Uplogix: Going Beyond Out-of-Band
Uplogix offers a new approach to reducing the cost and complexity of supporting satellite & terrestrial network environments. Uplogix Local Managers (LM) enable operators to remotely monitor and control both satellite and terrestrial-based network equipment. The appliances co-locate and connect serially with network and satellite communications equipment to provide non-stop local management and control. Uplogix LMs automate numerous network support, maintenance, configuration and recovery procedures—reducing the time, cost and error associated with manual support.
Uplogix Local Managers serve as an on-site, virtual network assistant and are deployed at teleport and POP locations to manage internal infrastructure. LMs are also deployed at end-customer locations to automate problem diagnosis and recovery, perform routine network maintenance and configuration, and ensure network availability, even when the primary connection is down. If a remote location’s main broadband satellite link goes down due to misconfiguration or other unforeseen circumstances, the collocated Uplogix LM automatically dials out to an Iridium satellite via an integrated external modem to re-establish an alternate, out-of-band network connection to ensure constant management connectivity and availability.
Automated recovery of network devices
Uplogix continuously monitors critical device statistics and user interactions with managed devices via an always-on, serial connection with no impact to network performance. This ensures issues are discovered faster and fixed. Onboard intelligence to store this polling information as well as processing and a rules engine enables level-one run book responses to be automated. These make up the bulk of issues IT staff deals with today: routine problems with routine solutions. Tasks prime for automation if you can have confidence in the tool.
Uplogix’ automated capabilities include:
- Detecting and correctly diagnosing equipment and communications failures
- Executing pre-defined, best-practice recovery procedures
- Provisioning and re-provisioning services
- Configuring devices via remote administration
- Measuring and managing remote network service levels from an end-user’s perspective enables enterprises to diagnose issues and resolve them, before they impact business operations, more quickly.
IN THE NOC: UPLOGIX CONTROL CENTER
The Uplogix Control Center is a single pane of glass to manage the entire Uplogix deployment. The UCC manages device inventory in a Parent/Child structure where children inherit properties from the parent unless explicitly denied. The UCC will recognize the heartbeat of an unconfigured LM and add it to an “Unassigned” group in the UCC’s inventory page. Using the UCC’s hierarchy, or tree structure, an administrator can place the unconfigured child LM into a parent group where it will automatically inherit all the appropriate configurations. These configs can include options like AAA settings (IP, shared secrets, DNS, NTP, SNMP, etc.), banners, syslog, environmental thresholds, and many more. The ability to inherit configs ensures that it’s easy to standardize your deployment. Hierarchical groupings by geography, location type, security levels, or whatever other breakouts that make sense for your environment allow you to manage the deployment quickly and accurately. With each LM heart beating to the Control Centre at a preconfigured interval, any subsequent config changes are also automatically inherited. This makes it possible to rapidly push broad—or targeted—changes to your Uplogix deployment.
Automating repetitive tasks
Mass configuration changes can be scheduled in the Uplogix Control Center and executed consistently by the Uplogix Local Managers as batches, rather than an administrator updating each router, switch or server one by one. With the Uplogix SurgicalRollback™ feature, changes can be pushed automatically with the confidence that any devices with failed changes will automatically be rolled back to the previous working state, restoring the network.
Uplogix is easy to manage, deploy, and update
Mass configuration changes can be scheduled in the Uplogix Control Center and executed consistently by the Uplogix Local Managers as batches, rather than an administrator updating each router, switch or server one by one. With the Uplogix SurgicalRollback™ feature, changes can be pushed automatically with the confidence that any devices with failed changes will automatically be rolled back to the previous working state, restoring the network.
Out-of-band management with out-of-band access
Out-of-band access is a fairly common solution for reaching remote devices over an alternate network path. Uplogix integrates with anything from a POTS line to a cellular modem to a satellite connection to ensure that not only do administrators have two-way access and onsite tools for managing remote gear, but also that data can be automatically pushed to centralized dashboard and other management tools.
How it Works:
An Uplogix Local Manager (LM) with factory settings will use DHCP and DNS to automatically find and begin communicating with the UCC. Once an Uplogix LM is communicating with the UCC, a network administrator can move the Uplogix LM into an inventory group where the LM will inherit configurations. This functionality eliminates the need to preconfigure an Uplogix LM before sending it to a remote site, as well as the need to have networking experts onsite when deploying a new LM.