The challenge? Only 25% of sites have dedicated IT staff, making outages costly and time-consuming to resolve. Internet or data center link failures can bring down core applications, while misconfigurations on key devices can take up to a full day to fix. Mercado Livre needed a way to simplify management at scale, ensure business continuity, and avoid expensive on-site interventions.

By adopting ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid platform, Mercado Livre gained LTE-based out-of-band connectivity, secure failover to data centers, and centralized cloud management. The result is stronger resilience, faster recovery, and fewer truck rolls — or in other words, turning uptime into a competitive advantage for Latin America’s digital economy.

Key outcomes:

• Business Continuity: Shipments and payments keep flowing during outages
• Fast Recovery: Remote fixes prevent 24+ hour downtime
• Efficiency: Faster deployments and fewer on-site visits

“Everyone on-site was amazed. The built-in LTE automatically took over and distribution carried on like normal. The ZPE solution paid for itself with just this one outage.”  –  Evandro Soares Correia, Jr. – IT Admin, Mercado Livre

Imagine the scenario from our last article: It’s 2am, a core router just went down, and customers in three regions have your phone ringing off the hook. You try SSH. No response. You ping through the management VLAN. Again, nothing.

What about the console port? This is your last lifeline to see what’s happening under the hood. But when you can’t reach it remotely, recovery slows to a crawl. What should have been a quick fix is now turning into hours of downtime, unhappy customers, and potential SLA penalties.

Things can really spiral out of control for ISPs who depend on their production networks for management. Let’s look at the biggest technical hurdles and business impacts that crop up, and the approach ISPs are taking to make sure they’re always in control.

The Problems When Console Access Is Gone

1. Recovery Turns Into a Road Trip

Technical hurdle: No console access means your only option is to dispatch engineers to the site, plug in manually, and perform recovery by hand.

Business impact: Each truck roll burns thousands of dollars, drags engineers away from other projects, and extends downtime. Customers lose trust and SLA penalties are suddenly on the table.

2. Small Outages Turn Into Big Problems

Technical hurdle: A single misconfigured update or failed device can have a snowball effect when you don’t have console visibility. You can’t isolate the fault quickly, and the blast radius grows.

Business impact: What could have been a quick local fix becomes a regional outage that puts business networks and enterprise accounts at risk.

3. Security and Compliance Take a Back Seat

Technical hurdle: In an emergency, teams know that they have to fix the problem fast. This means they’re likely to cut corners exposing management ports to the internet or using outdated console servers that have weak security.

Business impact: These shortcuts open the door to ransomware and compliance failures that could cost much more than the immediate outage.

Diagram: When management access depends on the production network, teams can’t recover from outages without going on-site to manually restore services.

The Technical Fix: Out-of-Band & IMI

It’s common to route management traffic through production networks. But this creates a “shared fate” problem: when production goes down, management goes with it.

ZPE Systems created the best practices that are used today and now recommended by CISA, the NSA, and the FBI. Here are the two critical components that fix the “shared fate” problem:

• Out-of-Band: Provides alternate connectivity (5G, satellite, secondary fiber) so you always have a way to connect to your devices, even if they’re thousands of miles away.
• Isolated Management Infrastructure: Physically and logically separates management from production, enforcing zero trust controls to keep attackers out, limit lateral movement, and accelerate ransomware recovery.

Diagram: Out-of-band provides a fully isolated management infrastructure with dedicated 5G, satellite, and other links that ensure remote access even when production networks go offline.

OOB and IMI ensure management access is always on, always secure, and always independent. Instead of rolling a truck and waiting hours for services to be restored, you can use your dedicated out-of-band path to instantly access sites from your browser. Nodegrid gives you complete, low-level remote control of devices as if you’re physically connected, so you can recover in minutes. This is critical for ISPs.

Why ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid Is Ideal for ISPs

Nodegrid is built specifically to give ISPs resilient, secure, and scalable management by combining all the functions of OOB and IMI into one device. This pairs with ZPE Cloud or on-prem Nodegrid Manager to give ISPs full remote access, visibility, and control of their distributed sites.

Image: ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid devices consolidate more than six management functions into one device, and pair with ZPE Cloud or Nodegrid Manager for holistic remote control of ISP fleets.

Whether you’re a Tier 1 operating backbone POPs, or a Tier 3 keeping local last-mile hubs online, Nodegrid gives you benefits including:

• Always-on console access via 5G/LTE, Starlink, or secondary fiber.
• Zero trust enforcement with RBAC, MFA, and continuous verification.
• FIPS 140-3 certified encryption for airtight security.
• Centralized policy control with ZPE Cloud or on-prem Nodegrid Manager.
• Device consolidation: console server, LTE modem, Ethernet switch, and security gateway in one appliance.

