Out-of-Band & LTE Routers Help Data Centers Mitigate Downtime and Provide Peace of Mind

International Data Corporation (IDC) announced earlier this year the LTE Routers/Gateways market would grow from $804 million worldwide in 2018 to $1.9 billion by 2022 which represents a compound annual growth rate+ (CAGR) of 27.4%.  They also reconfirmed that North America would continue to lead in the consumption of LTE routers/gateways but recognized that Asia/Pacific would grow the fastest overall in all regions.

Why is the IDC forecasting the LTE router/gateway market globally uptake? Why is the uptake in forecast focused on the enterprise space? These and other questions will be explored in this blog.

These gateways have been around for almost a decade with a large presence in consumer markets, but more recently the market is seeing a strong uptake in enterprise applications.  But first, let’s look at Long-Term Evolution (LTE) Routers, and how LTE connectivity works in the enterprise.

LTE Routers are an evolution of the cellular connectivity that historically provided Internet access to your cellular phone. LTE is a standard for wireless broadband communications for mobile devices and data terminals, based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA technologies.

LTE connection speeds improved dramatically and are now capable of providing connectivity throughput that make them a viable option for enterprise data center or branch offices. This performance factor is enabling applications in many vertical markets; including healthcare, food processing, retail and financial sectors.

Whether in the data center or branch office/remote site an LTE router offers temporary(backup) or permanent internet connectivity.  In many instances, an LTE router can be used as a temporary internet connectivity solution when the primary network infrastructure is not available.  In permanent or primary situations small or mid-sized operations may opt for LTE connectivity due to a lack of wired connectivity options or because of the flexibility that a wireless connection provides.

So now that you understand the basics of LTE connectivity let’s look at some factors we see in the enterprise that support this growth rate and where your organization can benefit from utilizing LTE routers in your data center, branch office, or remote site.

SD-WAN Deployment – the rationale for SD-WAN deployment in your branch offices are numerous from saving money to improving reliability just to name a few. Considering the increase in data traffic, improving uptimes and the complexity of networks in the enterprise the need for an SD-WAN deployment to offer IT personnel a solution to connectivity management is obvious.  Utilizing a full-featured LTE router/gateway for failover and failback to maintain internet connections is an important safeguard to our IT operation and compliments an SD-WAN deployment

Data centers are comprised of mission-critical components such as routers, switches, KVM’s, servers, storage and appliances that serve as the backbone of your IT infrastructure. Having a secondary network access and control to the data center, and its network infrastructure is called Out-of-Band Management. Every data center and remote site should have a dedicated out-of-band network to improve overall network resiliency, performance, support upgrades and local network repairs, and reduce response times for outages. LTE routers are part of the Out-of-Band Management (OOBM) solution and provide the cellular OOBM for remotely troubleshooting and restoring enterprise IT equipment through functions called failover and failback.

What are failover and failback? And why it is important?

Failover is a protective feature that switches over your primary operations on a computer server or entire data center to a redundant standby system or network through a cellular LTE router.

Failback is the reverse of the Failover process.  The failback recovery operation restores operations to your primary operating system and re-synchronizes the data after your primary operation has been restored, again using a cellular LTE router.

By definition, these failover and failback operations are critically important in the performance of a data center, remote site or branch office.  But wait there is more…

It makes good sense to equip your data center with the tools to prevent or minimize downtime, but there are financial reasons as well. Research Firm Gartner has sited that downtime in the data center costs on average $5,600 a minute or $300,000 for a network outage lasting a single hour!! The increase in the LTE router/gateway market is no surprise, and the need for LTE connectivity in your data center or remote sites should be considered.

To help you in incorporating LTE connectivity into your data center operations, our Sr. Field Application Engineer, Jeff Blyther has penned an Application Note on “Using an LTE Cellular Gateway for Failover/Failback”. In this Application Note you will get a detailed review of how Lantronix SLC8000 and SLB console managers allow you to automatically manage failover and failback, for your peace of mind! Our products will keep monitoring your primary network and seamlessly failover to a secondary LTE connection when the primary link’s performance is decreasing, and the failback when the primary link is restored.

Lantronix, as an OOBM industry leader, recognizes the changing IT infrastructure environment and recognizes the need for secure and reliable connectivity equipment. We offer a full range of OOBM products for the data center and branch office including a full feature LTE Connectivity Kit.  Check out all our OOBM products here.