Download Page 1 CHALLENGES With more than 200,000 active students


Penn Foster relies on Opengear ACM5000 for
Out-Of-Band Management of Distributed
Remote Sites
SUMMARY
CHALLENGES
Industry:
Education
With more than 200,000 active students worldwide, Penn Foster prides
itself on providing convenient, affordable and open access to a secondary
and post-secondary education. Contributing significantly to the organization, the IT department at Penn Foster plays a key role in ensuring uptime of
the IT infrastructure and online learning sites to continuously provide an
academically rich learning environment.
Customer Profile:
Penn Foster has been a pioneer and leader
in helping students achieve their higher
education goals for more than 28 years
through college and graduate school test
preparation and private tutoring. Penn
Foster is one of the world's leading
providers of accredited distance education.
Challenge:
 Provide simple and cost effective tools
for securely and remotely managing
network, power and computer devices
installed at remote locations.
 Centralized outbound dialing gateway
to initiate calls to remote site.
Selection Criteria:
Penn Foster initiated a network infrastructure upgrade, aimed at enhancing out-ofband management tools.
Network Solution:
Opengear secure ACM5000 Remote
Monitoring and Management Gateway
Results:
 Enhanced security and visibility of the
mission-critical distributed network
infrastructure performed Out-Of-Band.
 Penn Foster’s IT department now
has anywhere, anytime secure access
to core network infrastructure to ensure
uptime.
 Improved performance, scalability
and agility at the edge
Technology is inseparably linked with learning today, and with an explosion
of students using laptops, tablets, and smartphones to access online
courses, Penn Foster needed a secure out-of-band mechanism to ensure
consistent delivery of educational material to an ever expanding IT infrastructure.
The IT department at Penn Foster was faced with the challenge of upgrading their out-of-band network access to a secure next generation platform
that would scale to meet their growing, new demands.
With limited IT personnel at satellite facilities, Penn Foster was driven to
find a solution that would:
 Centralize the origin of outbound dialing to remote locations.
 Operate as a secure dial-in gateway at remote locations for
out-of-band access.
 Monitor and manage APC battery backup systems and deliver
secure remote access to the management interfaces to core
routing and switching components.
 Provide the best value and functionality at the lowest possible
price.
“Opengear goes well beyond traditional console
server functionality providing monitoring/alerting of
UPS, serving as an outbound dial RAS server, and of
course providing out-of-band access.”
- Thomas Jones
Network Engineer with The Princeton Review Inc.
© 2012 Opengear, Inc.
Centralized Outbound Dialing to Remote Locations
Secure out-of-band access to distributed IT equipment has been crucial for
enterprise customers to eliminate the need for onsite remote IT staff or
service calls to handle outages. Not only does this save travel costs, but
out-of-band access also reduces recovery time in the event of unplanned
outages to ensure remote site productivity.
Traditionally, out-of-band access to remote sites during unplanned network
outages has been accomplished using analog modem connections. This
solution is secure, robust and still widely deployed throughout the world. As
technology changes, the overhead for maintaining analog modem requirements for remote IT staff has become and issue for IT management. Most
modern laptops and tablets lack internal modems to allow for IT staff on the
road or working from home to connect easily to remote sites. Opengear has
met this challenge with centralizing the outbound dial connectivity and
enabling fremote IT staff to securely connect via a VPN and then trigger an
outbound call to remote sites.
