPv4 and IPv6
  • Reduces deployment time for both initial installation and recurring upgrades
  • Reduces/Eliminates the chance for human error via manual configuration
  • Lower costs associated with per-unit provisioning
  • Repeatable – Standardized templates for provisioning services

Next Step: Schedule a Demo and See What NodeGrid Can Do For You

We are perfectly positioned to meet anything manufacturers can throw at us. We pioneered IT infrastructure access and control back in the day and we’re pioneering IT infrastructure access and control for today and the future. Check us out. You’ll be glad you did.

Schedule a Nodegrid Demo Today

The Definitive Guide to Zero Touch Provisioning

by | Jul 8, 2020 | Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

It’s no wonder why zero touch provisioning (ZTP) is becoming more highly sought after. Whether business is expanding, going global, or simply in need of more nimble networking, ZTP sets the standard in effortless scaling. Compared to traditional provisioning methods, it delivers major benefits and helps you free up your IT resources.

 Scaling without zero touch provisioning is tedious at best, and can slow your business to a crawl (or to a grinding halt) at worst. There’s so much that goes into typical provisioning approaches, like coordinating staff commutes and device shipments, not to mention hours, days, or weeks spent at the command line interface (CLI). And no matter how thoroughly you audit and test each configuration file, going without ZTP leaves you open to human error — not just at each location, but at each network appliance as well.

ZTP eBook cover_Page_1
  • Secure your data — No more shipping pre-configured devices
  • Cut your workload — No more manual CLI configurations
  • Boost uptime — No more downtime due to human error

With zero touch provisioning, you eliminate so many of these drawbacks thanks to automation and scripting. That means that you no longer need to tie up IT staff with time-consuming configuration tasks and manual CLI input. On top of this, using an all-in-one hardware solution like ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid helps you further reduce CAPEX and OPEX costs. You can ship a single consolidated appliance to each location (instead of sending a cumbersome stack), and once it arrives, all you need to do is plug it in. Your network builds itself while your IT teams stay committed to critical business function. Find out how Zero Touch Provisioning can help your organization.

Download the ebook