The business world has learned how important it is for organizations to be able to pivot how they operate. Every day, we have been greeted with stories of restaurants and brick and mortar stores closing or drastically revamping how they serve their customers. Businesses that operate with a distribution center and multiple traditional stores, or hybrid-stores, have suddenly become a large part of the industry landscape. The need for enhanced remote management grows as the world becomes digitized and companies limit how many employees can be at a job site at a time. Cellular out-of-band management further strengthens the control IT teams have over their network infrastructure. LTE allows information technology managers to remain in control even when the power goes out and no one is on-site.
What is Cellular Out-of-Band Management?
Out-of-band management, or OOBM, is the ability for an IT manager to control network resources while working offsite through another channel like a serial console server. Cellular out-of-band management is when a remote management device, like a console server, is equipped with LTE to ensure continuity as a primary network or as a secondary network during failover. This feature eliminates the need to wake someone up or drive down to the data center at 2 am to fix a server or a network device.
Where is Cellular Out-of-Band Management Needed?
LTE out-of-band management is very useful to organizations who are looking for a secondary network for branch locations where IT workers cannot always be on-site. We have seen many retail organizations have success utilizing our cellular out-of-band solutions where there is primary ethernet connection, but not a secondary option.
Also, locations like cellular base-stations and new stores that are under construction commonly use cellular secondary OOB before the full network is installed. In situations like this, the cellular network is considered primary, either forever or until the full network gets installed.
A Real-World Application
For one of our retail clients, incorporating new technologies, such as in-store kiosks and augmented reality displays, have helped them maintain sales during the pandemic. This client has been able to continue to generate billions of dollars through hundreds of storefronts and an extensive e-commerce network, but continued growth necessitated an easy-to-manage IT solution to shift reliable processing power closer to customers.
To help them offload its use of centralized and cloud data centers, we installed Vertiv™ Avocent® Serial Console and Vertiv™ Avocent® DSView™ Management Software. The serial console provides remote access for port configuration, upgrades, troubleshooting, and disaster recovery, which allows secure management of in-band and out-of-band networks via serial port access, in addition to:
- Increased system resiliency
- Reduced data center support costs
- Simplified remote management of edge computing systems
- Maximum uptime from future-ready IT solution
Cellular Out-of-Band Management Solutions
The Vertiv Avocent® ACS 8000 serial console server family delivers secure in-band and out-of-band visibility and control to downstream equipment in most network applications. Recently new models equipped with LTE failover support were released, allowing IT and network operations center personnel to perform data management from anywhere in the world at any time. With a dual-core ARM processor architecture with expanded memory capabilities, updated Linux operating system, and DSViewTM management software, customers are enjoying heightened levels of performance, security, and reliability, regardless of IP connectivity.
We're here to help you find the best way to increase customization and centralized user management for data systems. If you’re seeking to create innovative solutions for your customers’ most challenging remote management challenges, please visit www.Vertiv.com/Partners.
