Out-of-band management for branch, edge and remote sites

Details

How do you bring up a new site without sending an engineer?

Ship the console server, have someone rack and cable it, and let it phone home. When it calls home to Percepxion for the first time, Smart Groups evaluate it against membership policy and apply the matching firmware and configuration automatically. That’s zero-touch provisioning: nobody configures the console server by hand, and the routers, switches and firewalls behind it come up over their console ports from the central team’s desks.

The device makes the first move. It registers to Percepxion over an outbound-only MQTT connection, so the site needs a path out, not an inbound firewall rule. The one setup step that matters on site is enabling the Percepxion client so the unit knows where to call.

How does a small team run hundreds of sites from one place?

Percepxion handles the fleet work. It schedules jobs across every site, manages firmware, applies config templates, and backs up and restores Lantronix appliance configuration. Access is organized by project, portal and organization, with three default roles and per-operation permissions, so a regional team or a partner sees only its own sites. The Smart Group that provisioned a site also holds its firmware and configuration policy, so the fiftieth site gets the same baseline as the first.

When someone needs a console, they open it in a browser. There’s no VPN to set up and no device IP to look up.

Which console server fits which site?

Size it to the site. For smaller branch and edge locations, the EMG series fits the space, and the EMG 8500 is modular and field-configurable, so its modules can change as the site grows. Both families register to the same Percepxion fleet, so a branch closet and a regional hub show up in one inventory and follow the same Smart Group policies. For larger sites, the SLC 9000 brings 16 to 48 console ports in 1RU, with two 1GbE and two 1/10G SFP+ uplinks with failover.

What about connectivity at sites with a single WAN link?

Add cellular. For the SLC 9000, the external NTC-501-SLC9 kit for North America and the NTC-502-SLC9 kit for EMEA and APAC add 5G, powered and managed by the SLC 9000 itself, so there’s no separate power supply at the site. That gives the site a second management path that doesn’t depend on the primary circuit.