Hey Everyone!  Our post today is going to discuss the Management Gateway Appliance.  If you don't have one you can either talk to your reseller to purchase one, or you can use our free trial of the Gateway Appliance in a virtual machine.  The free trial is fully functional with a built in limitation for how many devices it will allow to communicate to the core server at once.  What does that limitation mean in real usability?  Read on to find out!

This post is mostly a basic overview of what the Management Gateway Appliance is and does.  There will be follow up posts with useful tricks or best known methods.  If you already have a solid understanding of the Appliance then this post will most likely not contain any new information.  If you are not exactly sure what the Gateway Appliance is or how it helps, then this is the right place to start!

If you've ever wanted a device that could not only remotely manage your devices that are outside of your corporate network, without the use of a VPN, including Remote Control, Inventory and Security scanning and remediation, software distribution, etc., but is also painted a beautiful blue and teal then the LANDesk Management Gateway Appliance is just the tool for you.  Another incredible feature is the ability to offer on demand support to devices that don't even have LANDesk installed yet.

More information can be found here: http://www.landesk.com/products/ldmga/index.aspx

The free trial can be found by filling out the trial form here: http://www.landesk.com/Tools/Trial/Index.aspx

     * Fill out the form for LANDesk Management Suite and the Appliance download link will also be provided.

The Gateway Appliance in all its blue glory!

    What is it?

The Gateway Appliance is a rack mountable piece of hardware that comes with a pre-installed environment that is designed to facilitate communication between managed nodes that are out "in the wild" (i.e., outside of your internal network) and your core server.

I've worked for LANDesk for around a year, and this has quickly become one of my favorite product offerings, because it extends many of the features of Management Suite to all the laptops, home workstations, and other devices that normally wouldn't be able to be managed by LANDesk.  For the most part the change is invisible to the end user!  The ability to control devices outside of the corporate network dramatically increases the usability (also read: ROI) of LANDesk.

I highly recommend that everyone at least download the trial to see what benefit the Gateway can give.  If the load is big enough that the trial version won't cut it then I guarantee you're getting enough ROI on it to make it worthwhile to purchase the hardware appliance.  If the trial version handles the load just fine, then you've got all the benefit and the trial will continue to work.

What does it do. . . for you?

The Management Gateway Appliance receives secure SSL connections from the core server and it receives secure SSL connections from clients that are outside the network.  Once both connections are received the Gateway Appliance will act as a broker for their communication and the two devices can communicate securely over that SSL connection.

If you're on the edge of your seat with excitement after reading that description, then you probably need a hobby.  A guy here paints miniature figurines, you could always try that. Whenever I read a description like the one above my first question is, "So what?"  I want to know how that is going to affect me and my job and the company I work for.  I will list the most common use scenarios and how the Gateway Appliance fills that need.

1 - Laptops or remote locations:

This is the most common use case scenario.  What percentage of your computers are laptops?  How many of those laptops are on site all the time?  How many computers you manage are rarely or never on site?  Do you have remote locations?  How about a user that works from home and has a machine you are responsible for?  If you have devices that are not on the same network as your Core server you can sometimes really feel the pain!

Using the Management Gateway Appliance these devices will still send in inventory scans and can still be remote controlled.  If you have a Security and Patch Manager license you can even send updates and patch vulnerabilities to them!  Do you need to send a software distribution task?  That can be done also!

2 - Servers in a DMZ:

Are there devices that are separated from the core server and due to security protocol you aren't allowed to "punch holes" in the firewall?  Do you wish you could securely and easily manage those devices also?

The Management Gateway Appliance only requires one port for use, and that is port 443.  The best thing is that all traffic only needs to be open in the direction of the Gateway, so your devices don't need to open any port incoming, they only need to be able to talk outbound, and even that is only on the SSL port (443).

3 - Computers that do not have a LANDesk agent installed:

Have you ever been called to help an executive with a problem on their home PC?  Do you have those few users that you've never been able to get the agent to, because they're never in the office?  Do you have the need to remote control anyone, whether they've got LANDesk installed or not?

The Management Gateway Appliance has an On Demand remote control agent that does not depend on the full LANDesk agent being installed.  Even better, it cleans itself up when it's done.  It is a no residue remote control utility that will work from anywhere.  Do you want this to get better?  It does!  The remote control Viewer is also a small lightweight installation that can be downloaded directly from the Gateway.  That way you can remote control to anywhere from anywhere that has internet access to your Gateway Appliance.

Summary

As you can see the Gateway is an incredible piece of hardware that allows you, as a LANDesk Administrator, to extend your reach beyond your internal network.  Let's face it, working remotely is becoming more and more common so only managing those devices that don't leave your network is like brushing half of your teeth, you know there's stuff left that should be taken care of.

Here's a link to our wonderful Best Known Methods document for installing and configuring the Gateway Appliance:

Best Known Method for Configuring the Management Gateway Appliance

NOTE: At the time of this writing the Management Gateway Appliance only supports Windows LANDesk Agents, and the On Demand Remote Control is also currently for Windows only.