Modern IT operations require innovative solutions to keep up with application modernization, enhanced security, and the seamless management of multi-cloud environments. Enterprises are increasingly adopting hybrid cloud strategies, combining the reliability of virtualized environments with the efficiency of containerized applications. VMware’s vSphere with Tanzu leads the way in this transition, and WEI is ready to assist you in creating a forward-thinking IT infrastructure.

This blog discusses the advantages of vSphere with Tanzu and shows how our team at WEI facilitates a smooth transition to a modern, innovation-driven data center infrastructure.

Exploring The Full Potential Of VMware Tanzu

For businesses looking to optimize their IT infrastructure, VMware Tanzu offers a range of possibilities that go beyond simplifying application development and deployment. This platform provides a comprehensive framework to enhance collaboration between IT and DevOps teams.

With Tanzu’s extensive capabilities, organizations can benefit in several key areas:

• Unified IT and DevOps processes: Use a shared platform for deployment and monitoring, which promotes alignment between teams and developers.
• Enhanced visibility and control: Gain valuable insights into Kubernetes clusters, enabling proactive issue resolution.
• Automated security policies: Protect the entire container supply chain and maintain compliance across all stages of the CI/CD pipeline.

Starting Your Kubernetes Journey

Embarking on a Kubernetes journey is an essential step for organizations aiming to modernize their infrastructure. At WEI, we take a structured and personalized approach that ensures your business objectives align with industry standards like those set by the .

The process begins with an initial assessment, where WEI thoroughly evaluates your private cloud environment. This review highlights areas of improvement and lays the groundwork for a tailored strategy. By incorporating best practices and addressing specific business needs, we design a compliant and optimized cloud-native infrastructure.

As part of this journey, WEI deploys Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) clusters to establish a strong foundation for Kubernetes operations. These clusters are key to achieving consistency and reliability in workload management. Additionally, we provide critical support services, including:

• RBAC for secure, streamlined user management.
• Patching and upgrades to keep systems up-to-date and resilient.
• Backup and disaster recovery solutions for business continuity.

WEI ensures that your Kubernetes ecosystem is operational and positioned for long-term success. This strong foundation naturally transitions into implementing infrastructure automation and DevOps services, the next step in building a future-ready IT strategy.

WEI’s Integrated IT Solutions: Automation, DevOps, And Expertise

Automation and DevOps services and solutions are key to achieving efficiency and consistency. WEI integrates IaC and automation strategies to modernize deployments, allowing enterprises to focus on innovation rather than routine tasks.

By automating provisioning dynamically, organizations can align resources with demand, reducing waste and optimizing operations. This approach also minimizes manual errors and speeds up incident response through repeatable and tested deployment scripts. At WEI, we build compliant DevOps frameworks that support seamless operations, enabling businesses to adopt modern workflows while maintaining high security across their IT infrastructure.

The measurable benefits of VMware Tanzu and vSphere transform data center IT infrastructure. With over 35 years of experience, WEI provides:

• Industry-leading certifications: Our team includes Certified Kubernetes Administrators (CKA), Application Developers (CKAD), VMware Cloud Native Master Specialists, and VMware Certified Design Experts (VCDX).
• Tailored solutions: Partnering with WEI means gaining access to specialists who design custom architecture aligned with your goals, ensure smooth migration to modern environments, and provide lifecycle management services.
• Proven excellence: WEI is a three-time winner of the CRN Triple Crown Award, a testament to our commitment to customer satisfaction and technical expertise.

Final Thoughts

Transitioning to a modern IT infrastructure with vSphere and Tanzu unlocks opportunities for innovation and growth. With advanced automation and DevOps services, WEI equips your business to handle both current and future challenges to enhance productivity and create a solid foundation for growth.

Contact us today to learn how our team can help you achieve your Kubernetes goals with custom DevOps services.

Next Steps: As Cloud Native Master Specialists, the WEI team works with customers to gain a deeper understanding of what your biggest application modernization challenges are so we can develop a complete cloud agnostic Kubernetes solution. With help from WEI, vSphere with Tanzu allows your enterprise to focus on the development, maintenance, and delivery of the best cloud technologies in the world. 

to discover the vSphere with Tanzu services that WEI offers as well as an understanding of our deep certification portfolio.

The post Transform Your Enterprise With Expert Guidance And Advanced DevOps Solutions appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Several weeks ago, I was vacationing in Florida just after Hurricane Milton made landfall and rendered millions without electricity, gasoline, phone service, or internet. These recent devastating storms are a stark reminder of the critical importance of disaster recovery (DR) in today’s business landscape. An irony of modernization is that our increasing dependence on technology opens the door to more business disruption. While natural disasters have long been a primary driver for DR initiatives, the rise of ransomware attacks has exposed new vulnerabilities in our increasingly digital businesses.

Disaster Recovery Is No Longer Hypothetical

The threat landscape has expanded beyond traditional concerns. In addition to natural disasters, businesses face risks from cyberattacks, power outages, and hardware failures. As the frequency and variety of potentially disruptive events increase, the likelihood of needing to rely on a DR solution becomes less of a hypothetical scenario and more of an inevitable reality. According to a 2021 survey, nearly one in three businesses experienced an outage over a two-year period, and 61% reported outages that cost them more than $100,000 at some point. Disaster recovery is also a growing concern amid compliance requirements, as data loss can lead to financial and other penalties.

Disaster Recovery Challenges

At the core of disaster recovery lies the critical ability to restore data. Data is both transformative and complex. Business leaders expect all data to always be available to foster new initiatives and projects. They want nearly everything to be retained because they see potential value in a greater array of data types. If you could simply store all data in a single cloud repository, that request would be easy enough. Unfortunately, there are many challenges:

• On-Premises Considerations: Despite the cloud trend, 37% of organizations still run data protection exclusively on-premises, and 47% for government organizations do the same.
• Regulatory Requirements: Some agencies mandate that data be kept in-house due to control capabilities and specific requirements. Others set minimum retention periods for certain types of data.
• Hybrid Complexity: Hybrid environments involve managing data and applications across both on-premises and cloud infrastructures, making DR planning and execution more complex.

According to the mentioned study, 28% of survey respondents identified meeting disaster recovery requirements as a challenge. Only data capacity and growth were of greater concern. DR is a growing challenge in the era of transformational digital data.

Businesses Turn To Hybrid DR

Hybrid computing introduces significant complexities to DR strategies:

• Organizations must carefully balance on-premises and cloud-based solutions to meet their DR needs.
• Managing complex storage implementations across different environments becomes a challenging task often requiring specialized skills and tools.
• Ensuring the security and availability of critical data across multiple locations demands a comprehensive approach to data protection and access control.

