UNCOVERING THE LAYERS
common methods used for remote access
and maintenance. They are dependent on
the availability of the network.
Access is not possible when major
technical issues such as network or
connectivity failures occur.
A single hardware malfunction can be
enough to trigger several days’ downtime.
Normally a company will send a technician
on site. It often happens that the problem
is resolved in a few minutes, for example
by rebooting the device.
But in other cases, the troubleshooting
process has only just begun. In any case
valuable time is lost in travelling from the
location of the IT department, time when
staff cannot work productively or critical
systems are not accessible.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
That is why out-of-band management to
manage remote network hardware is worth
its weight in gold to network administrators
of distributed infrastructures. It means
they retain control over all components,
even when in-band management
strategies are unsuccessful. It also means
resiliency across the network with the
knowledge that even with a critical failure,
administrators can quickly gain access to
remote networks.
Out-of-band solutions with
cellular failover
The principle is simple. Network devices
are normally fitted with serial interfaces
which can be interrogated independently
of the network and give the administrator
a complete picture of the status of
the device. Many of the important
management functions such as firmware
updates are only available via serial console
interfaces anyway. If a device no longer
responds to a command, administrators
can carry out a hard reboot via the control
system for the power supply.
Out-of-band management allows admins
to maintain and manage components such
as servers, WAN devices, network devices
and power supply units and resolve
malfunctions via remote access. If there
is an issue with connectivity, out-of-band
solutions offer a failover solution. Today
this is normally done via cellular (4G
LTE or 3G), creating a fast connection. If
cellular is not guaranteed, companies can
use a slower connection via modem.
So out-of-band management can
ensure continuous remote access of
Issue 02
03
63