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Part 2: Immutable Infrastructure: Best Practices for Network Professionals

by | Jun 16, 2022 | Actionable Data, DevOps, Increase Productivity, NetDevOps, Network Automation, Scripting, SD-WAN, Uncategorized

immutable infrastructure best practices
Immutable infrastructure involves servers, network appliances, and other devices which are never updated or changed. In part 1 of our blog series, we discussed the most inherent challenges with the immutable infrastructure paradigm. This post will cover immutable infrastructure best practices that you should follow to overcome these challenges and fully embrace immutable principles in your enterprise.

Immutable infrastructure best practices for network professionals

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Infrastructure as code, or IaC, uses software abstraction to separate infrastructure configurations from the underlying hardware, allowing you to write configurations as repeatable scripts that you can deploy to many different devices. It also facilitates automation and orchestration through tools like RedHat Ansible, which stores and automatically executes configuration scripts according to predefined playbooks.

IaC is used traditionally for physical and virtual server configurations, but you can also use it to create and maintain virtualized network device configurations. This is sometimes called network infrastructure as code or software-defined networking (SDN). SDN goes beyond just abstracting configurations from the underlying networking hardware. It virtualizes your entire network, creating an overlay for managing and optimizing network routing, load balancing, segmentation, and more.

IaC is an immutable infrastructure best practice because it allows you to create and deploy configurations quickly and at scale. It enables truly immutable infrastructure that you can copy, delete, and replace at will. Without IaC, you must provision each new and updated instance manually. Even with a large team of engineers, updates could take a long time, and intermediate periods during which different versions of the same server or network configuration were active simultaneously will appear. Plus, manual configurations are error-prone, and mistakes could create vulnerabilities in your network.

Infrastructure as code and network infrastructure as code allow you to deploy virtual configurations programmatically and automatically. For immutable infrastructure, IaC is frequently used to deploy and configure images for containers and other virtualized environments.

Golden images

A golden image is a standardized template for physical or virtualized infrastructure. You start with a base image with only the software and settings required universally across all instances of that device. Then, you install any agents or services needed for monitoring, threat detection, analysis, etc. Finally, you harden the image with security policies and tools, and patch any known security vulnerabilities. Once the golden image is complete, you freeze it so no further changes can be made.

Best practices for creating, securing, and updating golden images for immutable infrastructure include:

  • Incorporate as many dependencies and settings as possible in your golden image to reduce the amount of configuration that needs to happen at deployment. This will ensure that the golden image you’ve tested and validated is as close as possible to the final production configuration. It will also make it faster and easier to scale.
  • Continuously scan and analyze golden images for new security vulnerabilities. That way, you can create and deploy patched versions as soon as possible, hopefully before a malicious actor has time to exploit those vulnerabilities.
  • Fully decommission old images once they’ve been replaced with newer, more secure versions. This will ensure a consistent and secure environment, and decrease the risk of accidentally spinning up new instances with old images.
  • Store golden images in multiple locations on a micro-segmented network. Use zero trust security to create granular policies and build  customized micro-perimeters around your golden images. This will protect your images from exfiltration or unauthorized modifications. It will also ensure access to golden images for recovery purposes even if you must isolate particular micro-segments during a breach.

Golden images for virtualized servers and network devices can be deployed, modified, and updated through IaC orchestration platforms—Like AWS, Azure, etc. This further streamlines the provisioning of immutable infrastructure, ensures consistent configurations across instances, and facilitates fast and easy scaling.

Stateful and persistent data

You should strive to make infrastructure and data as ephemeral as possible. Still, there are cases where you’ll need data to persist as you’re creating, deleting, and copying immutable resources. For stateful and persistent data, you should use mountable storage attachable to new instances when old ones are terminated.

Make sure you separate the ephemeral data from stateful/persistent data, so you only keep what you absolutely need to. This will help you reduce storage costs and simplify your overall operations. In addition, you should ship log files off immutable instances and send them to a centralized monitoring server as frequently as possible to ensure they persist.

Implementing immutable infrastructure best practices in your enterprise

Many of these immutable infrastructure best practices rely on modern, software-defined technology stacks, making it challenging to apply them to legacy infrastructure. You also need clear, centralized orchestration to see and control every piece of your immutable infrastructure, even across highly distributed networks with remote branch and edge locations. Finally, all of your immutable infrastructure solutions must work together seamlessly regardless of vendor or ecosystem.

