THE CHALLENGE
DigitalOcean, a cloud hosting provider guaranteeing 99.99% uptime to their customers needed a dependable backup method of access. They required a method that did not involve sending technicians to a remote site, or relying on a mobile KVM which can be costly and slow. DigitalOcean also needed persistent serial connectivity during maintenance periods to ensure access when rebooting devices remotely.
The solution had to meet several criteria:
- Provide resilient “always-on” backup connectivity
- Eliminate the time and cost associated with a technician traveling
- Ensure reliable access offline for equipment in remote data centers
- Minimize capital and operating expenses for the backup solution
THE OPENGEAR SOLUTION
DigitalOcean chose Opengear’s console server and infrastructure management solutions featuring Smart Out-of-Band (Smart OOB™) and embedded cellular connectivity to gain resilience and dependability.
DigitalOcean’s data centers now include an Opengear IM7200 48-port console server in each rack, which manages the over 40 servers on the rack through a separate out-of-band management network. Located on a different tier of their OOB network DigitalOcean also uses an array of infrastructure managers to feed serial consoles to each device, including Opengear switches in the racks and additional equipment
DigitalOcean’s need has been fulfilled and now:
- Has flexible, affordable and reliable solutions
- Fulfills its 99.99% uptime guarantee
- Ensures that diagnostics and maintenance are conducted quickly and remotely
- Experiences lower operating costs
“We rely upon Opengear heavily for all initial site bootstrapping and to handle any problems that arise where the server is completely offline or otherwise inaccessible. With sites around the world, we don’t have people at every data center all the time, so it’s crucial for us to be able to get to any of our globally distributed devices at any time. Accessing and managing servers remotely is a must.” ~ Jeremy Stretch, Network Engineer”
Cloud Infrastructure/Web Hosting
DigitalOcean is a cloud infrastructure provider and the second largest hosting company in the world. The company allows users to efficiently manage their compute and networking infrastructure, delivering speed by leveraging servers that use only high-performance SSD drives and offering simplicity through intuitive controls and development frameworks.