More ISPs are realizing these benefits and switching to Nodegrid using an approach that doesn’t require them to disrupt services. Take the Internet Association of Australia, for example. They were able to perform a nationwide rollout of Nodegrid at 35 POPs while maintaining 100% uptime, removing 70 devices from the management stack, and saving $17,500/month in costs. Read the IAA case study for full details, including diagrams and photos.

Here’s How To Deploy Nodegrid With Zero Downtime

There’s a lot at stake when you can’t reach the console during a failure or outage. But Nodegrid helps you quickly resolve those 2AM wakeup calls with secure remote access to all your systems.

To help you, we put together this Zero-Downtime Migration Checklist. Download this guide to see every step — from assessing infrastructure needs, to designing the right solution and validating after migration — and how you can deploy the most resilient ISP network management solution.

Gruve is a global AI services company, serving customers in Data Sciences, Cybersecurity, Customer Experience, and many other verticals. Their approach is simple: focus on the customer’s business, financial, and technical objectives, and tailor a solution that delivers measurable outcomes. To achieve this, Gruve has invested heavily in GPU clusters, high-speed cluster networks, and flash storage platforms.

The challenge for Gruve is operating this infrastructure. GPU disruptions or failures can have a cascading effect on training workloads and even jeopardize compliance. Resolving these issues with traditional solutions can take hours and require on-site human intervention. With strict SLAs in place, even minutes of downtime can have a significant impact on business.

Gruve required a solution that could help them react instantly as well as monitor their infrastructure in real time to perform proactive maintenance and management. Read the full case study below for full details on how Nodegrid and ZPE Cloud helped them:

• Resolve connectivity and hardware issues in minutes without going on-site
• Ensure ISO 27001 and SOC 2 compliance without service disruptions
• Allow IT staff to focus on revenue-generating initiatives instead of maintenance visits

“We rely on ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid to help us leverage the value of our AI Cluster investments. The Nodegrid platform gives us full visibility and adaptability as we build new AI solutions for customers and partners.”  –  Matt Robinson, CTO, Gruve

Picture this: It’s 2 a.m. and your core router crashes. Your NOC scrambles to respond, but your team has a big problem: the production network is down, so they can’t even reach the device. On top of downtime, you’re facing the potential for SLA breaches, penalties, and customer churn.

This scenario is inevitable for ISPs. But it doesn’t have to come with all the stress. This is where having a dedicated out-of-band (OOB) management strategy comes in. Here’s a look at why out-of-band is mission-critical for any size ISP, and why serial consoles still matter.

The ISP Management Paradox

ISPs live in a constant state of dependency: The network they’re responsible for managing is the same network they depend on for access. When that network goes down, so does their ability to fix it.

This paradox is why OOB management is more than a nice-to-have. Without a separate management plane, ISPs are forced to fly blind during outages, unable to access gear, troubleshoot, or recover services until technicians arrive on-site. That delay translates directly into lost revenue and frustrated customers.

Why Serial Consoles Still Matter

Some might argue that in today’s world of cloud-native networks and SDN, serial ports are a thing of the past. But there are a few big reasons why every ISP needs to take advantage of them:

• Direct, low-level access: Serial consoles provide the most reliable way to recover a device, bypassing higher-level services that might be unavailable.
• Protocol independence: Unlike SSH or web GUIs, serial access doesn’t depend on the production network stack. It just works.
• Isolated recovery path: When everything else is down, serial consoles are still ready to help bring critical infrastructure back online.

For ISPs, ignoring serial consoles means ignoring the most battle-tested path to fast recovery.

OOB is More Than a Backup Connection

OOB is typically thought of as nothing more than a backup link. But that mindset undersells its value. Modern OOB is strategic. Sure, it helps maintain business continuity by providing a physically and logically separate management plane that stays operational even when production is down. But beyond recovery, OOB serves as a tool for everyday operations.

ISPs use OOB for routine maintenance, firmware upgrades, and configuration changes without touching the production network. It provides a safe, isolated path to test or roll back updates, push new templates, or stage infrastructure changes, all without risking service disruption. In other words, OOB isn’t just your parachute in an emergency, it’s also the workbench for keeping your network in top shape.