Organizations can no longer rely on traditional on-prem DR solutions. That is why they are turning to more modernized solutions, according to a :

• 63% of organizations are using cloud services for data protection.
• 41% use a hybrid cloud deployment for data protection.
• 22% exclusively use cloud-based backup services like DRaaS.

Greater Flexibility And Enhanced Resilience

In the same way hybrid has transformed enterprises, it is now changing the game for DR. The shift to hybrid DR is not just about saving time and money. It is about making your whole system more resilient. Since most companies already use both on-site and off-site infrastructure, being able to keep data in multiple places just makes sense.

One of the keys to hybrid DR is Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI). HCI provides a common management plane across hybrid cloud environments and can help to minimize the outages related to hardware and software failures through its standardized architecture. Some HCI platforms, such as Nutanix, offer multiple snapshot types for greater flexibility in disaster recovery strategies. Nutanix provides two main types of snapshots:

• Full Snapshots: Used for asynchronous replication when RPO is 60 minutes or greater, keeping system resource usage low for extended periods with multiple snapshots.
• Lightweight Snapshots (LWS): Used for NearSync replication with RPO between 1-15 minutes, reducing metadata overhead and improving storage performance by decreasing I/O operations from long snapshot chains.

This flexibility is particularly valuable as enterprises increasingly seek to minimize their RPO and RTO times, where RPO measures the interval between backups and RTO measures the time between an outage and data recovery. The inherent flexibility of the Nutanix architecture is also evident in its distributed processing capabilities as well:

• Each node has its own virtual storage controller and access to local metadata.
• This design allows replication to scale along with the system because as you add more nodes, you add more processing power for replication.
• Every node participates in the replication process, which helps prevent performance hotspots in the cluster.
• Nutanix is designed to easily stretch between on-prem and the cloud, providing an approach where you can move data and workloads around as needed. By having your Nutanix infrastructure configured in this fashion allows for a simple to use and cohesive platform that can protect your data and also orchestrate the recovery shall the need arise.

This distributed approach allows for better scalability and performance compared to traditional systems that might have centralized bottlenecks or rely on specialized hardware.

Watch: Achieve A Game Winning Strategy With WEI & Nutanix

Final Thoughts

Nutanix leverages hybrid cloud environments to provide deeper resiliency and flexibility in data retention across multiple locations. Businesses that have embraced their approach have experienced numerous benefits in the DR efforts including:

• Elastic scaling
• Efficient snapshot management
• Simplified hybrid deployment
• Improved recovery times
• Integrated ransomware protection

As part of the Nutanix Elite Partner ecosystem, WEI can deliver a comprehensive disaster recovery solution tailored to your hybrid enterprise needs. Our innovative approach leverages Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) to seamlessly integrate on-premises and cloud environments that provides the resiliency and flexibility you need to ensure that your DR strategy aligns with both your infrastructure requirements and business objectives.

Next Steps: A leading federal credit union faced aging infrastructure, rising costs, and scalability challenges that jeopardized the reliability of its critical systems. To modernize its IT environment, they partnered with WEI to deploy a Nutanix-based hyperconverged solution, replacing outdated hardware and ensuring future growth with enhanced disaster recovery capabilities. and learn how WEI can transform your IT infrastructure!

*Source: 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Storage, Data Management and Disaster Recovery 2021

The post Why Disaster Recovery Matters For Business Survival In The Hybrid Cloud Era appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Let’s face it: keeping up with data center demands can feel like a constant uphill battle. IT teams are under pressure to deliver top-notch performance, iron-clad security, and smooth operations – often on a downsized budget. Sound familiar?

A comprehensive data center optimization strategy is the key to ensuring your IT infrastructure stays agile, adaptable, and secure. This strategy focuses on critical areas like operational efficiency, workload performance, security, and integration with DevOps practices.

We will dive into the key elements of successful infrastructure optimization and transformation. By implementing these, you can achieve a smoother workflow, enhanced performance, and improved security for your data center.

Why Do You Need A Strategy?

Data centers are critical in powering our digital landscape. They house the essential IT equipment that runs everything from complex enterprise applications to common social media platforms (have you yet?). However, data centers, like any engine, can become inefficient over time. This inefficiency can manifest as excessive resource consumption and struggling to keep pace with evolving demands.

A data center optimization strategy is your proactive approach to achieving peak performance. There are several compelling reasons to prioritize data center optimization:

• Reduce Costs: An optimization strategy can identify areas for improvement, such as consolidating underutilized servers or implementing more energy-efficient cooling systems. These steps can lead to substantial cost reductions over time.
• Enhance Efficiency: Streamline operations and resource allocation by eliminating redundancies and optimizing server utilization. As a result, your IT infrastructure functions at peak efficiency, delivering more processing power while relying on fewer resources.
• Boost Performance And Scalability: A well-optimized data center can handle increasing workloads more effectively. Optimization techniques like server virtualization allow you to dynamically allocate resources to meet fluctuating demands, ensuring smooth application performance and paving the way for future scalability.
• Improve Sustainability: The of data centers is a growing concern, especially as IT sustainability efforts are proving to save bottom-line dollars. Implementing a data center optimization strategy that prioritizes energy efficiency can demonstrably reduce your environmental footprint. This proactive approach also enhances your company’s brand reputation for sustainability – something consumers are beginning to keep at the top of minds.
• Minimize Downtime: Unplanned data center outages significantly threaten business operations. Organizations can identify and mitigate potential issues before they arise, ensuring the continued availability of critical applications for users.
• Support Innovation: Streamline operations and achieve efficient resource allocation. This frees up your IT team’s valuable time, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives and develop new technologies.

From Optimization To Transformation

Optimizing data center performance is a critical objective for businesses of all sizes. VMware, a recognized leader in virtualization solutions, offers a powerful new tool designed to address this very need called VMware . This comprehensive enterprise workload platform empowers IT teams to achieve a fundamental transformation in their data centers.

VVF goes beyond basic management, streamlining operations, enhancing workload performance, and fostering innovation – all to position IT as a true business enabler. This solution addresses four key pillars of data center optimization:

1. Boost Operational Efficiency

VVF delivers predictive and proactive operations management:

• Intelligent automation and streamlined workflow by deploying pre-configured management packs for agentless monitoring.
• Identifies and resolves potential issues using machine learning to understand application boundaries, and collect performance data from all endpoints.
• Facilitates proactive maintenance through AI-driven proactive troubleshooting and streamlined remediation.

