Opengear to serve the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Opengear is a Brisbane-based provider of next generation out-of-band management solutions.

The contract was won through Opengear’s reseller partner, the Ethan Group. The reseller responded to a tender put out by the DFAT and will fulfil the product supply to the Department. Opengear did the design and testing with DFAT and also provides all technical support.

Under the terms of the agreement, over the next three years, Ethan Group will supply around 200 CM4116 console servers for use at all Australian posts overseas.

The deployment is one of the first central management of distributed IT infrastructure over IP used by the DFAT. It will allow DFAT’s system administrators and network managers to affordably and securely monitor and control the department’s computers and networks around the clock, anywhere in the world.

According to Bob Waldie, chief executive officer, Opengear the new system will prove to be more cost-effective for the Department allowing it to remotely maintain servers, networks and telecommunications as well as deal with IT incidents, rather than send individual technicians to each location where a problem is experienced.

“By providing a system where server, network and telecommunications issues can be dealt with remotely from one location’s systems, administrators can now avoid much of the cost associated with sending technicians to individual sites.

“This can be of particular importance when you are dealing with a worldwide network like DFAT’s,” said Waldie.

Opengear’s CM4116 has added secure network console management to provide secure out of band management access to LAN managed devices and service processors.

The CM4116 has 16serial ports that provide secure access to the serial console ports on Windows, Sun and Linux servers and serially controlled network devices.

“For DFAT, the CM4116 console managers will mainly be providing secure access and management of network infrastructure such as routers, switches, PBXs and communications connections,” said Waldie.

The CM4116's Secure Tunnelling enables control of remote computers using network consoles like RDP and VNC. The CM4116 can also monitor and control networking appliances (routers, firewalls) and power switches over the management network using network protocols like IPMI, SoL and HTTPS.

"The use of Linux and other open source technology also made Opengear console servers a more cost-effective solution," he said.

Waldie couldn't provide a monetary figure for the value of the contract, however CRN has learnt that one server console is priced at $1800 inlcuding GST.

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