ZPE Systems can solve all these challenges with the Nodegrid network orchestration solution. Nodegrid supports network functions virtualization (NFV), which turns your physical networking appliances into virtualized solutions you can configure and manage through IaC and SDN. Nodegrid’s vendor-neutral serial console servers also support legacy pinouts, so you can bring your legacy physical infrastructure under your immutable orchestration umbrella.

The ZPE Cloud network orchestration platform can also control remote data center, branch, and edge infrastructure. You can host your choice of SD-WAN (software-defined wide area networking) solution on your Nodegrid devices or use ZPE Cloud’s SD-WAN app. This technology allows you to extend the reach of your virtualized network orchestration to your WAN architecture. To dig even deeper, you can use the SD-Branch app to control branch and edge LANs as well.

The ZPE Cloud platform and all Nodegrid devices are truly vendor-neutral, allowing integrations with leading third-party IaC, SDN, and security providers. Nodegrid empowers you to create a tightly-integrated, seamless immutable infrastructure solution for total network control.

See how Nodegrid can help you implement immutable infrastructure best practices in your enterprise.

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Part 1: Immutable Infrastructure: Challenges Your Company Needs to Be Aware of

by | Jun 13, 2022 | DevOps, NetDevOps, Network Automation, Network Edge Orchestration, SD-WAN, Uncategorized

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Immutable infrastructure refers to the critical network resources and systems that make up your infrastructure and that are never updated, changed, or fixed in any way—they stay exactly the same. If something needs to be modified, the entire system or device is replaced by a new one. While this approach has many advantages for organizations, there are still some immutable infrastructure challenges you’ll need to overcome.

Mutable vs immutable infrastructure

Traditional infrastructure deployments are mutable and continuously change in place. Sysadmins and network engineers will constantly deploy patches, modify configurations, and install new software on systems and devices while they’re actively in use. The benefit of this approach is that you don’t need to create entirely new server instances or network deployments every time you want to change something.

However, mutable infrastructure does create some risk. For example, what if you deploy a patch that breaks a core function? What if some new code introduces a security vulnerability to the system? How about if an in-place upgrade fails halfway through and you end up with an unplanned version of the configuration? With mutable infrastructure, you’re stuck troubleshooting the issues and attempting to deploy fixes on systems and devices actively in use.

On the other hand, immutable infrastructure is frequently copied, deleted, and recreated without making changes to the systems currently in use. Configurations are abstracted as software code and managed from a centralized location that’s physically and logically separate from the target infrastructure. This code can be copied and deployed to many different targets as frequently as necessary. The environments themselves are virtualized (and often containerized) which creates an additional abstraction layer from the underlying hardware. This also makes it possible to copy, delete, and recreate instances as needed.

When an infrastructure as code (IaC) or software-defined networking (SDN) configuration needs to be updated, a new version of the code is written, deployed to a new instance, and tested to ensure functionality and security. Then, traffic is redirected to the new instance and the the old one is simply deleted. If a virtualized or containerized environment fails, or is compromised by a hacker, you can delete it and replace it with an exact copy with minimum hassle.

Immutable infrastructure is becoming popular among DevOps and NetDevOps organizations that use IaC and SDN to integrate resource provisioning directly into the software development pipeline. While this approach has clear advantages—including security improvement, IT complexity and failure decrement, and easier troubleshooting than mutable infrastructure—there are also some immutable infrastructure challenges.

Immutable infrastructure challenges

The immutable infrastructure paradigm was initially conceptualized for hyperscale and enterprise data center deployments. It relies on software-defined technology stacks and orchestration solutions that automate deployment and provisioning. The challenge comes when you need to venture outside of this ideal deployment, as is the case for many organizations.

Modern enterprise networks are shifting away from massive, centralized data centers because modern enterprises are themselves less centralized than they used to be. As operations become more globalized and remote, distributed workforces evolve the norm, and enterprises deploy infrastructure closer to the network edge. Edge network infrastructure is deployed to small local data centers, branch offices, remote warehouses, and other distributed locations. Often, these smaller deployments rely on hardware-based appliances, servers, and legacy equipment.

This creates some significant challenges when you try to shift to immutable infrastructure, including:

  1. Extending the software-defined network automation and orchestration to remote locations outside your enterprise network.
  2. Bringing the orchestrator’s hooks into all of your disparate legacy hardware solutions.
  3. Finding a way to apply immutable principles to this mutable hardware-based infrastructure.

