The Opengear OM2200

If you had told me last year at this time that remote management of devices would be a huge thing in 2020 I might have agreed but laughed quietly. We were traveling down the path of simultaneously removing hardware from our organizations and deploying IoT devices that could be managed easily from the cloud. We didn’t need to access stuff like we did in the past. Even if we did, it was easy to just SSH or console into the system from a jump box inside the corporate firewall. After all, who wants to work on something when you’re not in the office?

Um, yeah. Surprise, surprise.

Turns out 2020 is the Year of Having Our Hair Lit On Fire. Which is a catchy song someone should record. But it’s also the year where we have learned how to stand up 100% Work From Home VPN setups within a week, deploy architecture to the cloud and refactor on the fly to help employees stay productive, and institute massive change freezes in the corporate data center because no one can drive in to do a reboot if someone forgets to do commit confirmed or reload in 5.

Remote management has always been something that was nice to have. Now it’s something that you can’t live without. If you didn’t have a strategy for doing it before or you’re still working with technology that requires octal cables to work, it’s time you jumped into the 21st Century.

High Gear

Opengear is a company that has presented a lot at Tech Field Day. I remember seeing them for the first time when I was a delegate many, many years ago. As I have grown with Tech Field Day, so too have they. I’ve seen them embrace new technologies like cloud management and 4G/LTE connectivity. I’ve heard the crazy stories about fish farms and Australian emergency call boxes and even some stuff that’s too crazy to repeat. But the theme remains the same throughout it all. Opengear is trying to help admins keep their boxes running even if they can’t be there to touch them.

Flash forward to the Hair On Fire year, and Opengear is still coming right along. During the recent Tech Field Day Virtual Cisco Live Experience in June, they showed off their latest offerings for sweet, sweet hardware. Rob Waldie did a great job talking about their new line of NetOps Console servers here in this video:

Now, I know what you’re thinking. NetOps? Really? Trying to cash in on the marketing hype? I would have gone down that road if they hadn’t show off some of the cool things these new devices can do.

How about support for Docker containerized apps? Pretty sure that qualifies at NetOps, doesn’t it? Now, your remote console appliance is capable of doing things like running automation scripts and triggering complex logic when something happens. And, because containers are the way the cloud runs now, you can deploy any number of applications to the console server with ease. It’s about as close at an App Store model as you’re going to find, with some nerd knobs for good measure.

That’s not all though. The new line of console appliances also comes with an embedded trusted platform module (TPM) chip. You’ve probably seen these on laptops or other mobile devices. They do a great job of securing the integrity of the device. It’s super important to have if you’re going to deploy console servers into insecure locations. That way, no one can grab your device and do things they shouldn’t like tapping traffic or trying to do other nefarious things to compromise security.

Last but not least, there’s an option for 64GB of flash storage on the device. I like this because it means I can do creative things like back up configurations to the storage device on a regular basis just in case of an outage. If and when something happens I can just remote to the Opengear server, console to the device, and put the config back where it needs to be. Pretty handy if you have a device with a dying flash card or something that is subject to power issues on a regular basis. And with a LTE-A global cellular modem, you don’t have to worry about shipping the box to a country where it won’t work.

Tom’s Take

I realize that we’re not going to be quarantined forever. But this is a chance for us to see how much we can get done without being in the office. Remember all those budgets for fancy office chairs and the coffee service? They could go to buying Opengear console servers so we can manage devices without truck rolls. Money well spent on reducing the need for human intervention also means a healthier workforce. I trust my family to stay safe with our interactions. But if I have to show up at a customer site to reboot a box? Taking chances even under the best of circumstances. And the fewer chances we take in the short term, the healthier the long-term outlook becomes.

We may never get back to the world we had before. And we may never even find ourselves in a 100% Remote Work environment. But Opengear gives us options that we need in order to find a compromise somewhere in the middle.

If you’d like more information about Opengear’s remote access solutions, make sure you check out their website at http://Opengear.com

Disclaimer: As a staff member of Tech Field Day, I was present during Opengear’s virtual presentation. This post represents my own thoughts and opinions of their presentation. Opengear did not provide any compensation for this post, nor did they request any special consideration when writing it. The conclusions contained herein are mine alone and do not represent the views of my employer.