![\"ZPE](\"https:\/\/zpesystems.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/ZPE-Palo-Alto-640-x-140.png\")
<\/p>\n[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.17.0″ hover_enabled=”0″ da_disable_devices=”off|off|off” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” sticky_enabled=”0″ da_is_popup=”off” da_exit_intent=”off” da_has_close=”on” da_alt_close=”off” da_dark_close=”off” da_not_modal=”on” da_is_singular=”off” da_with_loader=”off” da_has_shadow=”on”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.17.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” width=”auto” sticky_enabled=”0″ custom_padding=”0px||||false|false”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” custom_padding=”||30px||false|false” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
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When it comes to improving edge network resilience, traditional WAN architectures can easily get in your way.<\/p>\n
Suppose you\u2019re setting up an electrical substation, cellular base station, or other distributed remote infrastructure to incorporate cloud-based networking. To deploy, you need to configure a slew of cloud-enabled devices, from IoT sensors, to routers, firewalls, SD-WAN boxes, and out-of-band and cellular failover appliances. The physical footprint alone is intimidating, and is rife with points of failure. On top of all this, you need the right management tools to ensure everything runs smoothly. You might need visibility on power grid sampling, application performance, or user experience, with management software that lets you troubleshoot individual components of your infrastructure.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just your network or your business riding on your shoulders \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s people\u2019s livelihoods, whether they rely on you for delivering essential utilities or keeping them connected to the world.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important to boost edge network resilience and shield your customers from outages. And it\u2019s why ZPE Systems now hosts Palo Alto Networks\u2019 Prisma SD-WAN offering. Read the full press release<\/a>, and download the brief below for details.<\/p>\n But before you do, here are three tips to help you improve edge network resilience.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” custom_padding=”||30px||false|false” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n It\u2019s 8pm, and suddenly a surge of customer tickets crowds your support desk. You quickly scan the issues and realize that one of your towers is offline, causing an outage for many of your rural customers. One of your on-call technicians is standing by for dispatch, but the hour-long drive means your teams will be fielding complaints for at least 60 minutes. Meanwhile, customer satisfaction begins to drop and one star reviews pour into your online channels.<\/p>\n This is all too common with edge network support, and it highlights why out-of-band management can be a life saver<\/a>. Instead of having to dispatch IT support technicians to establish a physical connection and allow HQ to remote-in for troubleshooting, what if you could respond instantly from anywhere? With out-of-band, you get an isolated management network that\u2019s separate from your production network, and you can establish a connection using cellular, broadband, DSL, or even phone lines. This means you can quickly gain access to your infrastructure, and with an advanced out-of-band solution like Nodegrid, you can simply open your web browser to troubleshoot and resolve issues \u2014\u00a0whether you need to reboot a network switch, reconfigure a firewall, or analyze and adjust traffic flows.<\/p>\n No matter your deployment, out-of-band is essential to improving edge network resilience.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” custom_padding=”||30px||false|false” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Part of boosting edge network resilience involves diversifying the types of connections at each location. But this doesn\u2019t mean adding more layers of physical connections.<\/p>\n Although T1, T3, and MPLS links can serve as reliable backups, these physical connections most likely follow the same path as your main connection. So when a flood sends currents your way or a construction crew sinks a thousand-pound excavator bucket into your main line, chances are your physical backups will go down, too.<\/p>\n If you have 5G\/4G LTE cellular, you can keep your locations online through all this. Your cellular connections can serve as failover paths, but also provide reliable backup for out-of-band networks. Download the joint solutions brief below and see how Nodegrid\u2019s failover helped a large oil and gas company eliminate the majority of their continuity issues at the edge.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” custom_padding=”||30px||false|false” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n One of the biggest drawbacks to managing traditional WAN architecture is vendor lock-in. When you purchase one provider\u2019s SD-WAN or security solution, you\u2019re limited to using their unique management tools and integrating only pre-approved solutions (usually from them as well). This can make edge network resilience difficult to maintain, since you\u2019ll have to learn several different systems, protocols, interfaces, commands, etc.<\/p>\n When you centralize control, however, you get access to all the tools you need, using a single gateway. The best platforms for this feature a vendor-neutral operating system and rich API library that can accommodate your custom and third-party integrations.<\/p>\n Imagine no longer needing to log in and out of every solution in your stack, and instead using single sign-on to gain access to your SD-WAN\u2019s cloud controller, next-gen firewall, application performance monitoring app, and every part of your edge infrastructure. For a major digital security company, this meant cutting resolution times in half using a single tool that helped them provide continuous monitoring and achieve instant response times.