Solving immutable infrastructure challenges

Immutable infrastructure requires centralized orchestration of software-defined technology, so you need to apply SDN to WAN architecture to bring immutable to the edge. This is called SD-WAN, or software-defined wide area network. SD-WAN decouples the management of your WAN from the underlying hardware, so you can use orchestration to control distributed WAN architecture.

However, SD-WAN only gets you to the perimeter of your edge networks. To use immutable infrastructure effectively, you also need to extend the orchestrator’s reach into the branch and edge LANs. You can achieve this through SD-Branch technology, which gives you software-defined control over the internal networking infrastructure of remote architectures.

The second goal is to ensure that your orchestration solution can see and control every piece of your edge architecture, even legacy systems not designed with automation in mind. The SD-WAN/SD-Branch gateways and console servers you install at the edge need to support legacy pinouts and integrate with third-party hardware and software. If the edge connectivity solution can’t say yes to every component of your distributed network infrastructure, you’ll have gaps in the software-defined orchestration coverage.

The third task is to turn mutable hardware into immutable infrastructure, which you can accomplish through virtualization. In the same way that a single physical server can be turned into many different virtual machines, you can use network functions virtualization (NFV) to turn physical networking appliances into virtualized solutions. NFV creates an abstraction layer that separates the underlying hardware’s routing, switching, load-balancing, and other management functions. This allows your orchestrator to manage these functions automatically and create, copy, delete, and recreate network configurations at will without worrying about the mutable hardware.

The tricky thing about solving each of these challenges is that you need a truly vendor-neutral solution to make it all work. For example, if you have different branch gateways in different locations, you need to ensure that the SD-WAN/SD-Branch platform will integrate with all of them. Otherwise, you’ll need to manage multiple software-defined technology stacks, or you’ll lose the ability to apply immutable principles consistently across your entire distributed network.

The network functions virtualization platform also needs to support all of your disparate vendor hardware and legacy architecture; otherwise, you won’t be able to turn all mutable infrastructure into virtualized, immutable solutions. Plus, the orchestrator needs to integrate with your NFV platform as well as all edge hardware and software, to have full coverage.

Many immutable infrastructure solutions fall short of true vendor-neutrality. That means, to use them effectively, you have to upgrade your edge infrastructure hardware and software to compatible versions. This is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor and one that creates a massive roadblock for globally distributed enterprises hoping to adopt immutable principles.

Nodegrid brings immutable infrastructure to edge networks

ZPE Systems can help you bring immutable infrastructure to your edge networks with the vendor-neutral Nodegrid platform. Nodegrid’s powerful, all-in-one branch gateways give you the best of both worlds: you can use our powerful SD-WAN and SD-Branch technology or directly host your choice of third-party software-defined networking solutions. The modular design of the Nodegrid Net Services Router (NSR) also gives you added capabilities like edge compute, terminal server, NetDevOps, and more.

The vendor-neutral ZPE Cloud orchestration platform can say yes to every component of your distributed network architecture, including legacy hardware appliances and systems. ZPE Cloud gives you complete control over your mutable hardware, making it possible to apply software-defined orchestration to even the smallest branch deployments.

Plus, all Nodegrid devices run on the vendor-neutral, Linux-based Nodegrid OS with support for NFV. You can use Nodegrid OS to virtualize every piece of the edge networking stack, turning mutable branch hardware into immutable, automated solutions.

Learn how Nodegrid can solve your immutable infrastructure problems.

Call 1-844-4ZPE-SYS to see a demo.

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Why You Need a Next-Gen OOB Console Server

by | May 26, 2022 | Data Center Management, Failover Connectivity, Increase Productivity, Minimize Impact of Disruptions, NetDevOps, NetDevOps Transformation, Network Automation, Out of Band Management, Remote Network Management, Serial Consoles, Uncategorized

oob console server

An OOB (out-of-band) console server is a fundamental data center tool that allows you to view, manage, and troubleshoot critical remote infrastructure on a dedicated network connection.

While the functionality of generation 1 console servers is limited, generation 2 models evolved to include features like automation and security. Now, as more enterprises embrace NetDevOps, there’s a need for greater automation and orchestration, which is why next-generation or generation 3 console servers are emerging.

In this post, we’ll discuss the advantages of a next-gen OOB console server and how these devices address the challenges and limitations of previous generations.

The importance of an OOB console server

An out-of-band console server may also be referred to as a serial console, serial console server, or serial console switch. There are also OOB serial console routers which include gateway routing functionality for small branch offices and use cases for edge data centers.