Centralized
Datacenter
Remote Site
42
42
41
41
40
40
39
39
FO
UNDRY
N E T WO R K S
38
L in k
4 9
C o n s o le
FastIron Workgroup X448
)))
38
5 0
1
3
5
7
9
2
4
6
8
1 0
1 1
1 3
1 5
1 7
1 9
2 1
2 3
2 5
2 7
2 9
3 1
3 3
3 5
3 7
3 9
4 1
4 3
1 4
1 6
1 8
2 0
2 2
2 4
2 6
2 8
3 0
3 2
3 4
3 6
3 8
4 0
4 2
4 4
4 5
4 7
4 6
4 8
P o w e r4
5 F
4 6 F
37
4 7 F
4 8 F
1 2
37
C at al ys t 2950SERIES
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1112 13 1415 16
36
17 1819 20 21 2223 24 2526 27 28 2930 31 32
3334 35 3637 38 3940 41 42 4344 45 4647 48
SYST
RPS
1 0 /1 0 0 /1 0 0 0 T X
ST AT
DUPL X
1
2
36
SPEED
MO D E
1
U ID
2
HP
P ro Lia n t
D L3 2G05 p
35
35
34
34
33
33
Pow erEdge
2950
32
32
31
31
30
30
29
29
28
28
27
27
26
26
23
23
22
22
21
21
20
20
1
8-Port Standard KVM Switch
Model B004-008
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
19
18
18
17
17
16
16
15
15
14
14
13
13
12
12
11
11
10
10
9
9
8
8
7
7
6
6
5
5
4
4
3
3
2
2
1
1
 Primary TCP-IP In-Band Connection
 Dial-Up Modem Out-Of-Band Connection
Network Engineer with The Princeton Review Inc.
Key Features: Opengear ACM5000
Small form factor remote monitoring
and management gateway for serial
console ports, network hosts, UPS and
PDU's, available with environmental
monitoring
Internal Modem, optional 802.11, 3G
Cellular, environmental monitoring
TCP
24
24
- Thomas Jones
2, 3 or 4 serial ports, Ethernet, USB, V.92
25
25
19
)))
“I am very impressed
with the Opengear
ACM5003-M. For the
price and functionality I
haven’t found anything
that comes close.”
Remote IT Staff
Internal 4GB Flash Memory for storing
offline log data and localized copies of
running configuration files
Heartbeat Monitor with Automatic
Penn Fosterʼs Power Management Imperative
Power failures, spikes, supply surges and brown-outs remain a fact of life - as
do the service disruptions, data corruption and mangled file systems that
result from such power interruptions. The Uninterruptable Power Supply
(UPS) shields critical network infrastructure by maintaining a continuous
supply of electric power to connected equipment. Its rechargeable batteries
supply emergency power in the event of power loss and if the power loss is
extensive the UPS can signal to initiate an orderly power down sequence.
It is imperative that the UPS systems are monitored closely as each one will
only provide power for a limited period of time and will require graceful
shutdowns for IT equipment in the event of extended power outages.
Penn Foster, like other organizations have deployed more than one brand of
UPS system. This can cause management headaches and require proprietary software. Opengear provides the freedom from a single vendor solution by allowing for agnostic UPS systems management. Opengear’s unique
ability to provide instant notifications and visibility into distributed battery
backup systems both in-band and out-of-band gives the IT department at
Penn Foster peace of mind.
Low Total Cost of Ownership
Penn Foster was able to improve performance, scalability and agility at the
network edge, for a fraction of the cost for any competitor’s offering. The
result is a drastic reduction in the need for expensive on-site technical staff,
on-site visits and improvements in critical network availability.
© 2012 Opengear, Inc.
Failover to out-of-band connection
Enterprise grade security for compliance
with data center access and security
policies
About Opengear:
Opengear designs and manufactures next
generation console server and cellular
router solutions for secure remote access
and control of IT devices such as routers,
switches, servers, firewalls, uninterruptable
power supplies, power distribution units
and environmental monitoring devices.
Opengear is privately held with offices in
USA, UK and Australia. For more information, please visit www.opengear.com.
USA Head Office
630 West 9560 South Suite A
Sandy, UT 84070
+1 888 346 6853
Australian Office
Benson House Suite 44
2 Benson Street
Toowong QLD 4066
+61 7 3871 1800
UK Office
Herschel House
58 Herschel Street
Slough, SL1 1PG, UK
+44 776 6866159