ManageEngine announced the inclusion of automated device end-of-life (EOL) management services in DeviceExpert, the company’s network configuration and change management (NCCM) solution.

Automated EOL management - a first in the industry - helps network administrators improve device lifecycle management and ensure that network devices comply with corporate policies.

Large networks rely on a wide variety of switches, routers and other devices, and many organizations have policies requiring the replacement of devices to which manufacturers have assigned an end-of-life status. At EOL, many manufacturers will no longer support or maintain these devices, which increases risk for the organization that still uses them. Organizations today usually track device EOL status manually. The network management team must discover when a device has been declared EOL and then make a plan to replace the device. They have to save device configurations manually from the EOL device and then reinstall the configuration on the replacement device.

"With so many devices on a network, the task of discovering that a particular device has reached end-of-sale, end-of-life, or end-of-support status can be herculean," said Rajesh Ganesan, director of product management at ManageEngine.

"Yet it’s critical. If an EOL router or firewall hangs and the network administrator calls a vendor for support, the vendor may not be able to do anything, and the organization has a serious problem on its hands. The ability to automate both EOL status discovery and the identification of devices that have reached EOL saves time and money even as it helps eliminate potential network vulnerabilities."

As the industry’s only NCCM solution to offer EOL management, DeviceExpert automates many of the manual tasks that had consumed the time of an organization’s IT and network management teams. From a central location, DeviceExpert monitors equipment vendor websites and bulletins for information on EOL status updates. It maintains a central database of EOL device status updates, similar to the database of vulnerability signature updates that security software vendors maintain. The database is updated constantly, and DeviceExpert installations on customer networks regularly pull down EOL status updates, so an organization’s network managers always have up-to-date information about devices that have been assigned an EOL status.

The automation capabilities of DeviceExpert also facilitate the decommissioning and recommissioning of devices. The DeviceExpert inventory database contains the configurations of all the managed devices, properly versioned. Getting the replacement unit up and running is as simple as installing a new device and pushing a particular configuration version from DeviceExpert inventory. DeviceExpert not only backs up the configurations of all devices automatically, but also stores them with proper versions and labels. Administrators can view and deploy any version on any device. They can also use the state-of-the-art automation capabilities of DeviceExpert to carry out configuration changes, upgrade firmware, upload and download OS images, and check configurations for compliance to standards.