VVF empowers IT teams by providing comprehensive visibility and faster return-to-operations across their entire environment, from applications to storage. This simplifies management and maximizes resource utilization.

2. Supercharge Workload Performance

Have you noticed if lagging applications are slowing down overall business operations? If you haven’t, ask your end users. Application performance directly affects both user experience and overall productivity.

vSphere Foundation tackles this problem head-on with intelligent resource allocation and dynamic workload balancing. This powerful combination, achieved through DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler), ensures your applications consistently run at peak performance. DRS automatically distributes workloads across available resources, eliminating bottlenecks and preventing performance slowdowns before they happen.

VVF also boasts significant improvements for larger, more demanding workloads:

• Enhanced GPU Support: You can now add up to 32 GPUs in pass-through mode, a 4x improvement over the previous limit of 8. This allows you to tackle more complex AI models by providing significantly more processing power.
• Scalable Virtual GPUs: For those who don’t require the raw power of dedicated GPUs, vSphere Foundation now supports up to 16 virtual GPUs per virtual machine. This offers a more scalable and cost-effective way to leverage GPU resources for a broader range of workloads.

VVF keeps your hybrid cloud running smoothly and cost-efficiently. Powered by operational and business insights, real-time predictive analytics, and AI, the platform automatically balances workloads and proactively avoids resource contention. This ensures seamless workload placement and balancing across VMware Cloud Foundation, vSAN, or VMware Cloud on AWS.

Additionally, vMotion allows for seamless live migration of virtual machines between physical hosts. This means you can perform maintenance or upgrades on your physical machines without disrupting service delivery.

3. Accelerate Innovation for DevOps

vSphere Foundation seamlessly integrates with leading DevOps services and solutions, enabling developers to provision virtual machines in minutes, deploy code efficiently, and easily roll back changes if necessary. This streamlined process empowers DevOps teams to focus on innovation and accelerate development cycles, ultimately leading to faster time-to-market for new features and services.

4. Elevate Security

vSphere Foundation prioritizes data security by laying a strong foundation for a comprehensive security posture. It achieves this through a combination of built-in features:

• Role-based access control (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA): These features ensure that only authorized users can access specific resources. RBAC grants access based on a user’s role, while MFA adds an extra layer of security by requiring a second verification factor beyond just a password.
• Modern identity federation and secure multi-factor authentication: vSphere Foundation allows you to leverage existing identity management systems, simplifying user access and strengthening authentication with multi-factor requirements.
• Governance and compliance with industry standards: vSphere Foundation helps organizations meet strict security regulations by providing tools and features that align with industry compliance standards, including meeting sustainability and ESG commitments.
• Data-at-rest encryption for workloads: This crucial feature encrypts data stored on virtual machines, protecting sensitive information even if unauthorized access occurs.

Additionally, vSphere Foundation integrates seamlessly with leading security solutions, enabling organizations to leverage a multi-layered defense strategy to protect their data and applications from evolving cyber threats.

Final Thoughts

Optimizing your data center goes beyond just hardware upgrades. It’s about creating a strategic framework that drives efficiency, performance, security, and innovation. By focusing on the four pillars of vSphere Foundation, organizations can build agile, adaptable, and secure data centers empowering them to achieve their digital transformation goals.

WEI, with its VCDX-certified professionals, can assist in your IT transformation journey, validate your business objectives, and ensure alignment with your technical strategy. Contact us to get started.

Next Steps: discover the vSphere with Tanzu services that WEI offers as well as an understanding of our deep certification portfolio. When you work with WEI, you get more than an innovative solution. You get a team of dedicated strategic partners and advisors who stay connected to ensure your long-term satisfaction and success.

The post These Four Key Elements Support Your IT Infrastructure Goals appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

The digital ecosystem is booming with innovation, driven by a surge in applications and enterprise hybrid cloud adoption. From high-fidelity 10K video, real-time gaming, AI-powered automation, and IoT expansion, to immersive VR/AR experiences, businesses need agile and secure networks to support a number of cutting-edge applications. Additionally, the rise of 5G requires secure and adaptable network infrastructure.

To address these challenges, organizations are increasingly turning to software-defined networking (SDN) frameworks. SDN offers agility across data centers, whether private or hybrid cloud networks, to improve business outcomes. Let’s identify and explore some solutions that provide a comprehensive, secure, and open SDN approach to navigate the complexities of the modern digital landscape.

The Roadblocks to Digital Transformation

Many organizations are still grappling with network architectures designed for a bygone era. These legacy systems suffer from several key shortcomings that impede digital transformation efforts:

• Manual Configuration: Traditionally, network configuration tasks were performed manually, line by line. This approach is time-consuming, error-prone, and creates a significant burden for IT staff. As the network grows and evolves, the complexity of manual configuration increases exponentially.
• Slow Application Deployment: Provisioning new applications or network resources in a manual environment can be a lengthy process. This delay in application deployment can significantly impact time-to-market initiatives and hinder the organization’s ability to respond to changing business needs.
• Inconsistent Security: Traditional networks often rely on a patchwork of cybersecurity controls implemented at different points. This inconsistency creates major vulnerabilities and makes it difficult to enforce siloed security policies. Furthermore, manual processes for security configuration are prone to human error, further increasing breach risk.
• Limited Visibility: Legacy monitoring tools often provide limited visibility into network traffic and application performance. This makes it difficult to identify and troubleshoot problems proactively, leading to downtime and disruptions.

SDN offers a solution by separating the control plane, which dictates network intelligence, from the data plane, which handles the physical movement of data packets. This separation allows for programmatic configuration and automation, empowering organizations to achieve greater network agility across data centers and cloud environments.

SDN Solutions for the Enterprise

Organizations rely on agile, secure, and efficient networks to drive successful transformations. , a leading SDN solution, disrupts traditional data center management with its application-centric approach. By centralizing network policies, Cisco ACI streamlines operations and simplifies complex data center networks. This powerful framework extends beyond data centers, seamlessly integrating with wide area networks (WANs), campus networks, and even cloud environments.

Cisco ACI offers a trifecta of benefits:

• Network Optimization: Centralized policies simplify and automate operations, bringing order to complex data center networks.
• Enhanced Security: Extensive cybersecurity measures, zero-trust principles, and automated policy enforcement safeguard your business.
• Multi-cloud Acceleration: Seamless connectivity across on-premises and cloud environments fosters agility and simplifies managing workloads in enterprise hybrid and multi-cloud deployments.

This comprehensive approach empowers businesses with several key advantages: dynamic network provisioning, robust cybersecurity, and automated infrastructure services – all fueled by automation and policy-based control. Ultimately, translates to streamlined application deployment, agile IT operations, and accelerated digital transformation for organizations.

