![\"HEAnet](\"https:\/\/zpesystems.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/logo_HEAnet-1024x1024.jpg\"){kind=logo}
<\/center><\/p>\nIf there\u2019s one sector that relies on network uptime more than ever before, it\u2019s the education sector. For both in-person and virtual learning, students and staff connect to crucial resources around the world to share information. The infrastructure that enables this connectivity is critical, and in the country of Ireland, this infrastructure is deployed and maintained by HEAnet.<\/p>\n
As the national education and research network, HEAnet is a provider who must adhere to stringent service levels in order to keep entire education communities online. But they recently faced a few major challenges as their out-of-band (OOB) management<\/a> solution neared its end-of-life (EOL) date. This system was crucial to maintaining network uptime, as it gave engineers remote access to their 50+ nationwide locations. They needed to quickly roll out a new solution, but they were faced with a second challenge \u2014 limited staff.<\/p>\n It seemed HEAnet was stuck between a rock and a hard place. They would surely need to outsource the job, and that\u2019s when they turned to Rahi, the world-renowned MSP who introduced them to ZPE Systems\u2019 Nodegrid.<\/p>\n The rest is history, and for a deep dive into that lesson, download the full HEAnet case study below.<\/p>\n But before you do, here\u2019s a quick refresher on critical infrastructure and why network uptime can be difficult to maintain.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ header_3_text_color=”#214C64″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Critical infrastructure is made up of the systems that connect sites to each other and to the rest of the world. The data center is an obvious example of where critical infrastructure is deployed. Points-of-presence (POPs) and colocations are other somewhat obvious examples. All of these house components, such as servers, switches, and routers, which are essential to handling data and traffic that organizations rely on.<\/p>\n Here are more examples of where critical infrastructure is commonly found:<\/p>\n Organizations must maintain high levels of network uptime for their critical infrastructure, since it supports the lifeblood of everything they do. But this can be a challenge because these components are not always located within convenient reach of skilled engineers.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ header_3_text_color=”#214C64″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Maintaining network uptime can be challenging even for fully-staffed locations. This difficulty is amplified \u2014 quite dramatically \u2014 when organizations have to recover and maintain sites that are located far off the beaten path.<\/p>\n Imagine this: you\u2019re responsible for monitoring and troubleshooting critical infrastructure for a network of college campuses in your region. One of your most remote sites, which serves more than one thousand students and faculty on any given day, experiences sudden disruptions and eventually goes offline. It\u2019ll take close to four hours for you to put skilled staff on site to recover the network, which puts you at risk of breaching your SLA<\/a>. You and your team are stressed out and scrambling, while students and teachers have no option but to cancel some or all of their activities.<\/p>\n Now imagine that you have a tool that allows you to respond instantly and restore the network before anyone even notices. That\u2019s the kind of power you can achieve with a deep, robust out-of-band management solution, which is one of the tools HEAnet deployed to keep disruptions from reaching users.<\/p>\n There\u2019s more that can go wrong, however. Your sites could suffer an ISP outage, leaving locations in the dark if they don\u2019t employ any wireless backup connections. Or if your customer has a multi-vendor MSP solution that you\u2019re part of, the other vendor\u2019s components may be to blame, and you need a tool that can help you quickly diagnose the root cause.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ header_3_text_color=”#214C64″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n To see more challenges you might face when maintaining network uptime, download the HEAnet case study<\/a>. You\u2019ll also discover how Nodegrid gave them seamless backup connectivity<\/a> and allowed a single Rahi engineer to deploy two sites in a single day. Get the case study now<\/a>.<\/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 [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If there\u2019s one sector that relies on network uptime more than ever before, it\u2019s the education sector. For both in-person and virtual learning, students and staff connect to crucial resources around the world to share information. The infrastructure that enables this connectivity is critical, and in the country of Ireland, this infrastructure is deployed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":23519,"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":[26,88,102,82,150,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-studies","category-failover-connectivity","category-increase-productivity","category-out-of-band-management","category-pillar-2-critical-remote","category-zero-touch-provisioning"],"yoast_head":"\nCritical infrastructure and network uptime<\/h1>\n
\n
Why can network uptime be so challenging to maintain?<\/h1>\n
Download the HEAnet case study<\/h1>\n
<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\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>