[c-nsp] Remote management console servers?

[Saku Ytti]

On (2015-07-14 23:40 +0000), CiscoNSP List wrote:

Hey,

> We've just started using Opengear (7216's) - 16 serial ports(Can use standard straight through eth, or rollover), has 3G/4G, modem and 2 x Eth connections, all can be setup as failover for each other as OOB...plus supports dydns(We have to use this for our 4G, as we can only get dynamic IP)....so far, very happy with them (Our "old" OOB boxes were/are 2511's with old external modems hanging off them)....Cant get those modems anymore, so alternate box was needed.

I've done some Cyclades ACS (two acquisitions ago) in previously, which is
quite equivalent yet more costly. I considered Opengear for previous OOB
rollout, but luckily company politics stopped that plan, as we didn't want to
add another vendor/contract.
Being forced to solve with existing vendors, we discovered 'conserver' which
adds all the missing bits to Cisco CPE solution for OOB, i.e. you get serial
port multiplexing, you get persistent logging of console ports.

Now this is my favourite way to build OOB. Because with the Cisco CPE I have
comprehensive WAN options, which organization already knows how to provision and
support. All existing tooling/automation works.
Our WAN of choice was either own E1 or 4G, if we run 4G, we get dynamic IP
like you do, but that's not a problem for us, as we use DMVPN with IPSEC, so
we don't know or care about the WAN IP, we only experience the tunneled static
RFC1918 IP.
And it's convenient single package and PSU for assync, ethernet and WAN.
Instead of assync server, WAN router, modem and switch like worst case might
be.

-- 
  ++ytti