ZPE Systems’ out-of-band follows the best practice of Isolated Management Infrastructure (recommended by CISA BOD 23-02 for security), which gives administrators a dedicated environment to recover from disasters as well as perform routine changes.

Everyday uses of modern OOB:

• Push or roll back configuration updates
• Perform firmware and patch management
• Grant temporary access to vendors without exposing the production network
• Conduct compliance checks and audits in isolation
• Test changes before pushing them into production

Imagine this: Your OOB network leverages LTE, 5G, or even Starlink to maintain secure connectivity to the NOC or ZPE Cloud. That path remains accessible even during an outage, an active cyberattack, or a rollback gone wrong. This OOB path guarantees management access during outages and for everyday ops, so engineers get uninterrupted access to fix devices, roll back to a golden image, etc.

ZPE’s Nodegrid devices can use 4G/5G or Starlink for remote access, with out-of-band networks that can be set up in less than an hour.

Out-of-Band Benefits for ISPs

The payoff for an ISP building a dedicated OOB network is huge:

• Fast recovery times: Remediate instantly without waiting for truck rolls.
• SLA compliance: Reduce downtime and meet customer expectations.
• Secure access without risk: Manage gear without exposing the production network to threats or human errors.
• Device consolidation: Nodegrid replaces six legacy management devices with one to simplify infrastructure.
• Industry-leading security: Built-in protections that meet ISP-grade compliance needs.

Why Secure Out-of-Band Matters

OOB isn’t without risk. Traditional solutions may be improperly secured, which can open a backdoor into your most critical systems. But ZPE has built OOB with security at the core. Here are some built-in best practices that make Nodegrid the most secure out-of-band:

• Isolation by design: Physical and logical separation prevents OOB from being a vulnerability.
• Zero Trust enforcement: Role-based, least-privilege access ensures accountability and limits insider threats.
• FIPS compliance: Validated encryption keeps data and commands secure to prevent interception.

Migrate With Zero Downtime Using This Guide

By combining classic serial access with modern OOB best practices, ISPs gain a recovery framework that’s both reliable and adaptable.

The easiest way to migrate is by deploying Nodegrid. This drop-in replacement integrates serial console access, secure OOB, and centralized management that are purpose-built for ISP environments. Download the migration guide now to bring industry-leading resilience to your ISP network.

A leading retailer in Asia, who serves beauty and wellness products across the region, needed to address the growing complexity of their infrastructure. As they scaled, it became increasingly difficult to manage critical functions that edge sites relied on. This put business continuity in jeopardy and hindered their ability to quickly open new revenue-generating locations.

That’s when ByteBridge, one of ZPE’s trusted partners, proposed a solution only achievable by deploying Nodegrid. Read the full case study to see how this uniquely tailored management architecture delivered benefits like:

• Streamlined ops: Monitoring, remote access, power management, and more from a single portal.
• Lower TCO: Combined serial, Ethernet, 4G into one compact Nodegrid device.
• Wireless resilience: Automatic cellular failover for continuity during primary internet outages.

When Every Branch Matters: How a Credit Union Reinforced Network Resilience

For many credit unions, digital transformation has expanded well beyond core banking systems. They depend on resilient IT infrastructure for everything from interactive teller machines, to cloud-hosted apps and remote employee access. But for their IT teams, this brings a growing list of challenges: more branches, more network equipment, and more pressure to minimize downtime. And often, they need to solve these challenges without adding staff.

That’s where the cracks begin to show.

One mid-sized U.S. credit union faced a similar dilemma. They had to support more than 200 branch locations, but with only two IT staff. Routine network issues meant spending hours in the car, sometimes just to power cycle a device. Troubleshooting tasks or regular firmware updates easily consumed entire workdays. Combating outages was even worse because they lacked a reliable management path outside of the primary network. Long outages meant long workdays and lots of stress, not to mention the customer-facing issues like lost trust and reputation damage.

But instead of patching the problem, they made a bold move.

They adopted Nodegrid and ZPE Cloud, the out-of-band management solution that enables complete visibility and control, even when the main network fails. For the credit union’s IT team, this enabled them to perform all their jobs – from provisioning to troubleshooting, to device reboots – via remote session. The results? Drastically reduced travel costs, faster incident response times, and peace of mind knowing that every branch was protected by a resilient management backbone.

Download the full case study to see how they transformed their branch operations and set the foundation for secure, scalable growth.

Out-of-Band Management vs FMEA: Bridging IT Recovery with Risk Mitigation

By Ahmed Algam

When it comes to mission-critical infrastructure, failure isn’t a possibility, it’s an eventuality. That’s why tools like FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) exist in product validation and operational reliability.

