Case study: retail market leader uses Opengear solutions to manage Data Centers

Customer profile - key information:

• An international retail leader serving more than 50 companies, 75 brands and 5,500 stores, managing data centers located on different continents, processes huge amounts of data on transactions, inventory, etc. every day.
• Its central IT team tested a number of solutions, looking for an out-of-band solution to enable remote access to its data centers.
• In the end, the Opengear ACM7000 resilience gateway and Lighthouse Management Software were selected because they offered a secure and simple way to remotely access data centers.

Overview

The international retail leader manages more than 10 data centers on different continents to support its customers, employees and shareholders. 

Challenge

The central IT team needed to have constant access to its resources. Regardless of the state of the network and in-band connectivity, technicians should be able to manage the data center and troubleshoot problems in real time. With a large, distributed network and data centers far from corporate headquarters (and the central IT team), managing specialized equipment such as switches and firewalls was a huge challenge. When disruptions occurred in the data center, the team had to send a technician to diagnose and fix the problem. The process took longer than expected and involved significant operational costs. Things became even more complicated when a technician was not currently available. Then headquarters could wait up to several hours for "on-site" assistance.

Opengear's data center management solution

The central IT team began searching for an out-of-band solution to remotely access data centers. The support they received from the local Opengear team and the remarkable functionality of the Lighthouse platform helped them make their decision. They ultimately decided to implement Opengear's ACM7000 Resilience Gateway and Lighthouse Management Software because they offered a secure, simple way to remotely access and proactively manage their data centers.

Now, with the deployment of the ACM7000 console, the team can connect to remote ports of switches, firewalls and other sensitive devices in the infrastructure without the help of a third party. In addition, they can test and manage devices from anywhere, ensuring continuous availability and high performance.

In addition, Opengear Lighthouse Management Software has been implemented in the public cloud and secured by a firewall. This allows technicians, even in the event of a primary network failure, to securely access Lighthouse over a public Internet connection and seamlessly manage data centers. When the Internet connection fails, the team uses a dedicated IPsec tunnel to connect to the ACM7000 console manager. This provides an additional layer of security and resolves any possible connectivity issues.

Result of ACM7000 implementation 

With this deployment, the central IT team can gain out-of-band access to its 10 data centers - located on different continents - and manage them remotely from headquarters, via the Lighthouse system and the ACM7000 console.

The team is pleased with both the increased access to its resources and the resulting savings. Remote and self-managed data centers enable real-time responses to problems.