|
Executive Summary
While the proliferation of branch and remote offices is a positive sign of company growth, it can be a challenge for IT staffers. Besides managing data centers, IT teams take on the additional responsibility of managing and repairing branch office assets like routers, switches, firewalls, WAN optimizers and servers. Employees who work in these remote locations typically do not have the IT skills to troubleshoot problems. To overcome this challenge, many IT staffers use remote access software to diagnose and repair branch office problems. However, these tools are only useful if the OS and network are functioning. If the network or OS is down, an on-site employee might be asked to go to the server closet and address the problem. If that doesn’t work, then additional costs in travel, time, and lost business might be incurred.
This paper will address the added value (in terms of uptime and security) of out-of-band access and control tools for branch offices, and why out-of-band should be considered a critical component of branch office networks.
Challenges in the Branch Office
According to data from the Internet Research Group, there are over 1.5 million branch offices in the United States today, and this number continues to grow. What’s more, this does not take into account kiosks, ATMs and other self-service transaction locations.
While branch offices broaden the reach of businesses, it also broadens the burden of IT managers who are responsible for the installation, monitoring and maintenance of technology assets in these various locations. These assets can include networking devices, such as routers, switches, WAN optimizers and firewalls. They can also include distributed application and storage servers for transactions and e-mail.
The challenges associated with managing remote offices break down into the following categories: Control and Complexity: Branch office networks can have an array of heterogonous components in terms of devices and manufacturers. The increasing complexity of these networks brings an increased concern about failures and how to fix them. Also, with hundreds, or potentially thousands, of IT assets spread out across the globe, the need for a centralized dashboard to manage these devices becomes critical.
Security: Many branch offices, especially retail locations and banks, contain sensitive customer information and/or credit card data that can be vulnerable to intrusion without the proper safeguards. The proliferation of Wi-Fi in branch locations adds yet another layer to this security concern.
Limited Budgets and Resources: Typically, remote offices do not have their own dedicated IT staff. In this common scenario, it is incumbent on the HQ-based IT administrators to diagnose and correct networking and server problems. Sometimes, this involves traveling to the location to troubleshoot, which can increase the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) as well as increase costs from travel expenses. Another option is to hire a service provider to do a “truck roll” to the location, which can also be costly.
If the problem is critical and must be corrected immediately, then travel might not be an option. Remote access tools become an ideal way to log in and correct IT issues in the branches. Most remote access solutions are segmented into in-band and out-of-band categories.
In-Band Access Options
Remote Management Software: This type of solution enables IT administrators to access the desktop and applications running on target servers. A significant limitation of remote management software is that it requires that the target OS is available. If the operating system is frozen or crashes, then the server cannot be accessed. In addition, these software solutions are dependent on a connection to the target server’s network interface card. If the network is unavailable, then this also becomes a roadblock to repairing the problem.
Table 1 illustrates the gap between remote access software and out-of-band options like KVM-over-IP.
Terminal Emulation Protocols: Telnet and its encrypted counterpart SSH are used to access and configure devices with serial ports: routers, switches, firewalls, power distribution units and servers. Like remote management software, this access method is only as effective as its network connection. If there is a problem with the WAN, then an IT professional might be required to go to the remote location to make the repairs. In addition, these maintenance interfaces can make branch locations more vulnerable to network intrusion since hackers could use these same interfaces to steal data and plant viruses.
|
