Reliability has always been critical for telecommunications companies. Early on, telcos were challenged, largely by physical impediments, to maintain service to a growing community of customers. Man, machine and Mother Nature caused severed lines and damaged equipment, interrupting phone service and requiring costly truck rolls or repairs.

In order to guarantee the level of dial tone availability required by telephony applications, the architects of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) realized there must be a control network that would operate independent from the production network to support service delivery. System administrators could use the control network to access elements in the main infrastructure even when they became disconnected due to a hardware or software failure. As a result the concept of an out-of-band network was put into place.

While out-of-band originated within the telco industry, modern out-of-band technologies have taken their cues from the enterprise. Like the PSTN becoming a converged network supporting a host of traditional and value-added services, the out-of-band network has also undergone significant changes. Cohesive out-of-band infrastructures have improved access to IT assets, moving beyond reliability and emergency remote access, to increase the efficiency and productivity of the main network. Now the out-of-band infrastructure is making its way back to the service provider as today’s complex “next-generation networks” merge voice, video and data to create an infrastructure more analogous to data center environments than the original telephone network.

Out-of-Band Takes Shape as the IT Infrastructure Evolves

As companies became more and more reliant on the IT infrastructure to run their businesses and service availability became paramount, the use of out-of-band technologies became common in the enterprise. There, requirement led to change. An updated out-of-band implementation for the enterprise needed to harness the reliability, familiarity and proven concept of its predecessor while meeting the rigorous challenges of complex, performance driven and mixed-environment networks. This was proving to be no easy task.

Converged networks comprising an agglomeration of open source and proprietary technologies, local and remote sites and distributed applications have all complicated the means for ensuring reliable service. At the same time, service levels have become much more stringent due to driving factors such as competition, security and business continuity as well as business policy and regulatory compliance.

While physical risks may have subsided, companies continue to face highly detrimental and costly consequences when system disruptions occur. The enterprise need for advanced out-of-band technologies furthered the evolution and brought new capabilities as well.

A Systemic Out-of-Band Infrastructure Brings Key Benefits

In 2004, the concept of the out-of-band infrastructure (OOBI) was introduced. At a fundamental level, an OOBI provides secure local and remote management for every IT asset in the production network to ensure reliable service delivery across all supported applications. A true out-of-band infrastructure is not technology specific but encompasses all technologies to make the production network more efficient and accessible as well as more reliable. For example, console servers (for Unix servers, networking and telecommunications equipment), KVM switches (for systems requiring a GUI for management) and intelligent power distribution units (for remote power control) are deployed in the data center for emergency management, so that system administrators at a remote site could get virtual presence to access a server and recover it from an operating system crash.

By deploying out-of-band technologies in a systemic approach, all the different technologies can be integrated in the same framework to provide more functionality than simply emergency remote access.

Reliability remains the cornerstone of any out-of-band infrastructure deployment and today’s cohesive structure lends key advantages. An integrated OOBI improves access to the IT infrastructure thereby decreasing the time and resources needed for diagnostics and restoring a down network. Additionally, with local and remote support for all IT assets, companies no longer have to dispatch trained technicians (either in-house or third party) to the site, minimizing the costs and logistics of restoring failed equipment.

Other capabilities benefit the main network and the business. An effective OOBI optimizes IT assets and simplifies management to improve operational efficiencies and decrease administrative costs.

Extending beyond reliability, IT professionals can now strengthen other services such as security, audit tracking for all management access, billing, event notification, proactive system health monitoring, automation, etc. Out-of-band infrastructures support business continuity and disaster recovery by helping companies meet and maintain service levels and reliable networks. An out-of-band infrastructure also provides the advanced IT management capabilities companies utilize to meet their business policy or regulatory compliance objectives. An out-of-band infrastructure supports the ITIL framework in both the infrastructure and service management areas enabling companies to create a sustainable foundation for evolving compliance requirements.

Emerging Technologies Bridge the Gap

As new technologies are developed to streamline network operations, new applications and solutions likewise are born and continue to improve upon the role of the out-of-band infrastructure.

While serial interfaces (using RS-232 COM ports) are still the most common media for out-of-band, emerging technologies such as service processors are gaining momentum and bridging the gap to bring out-of-band infrastructures back to the service provider.

Service processors are small micro controllers embedded on the motherboard of most servers today or in the chassis of blade systems. Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is an open standard service processor platform supported by over 150 companies, many of whom also support their own proprietary technologies. For example, IBM ships Remote Service Cards (RSA), Dell ships Dell Remote Access Cards (DRAC), and Hewlett-Packard ships Integrated Lights-Out modules (iLO). Because those service processors are embedded inside the management equipment, they can provide additional information about the server including internal health parameters and control characteristics (temperatures, voltages, console access, remote reset, fan speeds, etc.).

The PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) has defined the next generation telecommunications platform, known as Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA or ATCA), using IPMI for the control plane. With this designation all next-generation telco equipment will use IPMI service processors in the control plane for remote management. The standardization of out-of-band around IPMI and the consolidation of all legacy, current and emerging out-of-band media under an OOBI becomes even more important as the telco and IT infrastructures merge into a converged network that needs to be managed as a single system.

Until now service processor intelligence and power has gone largely untapped and this designation is an opportunity for service providers to leverage their out-of-band networks and service processors together to gain improved server management and efficiency. System administrators can utilize out-of-band technologies to consolidate and securely manage the myriad of service processor technologies available. They can locally or remotely perform operations such as power cycle, remote console access, hardware monitoring and management, and event management across servers using one simplified user interface. Service providers can also achieve significant cost savings with regard to IT operations in terms of provisioning, deployment, and the recurring costs and overhead associated with maintaining and securing IP addresses for each service processor.

A Case in Point

Vonage Network, a subsidiary of Vonage Holdings Corp. and a leading provider of residential broadband phone service in Northern California, needed a solution to address inefficiencies within the converged data and voice network supporting its successful and growing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service business.

Inefficiencies threatened to increase costs and impact Vonage’s high standard of service. Key management challenges existed because the complex voice and data network comprised multiple vendor technologies, spanned several geographies and supported an increasing number of customers and evolving services.

Vonage selected an out-of-band infrastructure approach to improve service reliability as well as efficiency. As part of the solution Vonage deployed the Cyclades AlterPath ACS advanced console servers with the Cyclades AlterPath PM power management appliances to provide secure OOBI access between its main headquarters and its worldwide remote data centers. The out-of-band infrastructure provides remote access, fast diagnosis and troubleshooting, and restoration capabilities to over 1,000 network and IT devices across an environment comprising many vendor technologies.

By enabling remote management of its critical network and IT devices, the out-of-band infrastructure will help Vonage reduce costs associated with running geographically dispersed data centers and improve asset recovery time in the event of an outage. Michael Tribolet, executive vice president of Vonage Network said, “By improving efficiency as well as extending capacity with an out-of-band solution, Vonage is able to continue to provide its customers with an efficient, full-featured and cost-effective broadband telephone service.”

Looking Forward: A More Preventative and Proactive Role

The widespread adoption of out-of-band technologies is a testament to the fundamental need enterprises and service providers alike have to ensure the productivity of their networks and their businesses. As out-of band infrastructures continue to evolve, their role will be increasingly proactive and preventative, accessing and retrieving new levels of data to continually improve upon the efficiency of service delivery across heterogeneous and converged networks.

Marcio Saito is Chief Technology Officer of Cyclades Corp.

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