Key Use Cases for Cisco ACI

Cisco ACI empowers organizations to streamline network management and fortify security – contributing to successful digital transformation. This unique solution tackles several key challenges faced by modern IT organizations:

• Security Through Microsegmentation And A Zero-Trust Policy: Cisco ACI enhances network security with a zero-trust model and microsegmentation to reduce attack surfaces. Organizations can enforce strict security policies and ensure continuous compliance with business rules by segmenting the network into isolated segments.
• Unified Network Management: Cisco ACI delivers a single-view management platform to provide comprehensive network visibility into health, performance, and overall operational status. Embedded automation and operations tools further modernize your workflow by ensuring consistency and efficiency. The net effect is increased network visibility, expedited operations, and significant error reduction.
• Private Cloud Networking: Cisco ACI unlocks business agility by seamlessly integrating with industry-standard virtualization platforms. This creates a cloud-like experience within your on-premises data center. This translates to a dynamic private cloud network that automatically adjusts to your application lifecycle in real-time, enabling the swift deployment of critical applications. Cisco ACI delivers enhanced network agility, faster application delivery and deployment, and reduced time for network changes.
• Automation and Integrations: The platform optimizes network administration workflows by leveraging APIs and integrating with ecosystem partners. This programmability reduces errors and accelerates the rate of change, allowing increased operational efficiency, reduced operational costs through automation, and more time for strategic initiatives.
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) Readiness: Leveraging Cisco ACI’s workload portability across geographically distributed data centers, organizations can achieve exceptional business continuity. This strategic approach ensures application availability during outages, simplifies migrations, and empowers robust business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) plans. The benefits translate to sustained application uptime and a significantly reduced risk of downtime, ultimately safeguarding mission-critical operations.
• Public and Private Cloud Integration: Cisco ACI empowers businesses to leverage the full potential of multi-cloud environments by ensuring consistent network and cybersecurity policies across on-premises data centers and public clouds (like ACI cloud). This uniformity translates to reduced risk and increased agility. Organizations can expect a multitude of advantages:
  • Seamless public cloud integration
  • Uniform application of network and security rules
  • Faster time-to-market
  • Reduced hybrid cloud connection errors

Selecting the Perfect Partner for SDN Solution Implementation

In selecting a Cisco ACI solutions provider and partner, a critical factor is expertise tailored to your organization’s specific needs. The ideal partner will possess not only a comprehensive understanding of your business goals but also proven experience with the Cisco ACI platform itself.

WEI stands out as a leader with our extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of Cisco ACI. We are dedicated to empowering organizations in maximizing the platform’s capabilities so you can achieve seamless integration, robust security, and enhanced operational efficiency – all within your Cisco ACI environment.

Final Thoughts

In today’s digital landscape, traditional networks struggle to keep pace with evolving business needs. Cisco ACI acts as a bridge, enabling secure automation and streamlined management for complex cloud environments (including private cloud networks and enterprise hybrid cloud deployments). This ensures your network remains agile and adaptable. Partnering with a company like WEI unlocks the full potential of your digital transformation journey, delivering security, agility, and operational excellence. Contact our team to learn more.

Next steps: As businesses undergo digital transformation, the need for updated corporate networks and IT architectures becomes critical. Cisco ACI aids this shift by providing a network foundation that integrates with cloud environments and adapts to changing business needs.

It offers policy-driven automation to streamline infrastructure deployment and management, facilitates workload transfers across various frameworks, and enhances security. This technology simplifies and speeds up the application deployment process, helping organizations manage digital transformation complexities and prepare for future challenges.

below to find out more about this proven solution.

The post Transforming Data Center Operations: Ensuring Security And Agility In The Digital Age appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Imagine a data center that hums efficiently and is aligned with your business goals. No more scrambling to fix configuration errors or spending hours troubleshooting mysterious network issues.

As a data center (DC) network engineer, your role sits at the heart of data center operations. Ensuring a reliable, scalable, high-performing network infrastructure is critical for seamless business operations.

This blog post delves into four key best practices designed to empower DC network engineers to achieve peak effectiveness. We also explore how innovative tools like intent-based networking (IBN) can further streamline these practices and elevate your role from network management to strategic architect.

Four Best Practices For Thriving In The Modern Data Center

The best data center network keeps up with the ever-changing needs of the business it supports. If a network is only designed based on technicalities, it misses a big chance to be more functional. To get the most out of your network, here are four effective approaches to focus on:

1. Design For Business Outcomes

The key to an efficient data center network is aligning it with the business it serves – its goals, challenges, and growth plans. A well-designed network is a tool to ensure optimal performance and scalability to meet those needs.

However, network design often prioritizes vendor selection over desired outcomes. This can lead to choices based on relationships or certifications rather than business needs. While vendor differences may seem minor (feature bloat, buggy software), they can force business applications to adapt, thus increasing complexity and risk.

DC network engineers should prioritize business outcomes from the outset, engaging key stakeholders across the organization to understand the business processes the network will support. Leverage these insights to design a network that is not only technically sound but strategically aligned with the business’s success.

2. Automate For Reliability And Repeatability

Automating network tasks offers reliability, repeatability, and efficiency, yet most enterprises still struggle with outdated scripts that need constant updating. Homegrown scripts may address basic network needs, but they lack scalability. Manual configurations, on the other hand, are prone to errors and can lead to inconsistent performance and outages.

Broad and effective network automation hinges on key elements:

• Deep network visibility
• A reliable source of truth for configurations
• Pre-production change testing
• Reliable outcome validation

Well-designed automation tools and scripts should handle routine tasks like configuration management, software updates, and performance monitoring. This approach minimizes human error and frees DC network engineers to focus on strategic initiatives.

3. Validate Early, Deploy Faster

Network success demands continuous validation, not just final testing. This means checking configurations and performance throughout the deployment process.

We’ve all heard stories of typos causing network mayhem; human error is real! To emulate real-world production environments and minimize errors, successful network engineers employ continuous validation techniques. Tools like real-time operating system checks and peer review help catch issues early to minimize potential disruptions. Furthermore, organizations with established ITIL frameworks can leverage change management processes for rigorous scrutiny.

These real-time monitoring tools further empower swift problem identification and resolution which ensures seamless network deployment.

4. Be Proactive, Not Reactive

Unlike reactive management, which waits for problems to erupt, proactive network management anticipates potential issues. It identifies them through monitoring and analysis, addressing the root cause before it disrupts business.