OOB console servers are tools fundamental for data center infrastructure management; they connect to all your remote network devices and give you the ability to control them on a dedicated management network remotely. This network is completely separate from the WAN circuit and internal LAN, and is accessed typically via cellular, dial-up, or DSL modem.

Out-of-band data center access is crucial for a few key reasons:

  1. It provides 24/7 remote access to your critical data center infrastructure even if your WAN link goes down, allowing you to troubleshoot and recover without expensive truck rolls.
  2. You can still view and manage remote devices even if malicious actors compromise your production network or data center infrastructure without exposing yourself.
  3. Conducting resource-intensive network orchestration on a dedicated management plane reduces the performance impact on your production network and end-users.

Why do you need a next-gen OOB console server?

As modern enterprise networks have grown more complex and distributed, so have network and data center management workflows. This complexity makes it harder for engineers to efficiently manage their workloads and increases the risk of human error, especially with multi-vendor and hybrid network infrastructures.

These pain points led to the evolution of automated network management tools and solutions. Automation increases the speed and efficiency with which network administrators can provision, monitor, and optimize an infrastructure while reducing the risk of human error. Gen 2 OOB console servers have automation capabilities and scripting support that help fill the gap for data center management. Plus, Gen 2 serial consoles automate tasks like infrastructure provisioning (via zero touch provisioning, or ZTP) and basic troubleshooting (such as refreshing DNS or power-cycling) to reduce the amount of tedious manual work.

However, the needs and pain points of modern enterprises continue to evolve. It’s not enough to use individual, disparate scripts and solutions to automate specific tasks or workloads, especially to achieve NetOps or NetDevOps transformation. Gen 2 OOB console servers offer some automation support, but typically limit you to a particular vendor ecosystem or API library. Since enterprise networks consist of many different vendor solutions and devices, this rigidity leaves you with gaps in your automation coverage.

That’s why a new generation of console servers is rising to meet this challenge. Next-gen OOB console servers, also known as Gen 3, promise to deliver end-to-end automation and NetDevOps data center orchestration.

What to look for in a next-gen OOB console server

For an OOB console server to be truly next-gen, it must be able to dig its automation hooks into every device and solution in your rack. That means it needs to be vendor-neutral and include support for legacy systems not originally designed for automation.

In addition, a next-gen OOB serial console switch should support integrations with the third-party automation and orchestration tools of your choosing. That means both the hardware and software need to be vendor-neutral.

A next-gen console server should also provide high-speed OOB access and failover. Many Gen 1 and Gen 2 solutions use dial-up or 3G cellular connections, which can be slow and unreliable. Plus, 3G will be phased out (in the United States) by the end of this year. This leads to frustration when engineers try to troubleshoot and restore remote data center infrastructure as quickly as possible, and also hampers automation and orchestration efforts.

Another issue to consider is scalability. A next-gen OOB console server needs to provide enough managed ports for you to grow your data center infrastructure without needing to upgrade your management device continuously. You can even get modular serial consoles that allow you to expand or swap out port configurations as needed.

Last but not least, your next-gen console server needs to include and support advanced security controls. Imagine installing a preconfigured device that has unknowingly been infected. This could be like installing a trojan horse into your infrastructure. A next-gen OOB console server should include enterprise-grade security features and integrate with zero trust security controls and policies.

Orchestrating critical data center infrastructure with a next-gen OOB console server

Next-gen or Gen 3 OOB console servers deliver end-to-end automation and orchestration capabilities, so you can efficiently control complex data center infrastructure. A next-gen solution includes vendor-neutral hardware and software, high-speed OOB access and failover, the ability to scale up or down as needed, and enterprise security features and functionality.

The Nodegrid next-gen OOB console server solution from ZPE Systems delivers true end-to-end automation for critical data center infrastructure. Nodegrid’s vendor-neutral hardware and software can control all your vendor solutions, so there are no barriers to automating anything and everything. For example, Nodegrid zero touch provisioning (ZTP) can extend to all connected devices, allowing you to deploy remote data center infrastructure with the push of a button.

The Nodegrid Serial Console S Series can even control legacy and mixed environments, so you can upgrade your data center infrastructure at your own pace without losing automation capabilities. The open architecture, Linux-based Nodegrid OS supports integrations with third-party automation solutions so you can create a customized orchestration platform that suits your enterprise’s unique use cases and staff skillsets.

