Blackrock
Ansible Automation and Monitoring
Blackrock Overview
Blackrock is an Ansible IT automation service that integrates provisioning, monitoring, and update management as one system for easier operational management of IT infrastructure.
Blackrock integrates Ansible agentless automation, Klas and custom Ansible playbooks and collections, Nagios IT monitoring, and Grafana visualization as a single easy-to-use web service.
What devices are supported in Blackrock?
Blackrock natively supports Klas and Cisco devices, Keel and ESXi hypervisors, as well as virtual appliances. Support for 3rd party devices available as custom Ansible playbooks and Ansible Galaxy Collections.
Blackrock Functions and Features
The following is a high-level overview of Blackrock’s supported features and capabilities. For a comprehensive overview, please download a free trial or request a demo.
| Category | Features | Overview |
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| Ansible Automation |
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| Inventory Management |
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| Device Provisioning |
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| PKI - Digital Certificate Management |
Automate PKI IPsec certificate generation, with automatic rotation, ensuring devices always have a valid certificate.
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| Nagios Monitoring with Grafana visualization |
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| 360° Visibility |
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Web based service portal with API support |
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Ansible Automation
- Ansible agentless automation
(no additional software required on device). - Pre-installed Ansible playbooks.
- Support for most 3rd party networking devices through custom playbooks and integration of Ansible Galaxy Collections.
- Playbook execution results and logs are stored for future analysis.
- Ansible real-time logging.
Inventory Management
- Easy addition of managed hosts that is intuitive and user friendly.
- Group devices by geographic location, firmware, or hardware characteristics.
- View the running configuration and date of last modifications.
- Comparison Diff Tool to compare device configuration with expected configuration.
- View devices by location using Blackrock integrated maps.
Device Provisioning
- Get devices from factory state to deployment state using Blackrock Ansible automation and pre-installed playbooks.
- Automation of hypervisor installs such as VMware ESXi on Klas hardware.
- Configurable and flexible provisioning bundles which can include hypervisor image, firmware images, device configuration and virtual machines.
PKI - Digital Certificate Management
Automate PKI IPsec certificate generation, with automatic rotation, ensuring devices always have a valid certificate.
- Integrated support for NIAP approved Certificate Authorities (CA) e.g. ISC Certagent, PrimeKey EJBCA, and Cisco IPsec gateways.
- Automated Certificate Signing Request (CSR) generation and certificate push to device.
- Notification of expiring certificates with automatic rotation of certificates.
- View full details of all generated certificates.
- Certificate revocation and CRL analysis.
Nagios Monitoring with Grafana visualization
- Nagios IT infrastructure monitoring.
- Monitor and view the status of all networked devices and systems under management.
- Drill down into unique performance stats, and view with Grafana graphs.
- Create custom Grafana graphs as required.
360° Visibility
- Interactive dashboards and maps.
- High level view of device status and location.
- Traffic light color scheme, ease of identifying assets with issues.
Web based service portal
with API support
- Easy to web based user interface portal.
- SSL based security, support for bring your own trusted certificate.
- Multiple user support that can include admin and read-only users.
- API based on OpenAPI 3 standards, for ease of integration with other 3rd party management solutions.
Blackrock Use Cases
Blackrock eliminates the need to manually provision devices, and the complexity of managing, monitoring, and securing remote infrastructure using disparate systems. With integrated API support, Blackrock can be deployed as part of an into existing centralized management system, delivering insights into Klas and/or 3rd party networked devices.
Figure: Blackrock device provisioning eliminates the dependence of a human in the middle.
Blackrock Packaging and Certification
Blackrock is available as a virtual machine image (.qcow, .ova) file built on the secure and resilient KlasOS Keel Linux based Operating System, which is signed with a digital signature for ease of secure deployment.
Blackrock leverages Keel FIPS certified cryptography and NIAP Common Criteria (https://www.niap-ccevs.org/Product/PINE.cfm) modifications to ensure that Blackrock software is built on a secure and hardened operating system.
Blackrock package differentiators:
- Packaged as a single image file, with all applications integrated.
- No need to worry about underlying OS vulnerabilities, CVEs or OS package and kernel maintenance.
- Easy to deploy and ready to use in minutes.
- Digitally signed package, for secure deployment and access.
- Regular software updates, bug fixes and improvements.
- Flexibility to manage hundreds of devices using the power of Ansible and custom Ansible playbooks.
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Discover the advantages of using Blackrock
Gain the time to be more productive by automating manual, mundane and repetitive IT tasks.
Holistic IT Tools and Services
Reduces the burden and costs on IT teams of having to build, maintain and support IT automation systems and monitoring services in-house.
Enhanced Security
Eliminate the need for the human-in-the-middle and access to digital certs, deliver error free configurations for a consistent security posture.
Faster Deployments
Get devices production network ready in tens of minutes and not hours, giving the IT team the freedom to work on other tasks and priorities.
Related Products
Keel
The Intelligent Edge OS
Keel is a lightweight linux based OS, with integrated KVM-based hypervisor and SDN capabilities providing a secure virtualization environment on Klas modules with compute capabilities.
Blackrock supports full management and monitoring of the Keel and the enabled hardware, guest virtual machines and the sensors that it has access to using standard protocols of SNMP and syslog.