Imagine a switch port with intermittent outages – proactive management would catch the problem this early, preventing a scramble to fix a complete failure later. It also involves regular maintenance schedules to keep software and hardware current, further ensuring network stability and security.

Proactive network management is preventative maintenance for your network and enables your organization to save time, money, and prevent headaches.

The Importance Of Documentation

Meticulous documentation complements all the best practices discussed earlier. It establishes a clear record of configurations, changes made, and the reasoning behind design choices. This comprehensive record proves invaluable for troubleshooting, maintenance, and knowledge transfer, especially during personnel turnover. Standardized tools further enhance access and usability of the documentation.

Let’s face it: documentation requires a lot of work and often gets deprioritized during deployments or crises. However, like any healthy habit, documenting every step (such as diagrams and configuration changes) explains the “what” and “why” of every procedure. This history proves crucial for future modifications, troubleshooting, and audits.

Looking For A Reliable IBN Solution?

Businesses of all sizes depend on their networks to function efficiently, and any downtime has significant consequences. This is where intent-based networking (IBN) comes in. IBN solutions offer a new approach to network management, one that is automated, insightful, and proactive.

While traditional network management relies on manual configuration and troubleshooting, IBN solutions take a more intelligent approach. Let’s identify the key benefits of these platforms, especially how Juniper Apstra supports the four best practices:

1. Network Design: allows DC network engineers to define and implement network designs based on business intent. Apstra translates those goals (intent) into configurations and continuously validates and monitors the network’s state and alignment. The vendor-agnostic approach also gives businesses the freedom to choose the best hardware and software.
2. Automation: Juniper Apstra automates network operations with a comprehensive toolkit, ensuring consistent configurations and a stable network. Its strength lies in reliable automation with built-in safeguards. Apstra catches typos, policy violations, and other issues before they impact production thanks to its complete network state database. This streamlines change management and allows rollbacks for unforeseen issues, delivering dependable and repeatable automation.
3. Analytics And Telemetry: Juniper Apstra leverages real-time data and telemetry to simplify continuous validation. Gaining deep network insights, you can quickly identify and fix issues. Its built-in validation safeguards your network, ensuring it adheres to design intent and performance criteria throughout its lifecycle. Apstra also enforces continuous validation of device changes, preventing errors and aligning new modifications with your desired outcomes. For example, it flags and explains errors like adding a new VLAN to an interface with an existing untagged VLAN. This minimizes mistakes and ensures changes meet your business-defined parameters for reach, performance, security, and compliance.
4. Proactive Approach: Juniper Apstra proactively safeguards networks with advanced monitoring and predictive analytics. It ensures network reliability and business continuity by anticipating issues before they arise. The powerful analytics are useful to monitor device health, identify potential problems, and track resource usage. This empowers network engineers and teams to proactively scale and avoid reactive firefighting.

Additionally, Juniper Apstra supports and simplifies documentation with its powerful reporting and visualization tools. These tools automatically generate detailed reports and diagrams accurately reflecting your network’s current state. This makes it easier to maintain up-to-date documentation.

Furthermore, Apstra’s self-documenting nature continuously collects telemetry data from individual devices. This helps in maintaining a comprehensive record of the network’s overall state. Apstra also stores change logs and version histories, which DC network engineers can use to investigate past changes, understand their impact, and even revert the network to a known good state if necessary.

Final Thoughts

Optimizing data center network management hinges on a commitment to established best practices. This foundation, paired with meticulous documentation, safeguards the preservation and accessibility of institutional knowledge and processes.

Juniper Apstra is a powerful and comprehensive network management solution that supports a data center operations team. By leveraging Apstra’s intent-based networking, automation, and proactive management capabilities, network engineers can seamlessly build robust, efficient networks directly contributing to business value.

WEI’s team of experts provides a comprehensive suite of data center management services to optimize your operations and streamline Apstra implementation. Contact us today to empower your data center and team for success.

Next steps: Download our FREE white paper, to further identify the transformative benefits of Juniper Apstra. Contact our team to help assist you in identifying and realizing the necessary outcomes for your data center and the business it supports.

Link:

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Traditionally seen as physical rooms filled with activity, data centers have become the silent workhorses of the digital world. They house critical infrastructure, from basic communication tools to advanced applications and cloud services. However, with growing demands, how we manage these networks needs to be transformed.

As businesses increasingly rely on cloud services, the Internet of Things (IoT), and big data analytics, data center networks must become more efficient, agile, and scalable. These five strategies will empower you to design, develop, implement, and manage a data center network throughout its entire lifecycle to keep everything connected and running smoothly for the enterprise it supports.

1. Embrace Intent-Based Networking And Operations

Traditional network management is an error-prone process that relies on manual device configurations. Intent-based networking (IBN) changes this by translating and automating desired network behavior into specific configurations for all devices.

Juniper Apstra streamlines this process further with a central policy engine that hides complexities and aligns data center network operations. This saves time, reduces errors, and streamlines deployment and management.

2. Ensure Peak Network Performance Through Effective Lifecycle Management

Ensuring optimal security and efficiency within data center networks requires a proactive approach to (NLM). This comprehensive strategy involves regular security audits, firmware upgrades, and continuous performance monitoring.

A robust NLM strategy enables organizations to proactively identify and address potential vulnerabilities, optimize network performance, and minimize downtime.

Simplifying NLM is a feature offered by Juniper Apstra, and provides a unified view of your entire network infrastructure through the following:

• Provisioning: Automated configuration and deployment for faster service rollouts.
• Change Management: Streamlined processes with robust version control and rollback capabilities for secure network changes.
• Monitoring And Optimization: Real-time network health monitoring and performance optimization to ensure peak network efficiency.
• Decommissioning: Simplified device retirement and configuration cleanup for a smooth transition.

NLM, when implemented correctly, delivers three key benefits: lower costs, increased agility and scalability, and stronger security through consistent configurations and version control.

3. Leverage Intent-Based Analytics

Understanding data center network performance is crucial for troubleshooting, planning capacity, and maintaining security. However, raw data alone holds limited value. This is where (IBA) comes in.

IBA utilizes advanced telemetry data to generate valuable real-time insights from devices, applications, and traffic patterns. IBA offers the following benefits:

• Proactive Problem Resolution: Identify potential issues before they disrupt performance.
• Improved Capacity Planning: Gain data-driven insights into network utilization for informed scaling decisions.
• Enhanced Security Visibility: Advanced analytics empower you to detect and mitigate security threats proactively.

Any organization can leverage IBA, a feature available in Juniper Apstra, to gain a holistic view of their network health. This proactive approach identifies potential bottlenecks, security threats, and performance issues before they disrupt operations.

