Australian export success Opengear has today announced a new version of its Lighthouse central management appliance, which takes away the pain of managing networks.
Unveiled overnight at Cisco Live! In Milan, Opengear’s new Lighthouse Console Gateway automates the process of locating and establishing console connections on enterprise-scale management networks, while maintaining central authentication and audit capabilities.
Opengear (www.opengear.com) is a leading provider of critical infrastructure management solutions through advanced console servers, remote management, monitoring, and cellular out-of-band products. Founded in Australia 10 years ago, Opengear generates 90 per cent of its revenues from exports and has achieved major success in the US, which is its largest market.
Opengear CEO Rick Stevenson said the Lighthouse Console Gateway meant less downtime if an outage occurred. “When there’s a network fault, re-establishing access can mean looking up spreadsheets and network diagrams to see which management ports are connected where – not ideal when the downtime clock is ticking,” he said.
“Not only that, logging into a remote site that’s lost connectivity to the enterprise auth servers has historically meant compromising security, for example hardcoding a master password shared by the entire ops team. Lighthouse Console Gateway solves these two common problems.”
Security best practice mandates consistent and auditable user authentication against a AAA service such as TACACS+, RADIUS, Kerberos or Active Directory. The new Lighthouse Console Gateway feature authenticates on behalf of the remote Opengear management appliance and passes through authorised connections.
“With Console Gateway, admins no longer need to know which rack or which country a device is located in, or whether it’s currently connected via the in-band network or out-of-band cellular link,” said Rick Stevenson.
“Instead they use our convenient SSH interface to specify the name of the device they want to reach and Console Gateway handles the rest. It’s a win-win situation for our customers – ops get the SSH interface they prefer and IT managers know that all access is authenticated, authorised, and logged.”
The new Opengear Lighthouse leverages the extensive network and device connectivity of Opengear Data Center and Remote Site Management appliances to offer unparalleled remote and out-of-band access capabilities for network and IT administrators, including:
- Simplified central access: Lighthouse offers a convenient single point of management access to critical infrastructure scattered across tens, hundreds or thousands of data centre racks or remote locations, including those behind firewalls.
- Converged remote access: Highly available gateway to management consoles without the need for in-depth knowledge of network topology or operational state. Reach any device by name wherever and however it’s connected, via the primary management network, or 3G, 4G LTE cellular and dial-up out-of-band.
- Focus on security: Pass-through authentication uses central credentials to manage remote consoles – all sessions are authenticated, authorised and logged even during remote site outages. Sensitive management traffic is encrypted with strong cipher HTTPS and SSH and optional VPN.
- Built for existing tools and workflow: Operators are free to use their preferred SSH client or web browser to connect to managed infrastructure, wherever it is and wherever they are – in the NOC or on the road.
Rick Stevenson said the Lighthouse Console Gateway gave Network administrators the best choice of access models and connection methods to remotely access critical devices in a timely and secure manner. “During outages and new installs, network administrators need quick and easy access that scales to thousands of devices and still maintains the highest level of control and security,” he said.
“Our newly released Console Gateway feature allows our customers to better leverage capabilities of the Opengear out-of-band management solutions they already use.”
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About Opengear
Founded in 2004, Opengear designs, manufactures and delivers the most feature-rich, cost-effective, flexible solutions for secure remote infrastructure management. With Opengear, companies can access and manage mission critical systems, devices and equipment remotely and securely, even if the network is down, to save costs and maximise business continuity. The company is headquartered in Sandy, Utah, has substantial operations in the UK and Australia, and sales partners worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.opengear.com.