Nodegrid delivers high-speed remote out-of-band access and failover via two dual-SIM high-speed 4G/5G/LTE slots, plus you can upgrade to 5G without having to do a forklift upgrade. With up to 96 managed ports in a streamlined 1U rack-mounted device, the Nodegrid Serial Console Plus can handle enterprise-scale deployments or scale with you as you grow. The Nodegrid next-gen OOB console server also keeps management and orchestration secure, with onboard security features like UEFI secure boot, properly integrated TPM 2.0 security, encrypted solid-state disks, and geofencing.

The Nodegrid Serial Console from ZPE Systems is a true next-gen OOB console server. It delivers end-to-end automation, high-speed OOB access and failover, scalable port configurations, and enterprise-grade zero trust security features.

Learn more about OOB console servers:

★  Comparing the Best Console Servers for Data Centers in 2022
★  Out-of-Band Network Management: Fundamental Principles & Use Cases
★  How to Choose Secure Out-of-Band Management

See the Nodegrid OOB console server at work.

Call 1-844-4ZPE-SYS to request a demo. 

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NetOps vs. NetDevOps vs. SecOps vs. EdgeOps: Your Guide to Navigating the Networking Terms

by | Jan 25, 2022 | EdgeOps, NetDevOps, SecOps

Communication,Technology,For,Internet,Business.,Global,World,Network,And,Telecommunication
NetDevOps, SecOps, and EdgeOps are crucial components of a holistic and integrated approach to network infrastructure. However, the way each practice works to achieve this objective is not immediately apparent, and understanding this paradigm can be vital to a successful implementation.

This article helps to clarify those dynamics by explaining what each concept does and how they complement each other.

What is NetDevOps?

NetDevOps refers to the convergence of DevOps and networking. It is a practice that encourages communication and collaboration between network architects and operators to automate manual and traditional network processes.

One way NetDevOps achieves automation is via software-defined networking (SDN), which supplies and configures network appliances such as routers and switches. SDN enables businesses to control network behavior through code, allowing users to replicate processes across hardware.

SDN and other automation methodologies facilitate NetDevOps collaboration by enabling multiple people to concurrently work on the same systems, appliances, and applications. In a traditional IT environment, infrastructure configuration, testing, and deployment tasks take place in a sequential fashion, which leaves some team members waiting around for their turn to contribute. In a NetDevOps environment, you can deploy entire configurations to many devices at the same time with SDN, trigger automatic tests to run at certain benchmarks, and automatically integrate necessary software with just a few button clicks. Every member of the NetDevOps team collaborates nearly simultaneously to achieve the same objective.

The goal of NetDevOps is to foster a culture and environment in which network design, tests, and deployment happen quickly and reliably.

NetOps vs. NetDevOps

You may be more familiar with the term NetOps than NetDevOps, though they mean essentially the same thing. The NetOps methodology also applies DevOps principles to enterprise network management, such as collaboration and automation. The word NetOps de-emphasizes the software development (Dev) aspect of IT operations, but NetOps still involves abstracting networking functions as code with SDN and automation. For that reason, NetDevOps is becoming a more popular term for this methodology in modern IT environments.

What are NetDevOps roles in the integration process?

Let’s break down each integration process in NetDevOps and its primary goals.

Breaking down communication silos

The primary goal of NetDevOps is to improve efficiency by fostering team collaboration and communication. More specifically, it allows teams to be more pragmatic and efficient when faced with an issue, including distributing tools throughout the IT infrastructure. Once the enterprise establishes a collaborative architecture, silos are eliminated and teams benefit from more effective communication.

Reducing manual intervention with SDN

Manually revising network infrastructure is time-consuming and prone to human error. To address these inefficiencies and ensure that automation scripts are error-free, SDN employs certain DevOps practices, such as continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD). These scripts can be re-deployed on numerous servers, rolled back, and made available to all teams.

Promoting network automation

The command-line interface (CLI) performs network operations manually, device by device. Network automation can better connect networking with IT operations and tools, allowing for more agile network workflow. It also helps automate the management, testing, and deployment of virtual and physical devices inside a network. With network automation, enterprises benefit from quicker service start, less human error, and more effective wireless management.

What is SecOps?

Security operations (SecOps) is a partnership between security and IT operations teams similar to DevOps’ role as a collaboration between development and operations teams. It helps organizations automate critical security tasks and meet performance goals without compromising on security.

SecOps follows a set of security operations center (SOC) practices, processes, and tools, such as governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) systems and security information and event management (SIEM). Integration of these security measures occurs atypically early in the software development life cycle (SDLC), which is known as “shifting left”.