By correlating this data with business intent, IBA optimizes network efficiency, maximizes resource utilization, and empowers proactive data center management.

4. Prioritize Scalability For Data Centers

Your network must adapt to fluctuating workloads and year-to-year business needs. A robust, scalable infrastructure is key to maintaining consistent performance and minimizing disruptions during fluctuations in device or service deployments.

Scalable networks offer a flexible design with automated resource provisioning, allowing for easy management and effortless scaling through standardized configurations.

A scalable network solution allows you to:

• Reduce capital expenditure by efficiently scaling your network without unnecessary hardware investments.
• Quickly provision resources to support new initiatives.
• Simplify network management for any size or complexity of data center.

5. Ensure Support For All Network Designs

Modern data centers embrace a wide range of architectural designs. To maintain peak efficiency across this spectrum, an adaptable network solution is essential.  Here’s how to select the right platform for the job:

• Vendor Neutrality: This ensures seamless compatibility with your chosen network architecture, regardless of the specific hardware brands you utilize. This flexibility simplifies management in multi-vendor environments and protects your data center investment for the future.
• Heterogeneous Environment Support: Your network solution should seamlessly integrate with these components, fostering a truly unified environment. Apstra achieves this through its unwavering commitment to open standards, guaranteeing compatibility with a vast array of devices.
• Multi-Cloud Support: Apstra’s multi-cloud support empowers you to manage your on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud deployments with a single, unified approach.
• Streamlined Operations Through Automation: Consider API integration capabilities that allow seamless network connection with automation tools and cloud management platforms. This enhances your operations and maximizes efficiency.

Final Thoughts

Juniper Apstra leverages the best practices in data center operations through revolutionizing IBN.

As a trusted partner for networking and security, WEI offers solutions like Juniper Apstra to optimize your data center network and transform it into a reliable and efficient hub. This allows your business to operate smoothly in today’s ever-changing digital world.

Contact us today, and our team of experts can work with you to find the perfect networking solution for your business. Our networking experts can customize a plan to fit your unique needs and build a future-proof network that aligns with your business objectives.

Next Steps: Juniper Apstra’s intent-based networking platform is a single software solution that streamlines and automates the design, deployment, and ongoing management of data center networks. Apstra features a user-friendly, point-and-click interface and offers a programmable interface option for automating and orchestrating services and networks on a large scale.

Download our free tech brief, to learn more about the transformative benefits of Juniper Apstra. Contact our team to help assist you in identifying and realizing the necessary outcomes for your data center and the business it supports.

The post Five Best Practices In Building An Agile Data Center Network appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

A recent identified simplifying and automating IT infrastructure as the top strategic priority for businesses. This shift is driven by the limitations of data centers often burdened with complex, short-term solutions that sacrifice long-term reliability. The result? Slow innovation, frustrating user experiences, and costly downtime. By embracing automation and optimization, businesses can streamline processes, reduce costs, and unlock new opportunities to drive them forward in today’s dynamic market.

However, automation solutions such as software-defined networks (SDNs) are often complicated to deploy and difficult to validate. Fortunately, intent-based networking (IBN) software is available so organizations reap the benefits of faster service deployment and accelerated digital transformation. Let’s explore how IBN is a smart solution for businesses to achieve a more efficient and resilient future for their data centers.

The Benefits Of IBN

Intent-based networking transforms network operations by integrating machine learning, artificial intelligence, analytics, and orchestration. Ultimately, this results in the consolidation of configuration management and continuous validations into a single software package. Now, let’s identify the must-have deliverables of an IBN provider.

A Holistic Approach To Choosing The Right IBN Solution

Opting for an IBN solution should be centered around simplicity, cost-efficiency, and agility. Rather than settling for patchwork options, consider a holistic approach that prioritizes the following:

• Reliability. Approaches based on a single source of information, like those utilizing IBN, continuously validate networks against expressed intent, simplify complexity, assess vulnerabilities, and reduce outages. This ensures a reliable, secure, and resilient network, even during sudden or extensive changes.
• Ease Of Use. Your team needs a fast, easy-to-deploy solution to minimize downtime. Additionally, you seek an intuitive user experience for quick adoption and the ability to leverage existing skills and tools to reduce costs.
• Multi-Vendor Compatibility. There are solutions available that automate the entire network life cycle and support multiple platforms and open networking. This flexibility enables you to choose vendors based on your specific requirements, rather than being restricted by a previous equipment purchase.
• Cost Savings And Deployment Time. When evaluating solutions, look beyond the initial cost. Consider the long-term benefits of automated solutions, which minimize human effort in deployment, operation, and maintenance.
• Continuous Support. Opt for vendors who provide ongoing support, ensuring access to data center experts in the case of unexpected challenges. WEI can work in lockstep to guide your IBN solution from development to deployment to ongoing management. Every solution guided by our senior architects is driven with the client’s top business objectives in mind.

Modern data center networks demand a fresh perspective that focuses on business outcomes and user experience. Proven solutions such as Juniper Apstra exemplify this approach, allowing you to define business intent and automate the entire network lifecycle across multivendor environments.

Optimize Your Data Center Experience

With continuous validation, powerful analytics, and simplified operations, Juniper Apstra becomes a game-changer in supporting data migration and .

Adopting intuitive IBN solutions such as Juniper Apstra can provide the following benefits to your operations:

• Reliability. Automate network deployment and operations from day zero to day two and beyond with validated and repeatable designs. The reference design allows data centers to scale at runtime while maintaining consistent network policy and security.
• Simplicity. Juniper Apstra eliminates vendor-specific configurations through user-friendly workflow management and automation. Regardless of hardware vendor, users can design, deploy, and operate data center network tools through a single management pane. Additionally, Apstra ensures streamlined and proactive management through consistent data, intent-based analytics, and self-remediation for potential brownouts or deviations.
• Flexibility. Juniper Apstra supports a wide range of hardware and software vendors, including open standards-based options. When deploying new services or modifying networks, you can choose the best hardware and software combination to meet your needs. Multi-vendor networking teams can focus on innovation rather than learning multiple automation tools. Juniper also integrates with to provide network operators visibility into virtual workloads and networks.
• Zero-Trust Security. Juniper’s ensures seamless policy adaptation as applications shift across cloud environments. It empowers network security teams to segment traffic, monitor configurations, and enforce granular security. With a single policy framework, you can consistently apply zero-trust principles across all data center environments. This approach enforces authorized access and micro-segmentation, allowing only authorized entities to communicate with each other.
• Resource Optimization. With validated designs and automated operations, this feature allows networking teams to prioritize strategic business initiatives.
• Agility. Rapidly deploy and scale to minimize service delivery and resolution times, and maintenance windows. By using blueprints and declarative models, Apstra accelerates deployment, reduces mean time to resolution (MTTR), and ensures consistent, secure, and resilient networking across core and edge locations. When needed, customers can change or define business outcomes via a declarative model which enables the platform to efficiently handle configurations and streamline data center networking with precision.