But in IT, identifying risks isn’t enough. You have to be able to recover from them.

Let’s talk about where FMEA theory meets OOB (Out-of-Band) practice.

What is FMEA?

FMEA is a structured approach used to answer:

• What can fail? (Failure Mode)

• What happens if it does? (Effect)

• How likely is it to occur?

• How well can we detect or respond?

• What actions can reduce risk?

Each failure scenario is scored across three dimensions:

• Severity – How bad is the impact?

• Occurrence – How likely is it to happen?

• Detection – How easily can it be caught before causing damage?

The goal: Mitigate or eliminate high-risk scenarios before they cause downtime.

Where Out-of-Band Management Comes In

Now apply FMEA to IT infrastructure. Picture this:

• A router that locks up after a patch

• A firewall pushed with a bad config

• A top-of-rack switch that loses uplink

• A server stuck in BIOS after reboot

If your management tools are all in-band, you’re blind.

But with OOB, you keep access even when the network goes dark, using:

• 4G/5G LTE fallback

• Serial console access

• IPMI, Redfish, or BIOS-level control

• Out-of-band logging and alerting

How OOB Scores on the FMEA Scale

Real-World FMEA Meets Out-of-Band Management

One customer thought they had OOB covered. They plugged a 4G modem into their Cisco router to allow remote access in case of failure.

But when the router failed, their “OOB” path failed with it because their monitoring agent was installed inside the network.

Once we showed them how to move the agent to the true OOB path (outside the primary network), it was an immediate “aha!” moment.

In FMEA terms:
They reduced Occurrence and improved Detection just by separating in-band from out-of-band.

Check out some more real-world stories like this one by reading my other article, 3 Real Lessons in Network Resilience.

Design for Recovery with ZPE

At ZPE Systems, we believe resilience starts with visibility and control, even when everything else fails. That’s the purpose of our Nodegrid platform:

• Secure, isolated access to remote infrastructure

• Cellular, Wi-Fi, and wired failover for real redundancy

• Integrations with top monitoring and automation platforms

• Smart, adaptive OOB architecture built to support FMEA-driven design

If Your FMEA Requires Recovery, We Can Help!

If your environment depends on high uptime, fast response, and remote visibility, Nodegrid is your bridge between failure analysis and real recovery.

Use the form below to contact us and let’s talk about your FMEA goals.

Out-of-Band (OOB) management used to be a last resort, a ‘break glass’ tool for gaining access to failed IT. But many organizations are now realizing that out-of-band is a strategic weapon that can do much more than get them out of a jam. It can help patch systems within 48 hours, test config changes and firmware updates, and monitor infrastructure health to prevent failures and stay proactive.

But there’s one big problem that stops teams from putting together an out-of-band infrastructure: there are too many devices to piece together and manage.

Traditionally, teams have built OOB environments using multiple devices from different vendors:

• Routers provided secure connectivity and routing logic.
• WAN routers served as modular access points.
• Cellular devices offered LTE/5G backup and remote cellular access when wired networks failed.
• Serial console servers were added to gain terminal-level access to switches, firewalls, and other appliances.
• Firewalls or VPN concentrators (for security-conscious teams) were deployed to secure management plane access through encrypted tunnels.

The Complexity of Multi-Device OOB Environments

For teams managing a few sites, juggling devices may be feasible. But when there are dozens, hundreds, or thousands of locations, the cracks begin to show:

1. Operational Complexity

Every device has its own OS, firmware, and configuration syntax. Pushing a global policy change like updating SSH access rules or hardening TLS settings requires custom playbooks for each platform. Over time, this increases the risk of misconfigurations and creates blind spots in security audits.

2. Troubleshooting Bottlenecks

When a site goes dark, support teams need rapid access to console ports, environmental telemetry, and WAN connectivity diagnostics. But a fragmented toolset makes root-cause analysis a game of guesswork – Did the router fail? Does the modem have signal? Is the serial port offline?

3. Inefficient Use of Space and Power

Remote cabinets and edge environments have very limited (if any) rack space. You might have 1RU or less of space, but three devices that need to be installed. Even if you get crafty and manage to squeeze them in, having multiple devices increases power draw, thermal output, and points of failure. This isn’t scalable, especially in cramped environments like cell towers, retail stores, or substations.

