Sometimes, as we know, we technicians are masters at “complicating our lives”! We are focused on the problems we face daily and so committed to face company needs designing ingenious solutions that sometimes we miss the cases in which the solution is simple and available in just one tool!
One of the main problems, when talking about managing an endpoint infrastructure, is the administration of remote offices. In this situation, typical obstacles to face are:
- How can I guarantee uniform device management in the remote offices, as if these were in the central one (on the one hand) and customize their management on the needs that the offices have by their nature (on the other)? (for example: adapt to different connectivity possibilities, network properties, different time zone, different use of devices due to the locations’ operational peculiarities…)
- Is it possible to manage everything in an optimal and centralized way, guaranteeing normal maintenance without exceeding the use of company resources (connectivity, personnel, travel costs, bandwidth consumption, more expensive and less efficient remote activities)?
- And how can I maintain the highest level of security in all locations despite the connection and communication requirements outside the perimeter of the main network? What technologies should I use and what kind of architecture should I create?
When it comes to endpoint management, the answer to all these questions is ThinMan Gateway! Adopt this component, install it and configure it to cover the specific needs of your company and, at the same time, the remote offices’ peculiarities!
What’s ThinMan Gateway
ThinMan Gateway is the ThinMan module which allows to optimize the operation of remote offices, manage all endpoints efficiently and orchestrate updates and remote assistance on the entire infrastructure; all through a normal Internet connection, without the need to define VPNs for communication between peripheral offices and the headquarters and making the use of traffic on the WAN network more efficient.
Having a ThinMan Gateway (which can also be a simple software instance, in each location) is sufficient. In fact, the devices in the local offices will be able to communicate directly with their Gateway and thus optimize response times and the distribution of traffic which, on the WAN network, will be limited to the connections between the Gateway and the central ThinMan server. All this on encrypted and secure connections, both to have authentication services (for example ThinMan Login) and to have the possibility of providing remote assistance from the headquarters (ThinMan console) on one of the remote devices connected to a Gateway.
All Gateways will be connected to ThinMan, which will be to establish common or customized policies among all locations, monitor their functionalities and customize some Gateways to establish, in example, how to synchronize updates and activities to specific locations.
The main features of ThinMan Gateway
ThinMan Gateway is a tool present on the local network of the remote office, as a specific device (Hardware Appliance), or as a privileged device or local server on which the Gateway service can run (Virtual or Software Appliance). Only this device will need to communicate with the outside of the network towards ThinMan and will do so with secure connections via the WSS protocol. The Gateway will therefore act as:
- Device delegated to remotely control Wake on LAN in total security. So as to be able to also manage the Power Management of remote offices from the central one, defining the controlled switch-on of the thin client devices and their shutdown.
- Package manager repository, updates and firmware images for the remote site, so as to make update operations even more efficient. The content to be replicated on the single site can be defined by ThinMan in total flexibility, with a single or differentiated policy. The synchronization of all packages will therefore take place only between ThinMan and Gateway within the times and with the bandwidth consumption established to adapt to the headquarters’ specific operations and connectivity conditions. Gateway will then locally control the updates distribution on the local network and their application, without creating traffic on the WAN network between the workstations and ThinMan.
- Vehicle (proxy) to provide remote assistance on remote network devices without having to create and activate VPNs on workstations. It will thus be possible to provide assistance to all workstations in a uniform and undifferentiated way.
In particular, in the most recent versions, Gateway also offers the possibility of managing and distributing the firmware images of Windows workstations, allowing IT administrators to understand how to update or restore remote Windows devices without clogging up the central server in distribution and update activities (of images that take up tens of GB), encountering connectivity bottlenecks in peripheral offices and being able to transfer and apply these updates without affecting the peripherals offices’ operations.
In addition to all these benefits, you can immediately see how Gateway allows to structure the company infrastructure in a more rational and hierarchical way, also acting as an element of redundancy for operational continuity and as an element of optimization in management, lightening and locally redistributing loads that would otherwise directed to the ThinMan server. Also for these reasons Gateway can be used to better organize large central offices, for example by dividing them by buildings or departments, each with its own identity and operational peculiarity.
Do you want to learn more about how to install, configure and use ThinMan Gateway? We tell you about it in this article!