By optimizing your data centers, you achieve operational efficiency and reliable delivery of applications and digitalized services to customers. Intent-based networking solutions not only support your objectives but also drive new business opportunities.

Final Thoughts

The demands on your business operations are greater than ever, especially with the constant flow of data. As businesses strive to stay competitive, IBN provides a reliable, secure, and simple solution that allows organizations to create adaptive architecture that seamlessly aligns with their goals.

Whether you’re scaling up, optimizing processes, or enhancing user experiences, WEI understands your business needs and offers comprehensive IBN solutions such as Juniper Apstra and Cloud-Ready Platforms. Our experts can collaborate with you to create a customized networking strategy that aligns with your objectives.

Ready to transform your networking experience? Start your automation journey with WEI. Let us guide you toward a future-proof network that drives efficiency, innovation, and growth.

Next Steps: Juniper Apstra’s intent-based networking platform is a single software solution that streamlines and automates the design, deployment, and ongoing management of data center networks. Apstra features a user-friendly, point-and-click interface and offers a programmable interface option for automating and orchestrating services and networks on a large scale.

Download our free tech brief, to learn more about the transformative benefits of Juniper Apstra. Contact our team to help assist you in identifying and realizing the necessary outcomes for your data center and the business it supports.

The post Network Operations: The Six Key Benefits Of Intent-Based Networking appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Ethernet VPN-Virtual Extensible LAN (EVPN-VXLAN) is a network virtualization technology that supports large enterprise and multi-tenant environments. While single-vendor, chassis-based technologies may suffice for most traditional campus network architectures, they are not agile enough to support the scalability and expanding needs of today’s modern enterprises. EVPN-VXLAN/IP enables businesses to virtually connect geographically dispersed locations using Layer 2 (L2) bridging. It is ideal for data center interconnections, large campus environments, cloud-ready networks, and environments required to support substantially large numbers of endpoint devices.

What is EVPN-VXLAN?

Just as TCP/IP is a suite composed of the TCP and IP protocols, EVPN and VXLAN are separate components in themselves. EVPN serves as the control plane, using BPG extensions to transmit MAC address information. By moving the MAC learning process to the control plane, it avoids the flooding that is characteristic of traditional L2 networks in which the MAC tables must be constantly updated. It serves as a unifying overlay that accommodates resources from different data centers in much the same way that application containers float across virtual host servers.

VXLAN is an industry standard virtualization overlay protocol that expands the L2 network address space from 4,000 separate identities to 16 million. It is vendor neutral and switches that support it encapsulate L2 frames into L3 packets. VXLAN networks utilize spine-leaf switch architectures. Spine layer switches are used to pass traffic through leaf switches and are not VXLAN aware. On the other hand, leaf layer switches perform the VXLAN functionality and interconnect the spine to the array of endpoints. This dual layer topology is better suited for east-west traffic flows and provides increased redundancy as every leaf switch connects to every spine switch. It also negates the need for the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) configuration while still preventing loops.

Advantages of EVPN-VXLAN

A network overlay approach is essential in the era of computer mobility. This sense of mobility isn’t just present amongst client devices, but applications as well. Today’s applications are deployed onto virtual machines or containers that can stretch across multiple locations. This necessitates the need for a seamless mobility model that is flexible enough to continually support communications between application endpoints. This is regardless of where they are at the time. Pertinent advantages of EVPN/VXLAN/IP include:

1. Scalability: EVPN/VXLAN/IP makes it easy to add core, distribution, and access switches to the network without redesigning the underlaying network, allowing a campus fabric to significantly scale out to accommodate the influx of additional endpoints and traffic.
2. Flexibility: The open standards-based architecture of EVPN/VXLAN/IP ensures backwards and forwards interoperability, This makes it is easy to integrate into multiple networks.
3. Greater Security: Granular network segmentation of devices along with the ability to create group-based security policies provide greater control of end-user traffic while limiting the attack radius of suspicious traffic.
4. Improved Performance and Resiliency: Latency is reduced as every destination within the spine-leaf topology is never more than two hops away. Due to multiple active-active redundant links, the failure of a single spine or leaf will not disrupt the network.
5. Simplicity: Operational complexity is reduced as IT can easily configure the same VLANs across multiple buildings and sites.

Juniper Apstra Automated Data Center Migration Service

Planning a migration to a large enterprise environment that utilizes EVPN-VXLAN/IP is a mammoth endeavor and implementing one for the first time instills a substantial learning curve. The good news is that can make it easier regardless of your experience with network overlays. The service gives your IT team access to data center deployment experts who employ proven, best practice implementation methodologies and tools. The result is faster completion times, reduced deployment risks, and reduced costs. The Juniper Apstra service supports multiple migration scenarios:

• Move an existing Juniper EVPN-VXLAN/IP fabric data center network to one that is managed with Juniper Apstra.
• Upgrade from an existing legacy Juniper non-IP fabric data center to an EVPN-VXLAN/IP fabric data center managed with Juniper Apstra.
• Transition an existing non-Juniper fabric production data center to a Juniper EVPN-VXLAN/IP fabric data center managed with Juniper.

Harnessing this level of expertise in your next project also ensures that your future network environment remains aligned with assigned priorities such as minimal downtime and secure but efficient traffic flows.

Conclusion

In the same way that EVPN/VXLAN/IP segments and simplifies even the largest of networks, Juniper Apstra breaks down your next fabric data center project into distinct phases that make help ensure that your project is completed in an orderly fashion. Because Juniper Apstra is an , your next data center is sure to align with the business objectives of your organization. Learn how Juniper and EVPN/VXLAN/IP can add scalability, simplicity, and security to your next data center fabric.

Next Steps: Whether you are responding to evolving workloads and performance needs or changing scalability and resiliency requirements, chances are your enterprise will undergo a data center migration at some point. Download our white paper, and learn:

• The challenges of inevitable data center migrations
• How to incrementally build and validate blueprints
• How Juniper Apstra executes your intent
• Apstra automated data center deployment service

The post 5 Advantages Of A Juniper EVPN-VXLAN/IP Network appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

The common idiom, “Be as easy as one-two-three” is well embedded into our culture. It denotes that something is easy, simple, or intuitive enough to the point that it doesn’t require a serious amount of skill or effort. In turn, having the capability to break complex projects into shorter, more digestible three-step processes is something that modern professionals desire.