In a typical SDLC—which includes product design, development, testing, and deployment—security comes at the latter life cycle stages, sometimes after testing. However, SecOps introduces security measures much earlier in the life cycle, providing better safeguards as the product development progresses.

For example, a typical SDLC looks something like this:

  • Step 1: Planning – You determine the requirements for the software’s functionality
  • Step 2: Design – You model the look and functionality of the software
  • Step 3: Development – Your dev team writes the software code
  • Step 4: Testing – Your QA team tests the code to ensure it functions correctly
  • Step 5: Security – Your security team integrates security monitoring and protection measures
  • Step 6: Deployment – You release the software to production

Security is almost an afterthought, occurring right before deployment. Often, this can lead to friction between teams – most business units want to release the software as soon as possible, but security integration may cause delays.

A SecOps SDLC looks more like this:

  • Step 1: Planning – While you determine the requirements for the software itself, you also plan the architecture for the secure development and production servers you’ll deploy to support the software.
  • Step 2: Design – Development and design teams model the software, and security and ops teams stand up secure development environments.
  • Step 3: Development – As developers write software code and upload it to the repository, automatic security checks run to test for vulnerabilities
  • Step 4: Testing – On a secure testing server, the QA team runs functional and performance tests while the security team runs additional vulnerability and security integration tests
  • Step 5: Deployment – You release the secure software to a secure production environment

Not only does SecOps prioritize security to better fortify your software, but it also streamlines the SDLC, removing an entire step from the process. SecOps empowers you to release secure, high-quality software faster.

How does SecOps complement NetDevOps?

While NetDevOps facilitates work process automation, SecOps provides the security to make those things happen safely, safeguarding NetDevOps practices from cyberattacks.

In other words, SecOps acts as a bodyguard for NetDevOps. Two primary examples are as follows:

Securing critical data center infrastructure

Both SecOps and NetDevOps promote open collaboration between security, networking, and operations teams, especially when it comes to infrastructure management and monitoring.

In traditional IT environments, separate monitoring and management tasks are siloed in different departments, with security, operations, and networking teams all working with different software and solutions on different pieces of your infrastructure. SecOps instead brings all teams together, working within the same monitoring, incident response, and infrastructure management systems. This gives your key SecOps and NetDevOps engineers a holistic view of your environment, allowing them to collaborate and ensure your infrastructure is fully protected.

Securing continuous delivery and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines

SecOps processes ensure that CI/CD pipelines (as discussed earlier) emphasize both security and speed. SecOps teams use CI security techniques to provide a secure codebase and in CD to automate security-related tasks.

For example, one of the cornerstones of the CI/CD methodologies is automated testing (for functionality, performance, and integration) which runs continuously throughout the SDLC. With SecOps processes, you can also add automated security testing at key stages in your CI/CD pipeline. That means security issues can be found and remediated as early as possible, allowing you to release your software faster.

By combining SecOps and CI/CD processes, teams and technology may work together to protect the network and codebase while avoiding bottlenecks. SecOps teams can then leverage automation to minimize application and service outages and expedite security audits.

What is EdgeOps?

EdgeOps is a quasi-DevOps approach adapted to the internet of things (IoT)/edge environment for managing and overseeing the project development lifecycle. It addresses edge computing’s difficulties, considers the features of edge-computing solutions, and utilizes deployment methods adapted to the edge environment.

A single unified dashboard can follow the progress of a project that involves multiple technologies, tools, and experts. Independent work streams or pipelines can simultaneously manage activity from several teams or organizations. EdgeOps can process, analyze, and orchestrate large volumes of machine data and events at microsecond transactions.

How does EdgeOps enhance NetDevOps?

EdgeOps is, at its essence, the application of NetDevOps principles to the edge-to-cloud continuum. Examples are as follows:

Improving data processing

By maximizing the efficiency of their manufacturing equipment, chipmakers can enhance the yield and quality of their semiconductor production processes. EdgeOps helps enterprises boost productivity and efficiency through artificial intelligence across critical areas of the infrastructure.

Promoting cost-efficient and timely data transfers

The EdgeOps platform enables real-time data ingestion, processing, and analysis by operating at the equipment source. It can therefore address data security problems and the increased cost and timing of edge-to-cloud data transport.

Allowing for scalability

Companies no longer need to develop centralized, private data centers to expand data collecting and processing. Building, maintaining, and replacing these hubs during expansion can be cost-prohibitive.

