criterionnetworks

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Network Automation Road to Programmable
Networks
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Network Automation Road to Programmable Networks
The world of networking is undergoing a major
shift over the past few years. Micro services and
containers in application stack has put new
challenges to networking engineers across
enterprises to build a faster and leaner network
stack. Greater visibility into end-to-end network
flow and granular control is another big
requirement. It means that organizations need to
keep up with the agility of ever-changing
application landscape.
In fast-paced environment, network agility can be
achieved through Software Defined Networking
(SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and
Programmable Networks.
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SDN
(Software Defined Networking)
While these approaches to network agility
sometimes complement each other, (SDN) requires a
foundational shift in the way the networks are
built and operated. Service providers have
absorbed this concept in a limited way, while
enterprises are still finding it hard to adopt
since their needs are different. Enterprises
dont sell networks like service providers.
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Programmable Networking
Programmable networking is the answer to the
needs of enterprises. End-To-End network can be
automated through programmability without
changing the infrastructure. Thats why
enterprises are looking for network automation to
manage infrastructure through central automation
engine.
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Programmable Networking
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NFV
(Network Function Virtualization)
Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is gaining
increasing traction in the industry based on the
promise of reducing both CAPEX and OPEX using
COTS hardware. NFV decouples the network
functions such as NAT, Firewall, DPI, IPS/IDS,
WAAS, SBC, RR from proprietary hardware
appliances. It utilizes standard IT
virtualization technologies that run on
high-volume service, switch and storage hardware
to virtualized network functions. NFV involves
the implementation of network functions in
software that can run on a range of industry
standard server hardware.
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• Enterprises need to consider the below points
• while adopting these major transformations

• Reorganize Team Structure
• Skillset Transformation
• Continuous Integration and Development

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1. Reorganize Team Structure
In enterprises, networking team is divided into
Engineering and Operations team. Network
automation team should be formed as a subset of
Engineering and Operations. On one side, this
team should take care of developing the
automation scripts by working with design team.
On other side, this team should work with
operations team to build a platform that ensures
the scripts are deployed correctly while
providing the needed support.
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2. Skillset Transformation
During this transformation, networking engineers
will become networking developers and it needs to
bridge the skill-set gap. It means that we should
provide a seamless way in which existing network
architects and engineers can learn about the
various toolsets, understand configuration
Management tools such as Ansible, understand
scripting languages such as Python and understand
Linux as base operating system.
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3. Continuous Integration and Development
This is the most important transition in this
transformation process. In the traditional
network management, the configurations used to be
pushed on device basis individually through
manual method. This manual process controlled the
rate of changes. It also kept issues isolated
within the network device and further changes
could also be halted.
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Please refer to the below checklist to build this
new process

• a. Identify Toolsets
• b. Introduce Test Driven Development
• c. Build Automation for Dev, Test and Staging
  Environments
• d. Versioning and Deployment
• e. Continuous Monitoring

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a. Identify Toolsets

• Tools are the most important fact in building the
  CI/CD architecture for network automation.

1. Some of CI/CD example tool sets are
2. Source Code Management GIT, SVN
3. Configuration Management Ansible
4. Deployment Orchestration
5. Jenkins, Ansible Tower
6. Monitoring Nagios, Sensu

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b. Introduce Test Driven Development
As the entire configuration management for
network deployment becomes automated, it is
critical that developers follow test-driven
development model to write playbooks or scripts.
It means that a test case should be written
first, followed by the code to verify the test
case. It will eliminate longer development cycle
and more confidence within the team to make quick
changes to the environment.
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c. Dev, Test and Staging Environments
This is key to ensure that there are sufficient
dev and staging environments for developers to
test their code in a controlled environment
before it gets into production. Developers should
be able to spin up these environments on-demand
so that they have multiple variants of these test
beds.
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d. Versioning and Deployment
It is important to keep track of every change to
the infrastructure as a version change. It should
be easy for teams to track changes easily and
revert back changes if required. Versioning is
also important to deploy changes across an
infrastructure within the network, rather than
deploying it on all the devices.
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e. Continuous Monitoring
The final and foremost of CI/CD architecture is
continuous monitoring. It includes a monitoring
system to ensure notifications are created for
errors/issues, and trigger alerts at certain
thresholds.
As the number of changes increase in automated
deployments, monitoring system ensures that the
NOC team dont have to keep monitoring every
change.
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Criterion Networks is a network transformation
partner for service providers and large
enterprises to accelerate their journey in
adopting network virtualization and automation.
Criterions cloud based solution acceleration
platform, Criterion SDCloud tailored for
customized network automation use-cases enables
multi-vendor solution sandboxes, learning academy
and Network Designer to support customers with
their ongoing transformation to Network
Automation. Criterion Networks Learning platform
could be utilized for the skills transformation
and Designer platform could be used as a
Dev/Staging environment for Enterprises to make
it part of their CI/CD
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260Santa Clara, CA 95054, USA Call 1 (408)
715-7754
Criterion Networks - India Unit 2, 7th
Floor, DiscovererBuilding, ITPL, Whitefield
Road,Bangalore-560066, India Call 91 (80)
4124-1222
https//www.criterionnetworks.com
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