"Best practice('s)" for OnPlus deployment - Activate "in advance", or on-site, or does it matter?

[davebainum]

Hi all,

Okay, so my prior little issue with the OnPlus device raises another tantilizing question:

What is the "best practice" for deploying new OnPluses?  Is it to activate it (start to finish) at the actual customer site, or is it better/easier to just pre-activate them in a controlled environment (e.g., our IT Company's offices), and then just "plug them in" at the customer sites?  Does it ultimately really matter - as long as the records are properly updated in the portal?  I suppose there could be billing or privacy issues - but those could just be addressed by "clearing out" the old settings in the portal or having good recordkeeping on our end to compensate...

We've been doing more of Option #2 lately, given that the device supports DHCP and we haven't really seen any negative side effects.  I suppose that purists will say that it would be "better" to potentially assign it a static IP address just like any other fixed device on the network... but more and more, we're seeing other devices that almost "insist" on using DHCP even though they are permanent server devices (Server Essentials 2011, Microsoft Response Point comes to mind...).  I kind of like the flexibility of it just going off of DHCP and being potentially able to rapidly exchange/remove/change out the devices as needed - and then just updating the records in the portal, changing customer info. or administration, etc. as appropriate.

Just curious if there are any thoughts on this topic...

Cheers,

-- Dave Bainum, PMP* (dbainum@ritetech.net)

RiteTech LLC / www.ritetech.net / Tel. +1 (703) 561-0607

[*PMP=PMI Certified Project Management Professional]

[afullfor]

Dave,

Good discussion.  The option of pre-configuring or just configuring on-site is really up to you.  Option 2 is probably a little safer because you don't have to remember to force re-discovery, and without that you would have the IT Office discovery leak through.  If the customer does not have plenty of bandwidth, you might save a little time activating at the office.  Even just getting as far as the OnPlus Agent to the activation page means the device has moved from the manufacturing code the the current bootstrap load, which saves a little time on-site.

As for using static IP vs DHCP, I think it is safe to say that best practice is to use static.  We have seen real-world cases where a site loses power, and when the power is restored, the DHCP server does not recover correctly, even though WAN and routing is fully functional.  If the OnPlus agent is configured with a static address, it will operate normally, firing events indicating the network problems, and even providing remote access to the failed DHCP server device.

I can definitely see cases where DHCP is sufficient.  For example, when the Agent is just being used to handle a site survey and not for permanent monitoring.

Andy

[Michael Holloway]

+1