Instead, organizations can quickly and cost-effectively scale their edge network reach by combining privately-owned servers with regional edge computing data centers. EdgeOps flexibility allows companies to adapt swiftly to changing markets and scale their data and revise requirements more efficiently as they grow.

The future impact of NetOps, NetDevOps, SecOps, and EdgeOps

Secure, cloud-based automation and IoT will have increasingly significant global implications moving forward. The collaborative and agile nature of these three Ops will play an essential role in this transformation.

While each provides a different piece to the network integration puzzle, all focus on improving communication and promoting efficiency. Better automated processes, shorter feedback loops, and shared responsibilities are due to their interlace.

Want more information about how these practices help promote a seamless network infrastructure integration?

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Watch agile networking in action with these Nodegrid demos

by | Dec 16, 2021 | Modernize Legacy Environments, NetDevOps, Network Automation, Out of Band Management, Power Management, Streamline Deployments, Uncategorized, Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)

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Watch agile networking in action with these Nodegrid demos

 

ZPE® Systems Network Solutions Architect Rene Neumann shows you how easy it is to enable agile networking. See Nodegrid and ZPE Cloud first hand with our collection of demo videos. You’ll learn how to:

 

  • Use true zero touch for automatic deployments
  • Fully set up environments using rich orchestration
  • Remotely configure and manage edge workloads

Demo: Deploy Networks Fast with ZPE Cloud’s Zero Touch Provisioning

Demo: Fully Provision Edge Network Workloads with Nodegrid

Demo: Orchestrate Branch Network Devices Using Nodegrid

 

View More Videos    Schedule a Demo

The Importance of NetDevOps Automation for Modern Networks

by | Nov 16, 2021 | NetDevOps

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The NetDevOps methodology is all about removing barriers and encouraging open collaboration between network, development, and operations teams. NetDevOps automation is what enables this collaboration to happen in real-time.

Let’s look at the key areas where automated NetDevOps practices can benefit your enterprise through software-defined networking, network function virtualization, software-defined wide area networking, and datacenter infrastructure management automation.

What is NetDevOps automation?

Network automation for NetDevOps focuses on eliminating manual device configurations and simplifying your infrastructure through virtualization and consolidation. Four key areas for NetDevOps automation are:

  • Software-defined networking, or SDN, uses software-based controllers to direct network traffic on virtual or hardware infrastructure.
  • Network function virtualization, or NFV, replaces physical networking appliances with virtual machines controlled by a hypervisor or SDN controller.
  • Software-defined wide area networking, or SD-WAN, separates traffic management and monitoring functions from the underlying hardware and makes them available as software.
  • Datacenter infrastructure management, or DCIM, unifies the management of all your remote and datacenter appliances under one control panel.

This article focuses on the network automation side of NetDevOps, but automating the Dev and Ops portion is also essential.

DevOps automation

On the development side, test automation and CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) focus on constantly checking new code for bugs and security vulnerabilities to streamline the deployment process.

On the operations side, automation seeks to eliminate manual configuration and provisioning of development, testing, and production systems using IaC (infrastructure as code). Using IaC, server configurations are written as software code that can run through the CI/CD automated testing process to ensure conformity and reduce human error.

The importance of NetDevOps automation for modern networks

Now, let’s dive a little deeper into NetDevOps automation for network teams.

Software-defined networking for NetDevOps

Software-defined networking (SDN) takes the control plane for physical and virtual network devices and makes it available as centrally-managed software. This allows you to create or change configurations for all your devices from one place, and then automatically deploy or roll-back those configurations at the press of a button. Your network appliance configurations can also run through the CI/CD process, just like software code and IaC, so you can perform automated testing to ensure that there are no errors or security vulnerabilities. This automated, software-based approach to network management provides numerous benefits, including:

  • Increased team efficiency: SDN saves time and reduces human error, which improves the
    overall efficiency of your NetDevOps teams. Using SDN, your network engineers can create one software-based configuration file and deploy it many times, rather than manually entering CLI commands on every new device. This saves time, freeing your teams up to work on more business-critical tasks. Plus, with SDN you know every device receives the same configuration every time, which minimizes the risk of human error and makes it easier to pinpoint any errors that do show up.
  • Improved routing intelligence: SDN provides centralized management and a holistic view of your entire network, which empowers you to improve your routing intelligence and optimize your network traffic. You can use SDN’s centralized control panel to create pre-defined load balancing, performance, and bandwidth policies, then use those policies to intelligently and automatically route traffic on your network. For instance, if there’s a traffic spike at one datacenter, your load balancing policies can automatically re-route certain traffic (say, remote or branch office traffic) to an alternate site that can handle those requests.
  • Enhanced security capabilities: SDN supports and simplifies network micro-segmentation enabling you to implement advanced security methodologies such as zero trust security. Without SDN, creating new micro-segments is often a manual process involving tedious tasks like mapping network dependencies or configuring and deploying new appliances. Since SDN provides a central control panel with software-defined configurations that can be automatically deployed at will, micro-segmentation for zero trust security is much easier, allowing you to get more granular and specific with your policies and security controls.

You should consider software-defined networking for NetDevOps automation if your organization is looking for a more efficient networking team, a more optimized network, and an easier way to implement zero trust security.

Network function virtualization for NetDevOps

Network function virtualization (NFV) is simply the virtualization of networking appliances like routers and switches. NFV separates the communication services—e.g., load balancing, routing, firewall security—from the physical hardware they usually live on, and instead makes them available as software. You can then program and control all your virtual networking devices from a central hypervisor or an SDN controller, providing the opportunity for network automation and orchestration.

NFV enhances the capabilities and benefits of SDN by further abstracting the control functions of your network and removing even more physical devices from your infrastructure. Since NFV runs on virtual machines rather than hardware appliances, you can reduce and consolidate your network infrastructure, making it easier to manage. Fewer appliances also means you spend less money on hardware and colocation costs. Plus, scaling virtual infrastructure with NFV is faster and cheaper than physical infrastructure because you can spin up virtual machines and applications with the click of a button and automatically apply configurations via SDN.

You should think about NFV for your NetDevOps automation if you’re hoping to consolidate and simplify your network infrastructure, reduce datacenter costs, and enable fast and easy network scaling.

Software-defined wide area networking for NetDevOps

Software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) separates the traffic management and monitoring functions from your WAN hardware so you can apply intelligent routing to your remote and branch office traffic. SD-WAN looks at your WAN traffic to determine where it’s headed, and then chooses the most efficient route to that destination based on current network conditions and availability.

SD-WAN makes it easier to orchestrate and control your WAN architecture because it decouples management from the physical software, allowing you to do everything with software.SD-WAN also provides easy scalability by allowing you to automatically deploy new branch office configurations, quickly add new cloud services, and dynamically optimize routing paths to incorporate new resources and locations.

If you’re looking for an easier and more efficient way to manage and optimize your WAN traffic, then you could benefit from SD-WAN for NetDevOps automation.

Datacenter infrastructure management for NetDevOps

Datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) software provides centralized management and control over datacenter resources. You can use DCIM to gain visibility on all your physical and digital assets, no matter where they’re located, from behind one pane of glass. DCIM automation focuses on discovering and tracking assets (both physical and in the cloud), monitoring and optimizing resources, and provisioning and configuring new devices.

For example, zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) allows you to deploy remote devices without needing an engineer to stage configurations or manually install the hardware. ZTP devices use DHCP or TFTP to communicate with a server that provides configuration files or images that the device downloads and runs automatically. That means you can ship a new switch to a remote datacenter and have a local employee plug the device in and connect it to the network. From there, ZTP handles all the steps that are usually performed on-site by a network engineer.

DCIM automation with ZTP allows you to scale up your datacenter operations quickly and easily deploy new infrastructure. Your engineers can spend less time staging networking appliances or traveling to remote datacenters, allowing you to allocate your resources to more important projects. DCIM automation also provides a central control panel that you can use to manage all your datacenter infrastructure from anywhere in the world.

If you’re interested in bringing NetDevOps automation to your remote datacenter management, then you should look for DCIM solutions that support automation and zero-touch provisioning.

Kickstart NetDevOps automation on your network with Nodegrid

NetDevOps automation provides many opportunities to simplify and optimize your network management using software-defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV), software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), and datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) with zero-touch provisioning (ZTP).

Are you looking for a way to kickstart NetDevOps automation on your enterprise network? The Nodegrid family of datacenter management solutions can help. For example, serial console servers running the Nodegrid OS can automatically discover and analyze new datacenter devices, allowing for greater efficiency and scalability. Plus, Nodegrid’s vendor-neutral network management software helps you control and orchestrate your entire architecture from behind one pane of glass.

Learn more about how Nodegrid can kickstart NetDevOps automation on your network.

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