////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// FEATURE: DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS
Unfortunately, the tight coupling of
hardware and software limits organisations’
automation choices. A proprietary network
operating system means either using
proprietary automation software or, as this
is a closed environment, using an API to
stitch it all together. Again, the ‘one size fits
all’ mentality prevents an organisation from
achieving its Digital Transformation goals.
To make the network fast and agile, your
operating system needs to support open
source automation tools like Ansible, Chef
and Puppet. Your networking team needs
the freedom to craft customised automation
solutions that meet organisational objectives.
Staying on top of the health of
data centre networks
by the power of a single switch. As your
needs grow, you can add more smaller
switches and they’ll all work together to
share the load. A happy consequence of
scaling out is that you limit the size of
your failure domains. If one small switch
out of dozens fails, the impact is small. If
it has redundant connections, the impact
may be minimal – just a temporary drop in
performance. As one might expect, cloud
providers use the scaling out approach to
achieve performance, reliability and agility at
a massive scale. If an organisation is serious
about Digital Transformation, its network has
to use the same approach.
The pursuit of fully
automated configurations
Today, there is unprecedented pressure
on the data centre network to not only
scale and remain performant, but also gain
far greater agility and flexibility through
extensive automation of the entire network
life cycle, from provisioning and deployment
to day-to-day management and upgrades.
As the network grows and becomes more
complex, manual configurations become
increasingly time-consuming, difficult and
risky. Automation is therefore a key piece of
the scalability puzzle.
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Combined with the threat of network
outages, the widespread adoption of
microservices, containers and virtual
machines has added a new layer of
complexity in the data centre, resulting in a
strain on traditional networks and the need
to achieve operational simplicity. When
an issue arises, organisations are forced to
go hunting for the proverbial needle in the
haystack, implementing a manual, box-to-
box intervention because they don’t have
a holistic view of all the activities putting
demands on the network.
In order to ensure the data centre network
is behaving as intended, obtaining a
holistic view of the network is critical.
This translates into the ability to collect
data, analyse it and visualise it in real
time in order to obtain actionable insights
and effectively manage the data centre
network. CEOs are increasingly viewing
infrastructure as a strategic resource to their
business and having a direct view across the
network enables teams to prevent outages
achieving an even greater ROI from their
data centre.
JR Rivers, Co-founder and CTO,
Cumulus Networks
The benefits of challenging the
networking status quo
Enterprises in all vertical markets and
geographies are finding that change
is inevitable in the era of Digital
Transformation. This is especially true
in the data centre, where architectures,
infrastructure, people and processes
must go hand-in-hand with increased
IT and operational efficiencies, faster
provisioning of resources, improved network
management and troubleshooting. All of
this needs to happen within the context of
faster time to market and better alignment
of IT teams with the business outcomes
that matter most to the organisations that
employ them.
Fortunately, IT transformation initiatives
provide enterprises with the opportunity
to reassess network architectures and
operational models in light of the need
for a modernised approach to IT. In
the sphere of networking, that means
implementing practices that heavily
emphasise automation, flexibility and
scalability to deliver operational agility and
efficiency gains, which would ultimately
translate into increased revenue and overall
organisational success. n
THE ‘ONE SIZE FITS ALL’ MENTALITY
PREVENTS AN ORGANISATION
FROM ACHIEVING ITS DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION GOALS.
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