4. Increased Procurement and Support Costs

Assembling out-of-band networks from multiple vendor devices simply makes more work for procurement teams, who face long lead times and inconsistent licensing models. But that’s just the beginning. Costs pile up when you need to maintain this infrastructure. It’s extremely expensive to have a separate contract for each cellular device at every location, for example, which can easily add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Or, having third-party maintenance contracts for existing devices that have gone EOL.

Why Teams Dream of a Single-Box Solution

Remember when the smartphone hit the market? Rather, when it became commonplace and developers started making an app for everything? There were so many single-function devices  and items that you didn’t need anymore – phone, alarm clock, digital camera, calculator, notepad, mp3 player, flashlight – the list goes on.

Networking and IT teams are dreaming of something similar for their infrastructure. At every expo and conference in recent years, we talked with thousands of people who said that out-of-band adds too much extra equipment (and work) that they don’t want to deal with.

So, what do they want? Something that “just works,” according to those we talked to recently at RSA Conference 2025. They want to be able to deploy one box that securely comes online, can be configured remotely/automatically, and doesn’t require a bunch of other devices for automation or computing or cellular. Here are some popular wish-list use cases:

• Remote Sites & Branch Offices: A single appliance that can offer serial access to critical equipment, cellular WAN failover, and environmental monitoring in space-constrained sites.
• Colocation Data Centers: One platform that combines console access, VPN tunneling, and rack telemetry to reduce hardware costs and footprints.
• Industrial & OT Environments: Ruggedized devices with extended temperature ranges, shock resistance, and power redundancy ideal for energy, utilities, and manufacturing.

Imagine their surprise when we say, “That’s our box. We do what nobody else can.”

ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid is Single-Box Out-of-Band Management and More

ZPE Systems developed this all-in-one capability and offers devices in a variety of sizes, up to 1RU. This platform is called Nodegrid and it combines the many functions we discussed, plus the ability to host third-party apps/tools, run Ansible and custom automation, and provide centralized management via on-prem deployment or ZPE Cloud connection.

All-in-One Capabilities

One Nodegrid device handles all the functions of traditional, dedicated devices, including:

• Serial console server (for direct access to routers, switches, firewalls)
• Cellular modem (LTE/5G with dual SIM failover)
• Ethernet routing and switching
• Secure VPN or SD-WAN capability
• USB out-of-band storage or keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) options

On top of these, Nodegrid runs VMs, Docker containers, apps, and automation solutions. It replaces up to nine traditional devices and fits neatly in 1RU or less of space.

Here’s how our customer Vapor IO used Nodegrid to free up 5RU and automate their deployments. Read Vapor IO case study .

Centralized Management and Policy Enforcement

Administrators can deploy and manage thousands of units through a single orchestration platform, via Nodegrid Manager (on-prem) or ZPE Cloud (SaaS). This lets them easily enforce access policies, audit activity, and automate firmware updates without relying on disparate interfaces.

Isolated Management Infrastructure Best Practices

Nodegrid provides what is called Isolated Management Infrastructure (IMI), which is an industry best practice for maintaining resilience. Unlike traditional out-of-band, which relies in part on production systems, IMI creates a completely separate management network that remains accessible and online even if the production network completely fails. This lets teams access and recover their systems during an active cyberattack or outage. IMI has been used by hyperscalers for more than a decade and is now being written into new laws around the world.

Hardened Security

The Nodegrid and ZPE Cloud platform have the industry’s highest security. You can read the full security assurance document that covers the hardware, software, and cloud security features, as well as the third-party certifications. Here are some of the highlights: secure boot, signed OS, self-encrypted disk, three Synopsys validations, ISO27001, FIPS 140-3, SOC 2 Type 2.

Automation-Ready

Nodegrid integrates with Ansible, Terraform, and Python APIs, enabling Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) workflows and automated responses to network incidents. Automation can run natively on the Nodegrid device, or stored in ZPE Cloud and pushed down where needed.

Schedule a Demo

The days of piecing together out-of-band solutions are coming to a close. The overhead, security gaps, and physical constraints are driving a clear trend: simplify the edge, secure the core, and consolidate the tools.

ZPE Systems helps you do all three of these. To get hands-on with our products or chat with an engineer about your specific use case, schedule a demo at the link below.

Schedule a Demo

See Nodegrid in Action!

Senior Sales Engineer Marcel van Zwienen put together this 20-minute video giving you a first-hand look at Nodegrid’s interface. He shows you how ZPE Cloud makes it easy to monitor, troubleshoot, and update devices even if they’re thousands of miles away. Don’t miss it!

Watch Video