FAQ R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud

A premium portfolio of products engineered in Germany, consisting of routers, switches, access points, and firewalls which are "cloud-ready". The application of the very latest software-defined networking technology to establish enterprise-wide, highly automated infrastructures in the areas of WAN, LAN, WLAN, and security. The choice of operating mode is yours: As a Public Cloud hosted in Germany or as a private cloud. "Fully integrated" describes the unique interplay of a number of factors that make the R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud an integrated network management system: This unique combination means that the R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud ensures the intelligent organization, optimization and control of your entire network architecture, which drastically simplifies the provision of dynamic networks.

"Software-defined networking" does away with the former manual configuration of individual devices and replaces it with the automated orchestration of networks. The administrator uses an easy-to-operate, centralized interface to specify the framework conditions for the overall network design. The configuration and rollout of configuration changes are handled by a central management system – fully automatic and custom-designed for all of the network components (routers, gateways, switches, access points, and firewalls). This ensures that the capabilities of the network components are utilized to the full, particularly in the area of virtualization. Another aspect is the strict separation of management connections on the control plane from data connections on the data plane: While the data connections (e.g. VPN tunnels) are set up between the VPN gateways, the individual network components are connected directly to the R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud over independent management connections. What this means is: User data remain invisible to the R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud while the management and monitoring of network.

The Public Cloud is hosted at a datacenter in Germany. A server hosts several organizations and projects, all of which are managed securely separated from one another. This Public Cloud provides a fast and easy entry into SDN-based Cloud management and is ideal for small, medium-sized and large projects. In addition, the R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud can be set up as a private cloud at data centers operated by system vendors or end customers. This is ideal for service providers and integrators, and where specific data-protection requirements apply.

Yes. The customer is given access by the organization or project administrator, for example as a project observer with read-only access to the dashboard. In this case, passwords are hidden and the configuration cannot be changed.

Yes, the setup of self-defined parameters and firewall rules are done in the menu entry "Security". For every network of a R&S®LMC project, a security profile is automatically created or existing settings and rules are migrated there. In addition, security rules such as those for Application Management, Content Filter, and Packet Filter can be created there centralized for all networks of a project, also called security profiles, and applied automatically to all desired locations.

Yes, the R&S®LMC offers the possibility to adopt local configurations. This function is deactivated by default. Thus, the R&S®LMC determines the configuration. Please note that the automatic SDN configuration overwrites parts of the device's configuration. The integrated password management of the R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud ensures that no unauthorized configurations can be made locally.

The R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud initially writes the configurations in test mode, only after a configuration was successful and a connectivity check to the R&S®LMC was carried out the device finally accept the configuration. In case the R&S®LMC is not accessible for more than 5 minutes after a configuration rollout, the configuration of the device will automatically be rolled back. A “snapshot” feature for multiple configuration statuses is not currently available.

The devices continue to work autonomously, although during this time they cannot be monitored or reconfigured from the Cloud.

A device connected to the Cloud acts as follows in case of reset: In case of a device reset, the device's R&S®LMC certificate will be deleted and the R&S®LMC domain will be set back to the default value cloud.lancom.de. A cloud-ready device with zero-touch function will autonomously try to connect to the public R&S®LMC. If the cloud-ready device had been actively managed in a R&S®LMC project and integrated via PIN in this project before the reset, the device will automatically be integrated in this project again as long as the device can connect to the internet after the reset. If the cloud-ready device had been managed in a private R&S®LMC and had been integrated via PIN in a certain project before the reset, the device will automatically be forwarded from the public R&S®LMC to this private R&S®LMC but will NOT autonomously be integrated in the project again. Such devices have to be integrated in the respective project manually with a vaild activation code.

Devices can also be permanently disconnected from the Cloud and operated stand-alone (e.g. operated with LANconfig, WEBconfig or WLAN controller).

To disconnect a device from an instance of the Cloud, the following commands have to be executed:

LCOS-based devices (routers, access points and WLAN controllers):

WEBconfig: In the configuration area Configuration > R&S®LMC > Configuration, set the Operating switch to No and execute the Delete Certificates command.

Alternative: On the Switch OS command line, go to the R&S®LMC directory by entering the command “lmc”, then run the commands “delete-certificate” and “operating no”.

For LANCOM switches, the same procedure is performed as follows:

WEBconfig: In the Configuration area of the LCOS menu tree SETUP > LMC, set the Operating switch to No and execute the Delete Certificates command.

Alternative: On the LCOS command line under Setup/LMC, execute the commands “do delete-certificate” and “set operating no”.

Alternatively, the device can be deleted from the R&S®LMC device list. If the device is connected actively to the R&S®LMC at this point of time, the R&S®LMC certificate will likewise be deleted from the device. Thus, the device will then be uncoupled from the R&S®LMC.

In general, we recommended that you give the devices a clean start and reset them before configuring them with the Cloud. If previously configured devices are integrated into the Cloud, their individual parameters are from then on written to the individual device configuration of the Cloud, and cross-device settings can be made via the SDNconfig of the R&S®LMC. The SDNconfig works in such a way that previously existing and identically named settings are updated by the R&S®LMC. So for example, if a network called INTRANET or an SSID called GUEST is already configured on the device, and a network of the same name is defined in the LMC, the SDNconfig "wins" and overwrites those entries in the tables of the devices.

R&S®LANCOM WLAN controllers offer functions such as configuration, monitoring, firmware management, layer-3 tunneling, roaming acceleration and client steering. In the long term, the capabilities of the WLAN controller will be provided by the R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud, so the future is set to be “controller-less”. Currently, the R&S®LANCOM Management Cloud supports configuration, monitoring, firmware management, client steering and fast roaming. The layer-3 tunneling functionality can be outsourced to a R&S®LANCOM Router by a subsequent LCOS update. In many cases, it is a good idea to use existing WLAN controllers in connection with the R&S®LMC as a hotspot gateway. Furthermore, Rohde & Schwarz Networks and Cybersecurity has a temporary offer for the migration from a WLAN controller installation to an R&S®LMC installation.