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Prisma SD-WAN and Nodegrid help companies streamline deployment, configuration, and management of their edge networks. Download the brief<\/a> for full details.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When it comes to improving edge network resilience, traditional WAN architectures can easily get in your way. Suppose you\u2019re setting up an electrical substation, cellular base station, or other distributed remote infrastructure to incorporate cloud-based networking. To deploy, you need to configure a slew of cloud-enabled devices, from IoT sensors, to routers, firewalls, SD-WAN boxes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":10480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":" It\u2019s Friday morning, and you\u2019re bringing a new site online with <\/span>zero touch provisioning<\/span><\/a>. 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\u2019ve still got your entire day left. What are you going to do with all your free time?<\/span><\/p> This is the picture that\u2019s commonly painted of zero touch provisioning. And why not? When <\/span>compared to manual provisioning<\/span><\/a>, zero touch brings drastic improvements and efficiency to deploying networks. Its biggest benefits include:<\/span><\/p> With zero touch, you don\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p> The trouble with zero touch provisioning is that it usually comes with hidden obstacles that vendors don\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p> Here are 3 big drawbacks you need to know about zero touch provisioning.<\/span><\/p> Imagine you\u2019re 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.<\/span><\/p> For the most part, zero touch is limited to one vendor\u2019s solutions and doesn\u2019t extend to devices or solutions from other providers. This is usually to encourage purchasing multiple solutions from or standardizing on one vendor.<\/span><\/p> Why is this a drawback?<\/span><\/i> 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\u2019re choosing a zero touch solution, consider how much of your stack it can actually automate and how much time you\u2019ll still have to spend on manual provisioning.<\/span><\/p> 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.<\/span><\/p> Most solutions do live up to the promise of being \u2018zero touch,\u2019 but only after you\u2019ve performed extensive preconfiguring of your devices. This is a major security concern because you\u2019re loading up your stack with sensitive information about your network. <\/span>Recent reports<\/span><\/a> show that ransomware claimed a victim every 10 seconds in 2020.<\/span><\/p> Why is this a drawback? <\/span><\/i>With your network attack surface more distributed now, especially during the pandemic, it\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p> 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.<\/span><\/p> 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.<\/span><\/p> Why is this a drawback? <\/span><\/i>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.<\/span><\/p> Imagine you\u2019re 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\u2019t 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\u2019t have to.<\/span><\/p> That is what true zero touch provisioning feels like, and it\u2019s something we\u2019re passionate about at ZPE Systems. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve spent years building zero touch convenience features into our Nodegrid solutions. You don\u2019t have to put up with these major drawbacks any longer.<\/span><\/p> Nodegrid\u2019s zero touch provisioning extends across vendor solutions, even to devices that don\u2019t support automation. This means that you can automate and push configurations to whatever you connect to Nodegrid \u2014\u00a0including legacy switches, routers, and other equipment.<\/span><\/p> Nodegrid\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p> 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.<\/span><\/p> When you\u2019re choosing a zero touch solution, carefully consider how these drawbacks will impact your deployment and management efforts. To help you, download <\/span>The Definitive Guide to Zero Touch Provisioning<\/span><\/a>, and when you\u2019re ready to implement your solution, use our <\/span>4-Step Checklist for Setting Up Zero Touch Provisioning<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p> For regular updates to help you streamline enterprise networking, sign up for our newsletter using the form below.<\/span><\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[88,82,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-failover-connectivity","category-out-of-band-management","category-remote-network-management"],"yoast_head":"\nHow to improve edge network resilience<\/h1>\n
1. Respond fast with out-of-band<\/h3>\n
2. Stay connected with cellular backup<\/h3>\n
![\"Backhoe](\"https:\/\/zpesystems.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Backhoe-783x1024.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n3. Go vendor-neutral to centralize control<\/h3>\n
See how Palo Alto Networks and ZPE Systems boost edge network resilience<\/h1>\n
![\"Business](\"https:\/\/zpesystems.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Business-person-using-laptop-300x169.jpeg\")
<\/p>So what\u2019s the problem with zero touch provisioning?<\/b><\/h1>
Drawback: Zero touch provisioning is limited to one vendor<\/b><\/h1>
Drawback: Zero touch provisioning isn\u2019t secure<\/b><\/h1>
Drawback: Zero touch provisioning limits orchestration<\/b><\/h1>
Can you avoid these drawbacks?<\/b><\/h1>
Get free resources to help you deploy zero touch provisioning<\/b><\/h1>