Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE: EMR) and the world’s leading provider of critical infrastructure for information and communications technology systems, today introduced firmware updates to its Avocent® Universal Management Gateway (UMG) appliance that further harden the industry’s preeminent secure UMG platform. The enhanced Avocent UMG is available globally.

Already the only management system on the market that can manage data center infrastructure through service processor, serial and KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) connections, the enhanced Avocent UMG further refines root-level access controls, reducing the risk of malicious intrusion. The latest firmware release (available here) provides updated support for a long list of service processors—including recent additions Oracle iLOM3, Dell iDrac8 and Dell Series C—and service processor firmware. These enhancements, and the Avocent UMG’s ability to isolate the management network from the rest of the environment, provide an added layer of security that bolsters overall data center security in multi-vendor environments. 

Other recent enhancements to the Avocent UMG are designed to bolster the system’s ability to provide alerts of failures and potential failures in multi-vendor environments. Data center managers can configure and opt-in to alerts tailored to the most relevant platform event traps (PETs)—including everything from the failure of the CPU, hard drive or server processor, to an OS blue screen—across multiple vendors and systems.

“Managing IT security is a complex task that grows in complexity with the introduction of new technologies,” said Jay Wirts, general manager, Avocent Core Products, Emerson Network Power. “With today’s firmware enhancements to the Avocent UMG appliance, we have taken another significant step toward enabling not just a more secure network, but a more flexible, productive data center.”

The Avocent UMG is the industry’s only consolidated management appliance enabling secure, centralized remote management of almost any device in any location. The enhanced Avocent UMG functions in a heterogeneous environment, identifying and accessing servers and service processors whether connected physically to the appliance or through the network. That access eliminates the need for inputting multiple IP credentials, logins and passwords, streamlining network operations and machine-to-machine communication.

Users can save Avocent UMG configuration files from Web UI—an HTML-based application used to configure and manage appliances remotely—eliminating the need to go through setup every time the Avocent UMG configuration has been changed. Other recent enhancements to the Avocent UMG enable users to record up to 40 simultaneous KVM sessions and patch three recent security vulnerabilities (POODLE, GHOST, JetLeak).

To learn more about Emerson Network Power’s hardware and software solutions, please visit www.EmersonNetworkPower.com.