Enter Juniper Networks and its acquisition of Something that Juniper set out to achieve with their acquisition is taking on the mammoth task of creating a modernized data center and simplifying it. Juniper Apstra is a software-only, multi-vendor, intent-based networking solution that helps IT teams design and operate a modern day data center or campus fabric. Ultimately, it provides an organized means to help ensure that your project falls well within its projected window and meets your prescribed business objectives.

The Power of Intent-Based Networking

A lot of time is spent on advocating for the benefits of intent-based networking. Juniper Apstra helps translate business intent and technical objectives into policies and device configurations. This ensures that the data center is servicing the needs of your business. We are well past the era of technology wagging the tail of the dog. Business must drive technology today, and that starts with the data center. At WEI, we’ve talked a lot about the advantages of a network that is intent-based driven. Juniper Apstra is the only intent-based networking technology that is vendor agnostic for both hardware and device operating system. But you can’t tell the full story of Apstra without mentioning how it breaks a data center project into incremental chunks comprised of these same three steps: create, validate, and deploy.

Everything Must be Validated

It is relatively easy to create something. The challenge is creating something that meets your initial expectations. If not, the creation process is wasted. That’s where validation comes in. If your data center must match up with the objectives and needs of the business it supports, then every idea must be validated before it becomes implemented. For example, Apstra uses pre-condition validation to substantiate an initial request such as a new VLAN or security policy by examining all possible repercussions and whether the predicted result aligns with the initial intent.

Validation can also be extended into operations as well. For instance, is it okay to put a virtual host server into maintenance mode at this precise moment? Then we have post-condition validation, or what Apstra refers to as real-time expectations validation. Here, Apstra utilizes telemetry data and analytics to perform real-time validation checks to ensure that the proposed change achieved the desired result. In summary, every action affects the data center must first be validated before being deployed. It’s then continually validated until an instance occurs that no longer matches the original intent for its creation, which constitutes a new change.

Rinse And Repeat

We are not alluding that designing, creating, or operating a data center is easy. Today’s data centers are highly complex with many moving parts. And that’s where the is found – the solution breaks your project into standard phases with each phase comprised of specific activities. For instance, the end objective during the design phase is to create a blueprint. During the blueprint creation process, the necessary device and policy configurations are created automatically and then validated. Once validated, the designer can then commit them to the configuration at which time they are pushed out as an abstraction layer that is vendor neutral. Once the vendor models have been defined, Apstra will utilize zero-touch provisioning to configure all your devices while reducing the chance for human error.

The blueprint creation process is broken into multiple phases. You may want to begin by outlining your required leaf and spine switches and defining their ports. Next, you’ll design your racks, detailing things such as subnet allocation schemes, layer 2 application segments and layer 3 routing domains. You can then make rack accommodations for your servers. Each individual rack can be saved as a template that can be used repeatedly to save time. Before a template is saved, Apstra reviews it to ensure that you have all ports accounted for and that every server has pre-conditioned connectivity. All of this is done using an easy-to-use graphical user interface that makes it simple to maneuver and manage.

The entire blueprint creation process is a constant cycle of create, validate, and deploy. This rinse and repeat process reduces the need for costly troubleshooting down the road once items are in place because everything has been properly tested beforehand. Think of Apstra as your test environment — without the expense of creating one. Of course, there is bound to be a glitch or two, but the automated perpetual testing of the Apstra system will be detected and notify you.

Conclusion

When you build a data center, it is important to stay focused on the big picture. It is not about configuring devices, but rather configuring the entire fabric of your data center to ensure optimum operability. This is what Apstra does. It provides the disciplined simplicity that IT support teams yearn for today, and WEI can help your team realize this.

Next Steps: Whether you are responding to evolving workloads and performance needs or changing scalability and resiliency requirements, chances are your enterprise will undergo a data center migration at some point. Download our white paper, and learn:

• The challenges of inevitable data center migrations
• How to incrementally build and validate blueprints
• How Juniper Apstra executes your intent
• Apstra automated data center deployment service

The post Create, Validate, Deploy: Apstra’s 3-Step Process appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and There’s a great deal of complexity and moving parts to consider along with many potential pain points that cause delays. That’s why the design phase is so critical. Whether you are constructing a data center or erecting a building, you need a blueprint to guide your crew throughout the process. A data center blueprint is more than just drawing equipment racks with mounted devices. It needs to include granular details such as IP address pools, VLAN IDs, routing protocols, and security policies – all of which must be pushed out in the form of configuration settings for all interconnected devices.

Sounds like an arduous process, doesn’t it? It can be if you don’t have a system in place to guide you. We’ve identified to be that essential system that provides the needed guidance, however. It’s an intent-based multi-vendor solution that automates and validates the process of designing and deploying your next data center project. Juniper Apstra will also assist you in operating and managing your data center throughout its life cycle, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

The Basic Process of Juniper Apstra

There are two fundamental aspects of the intent-based networking platform for creating a blueprint: intent fulfillment and intent assurance. Intent fulfillment means defining what the intent is so that the data center aligns properly with business objectives. Meanwhile, intent assurance involves validating the design elements before any configurations or settings are deployed. The entire process can be segmented into these five steps:

1. Define the intent for the project.
2. Translate intent into a series of prescriptive network configurations.
3. Verify that the changes are valid prior to deployment.
4. Deploy the verified configurations.
5. Monitor the network state to ensure continuous compliance with the intent and make changes, if necessary.

Juniper Apstra installs on more than just one virtual machine and is accessed using a web browser. You then start the blueprint creation process using preconfigured or custom templates. As the blueprint is created, Apstra creates the necessary configurations for your devices.

Designing Your Switches and Servers

The initial design steps are created using an abstraction layer that eliminates vendor dependencies. Here, you will define your spine and leaf switches as well as your servers as logical devices. For switches, you will specify details such as port count, port speed, and how the ports are to be used. For instance, you can require that the highest port number of every switch should always use 10 GB. Once these specifications are defined, you can choose amongst a list of multiple switch vendor models that comply with your stated specifications. You can then move on to servers. You only need to create one logical server to represent each server type, so you specify the details just once.

Designing Your Racks

Once your logical switches and servers are created you can go about laying out your racks. You can do this using existing templates, which you can modify to your needs. Like servers, you can design a rack once and use that design as many times as needed from then on. You can start inserting your spine and leaf switches followed by your servers. Once a rack has been completed, Apstra validates the number of available switchports to match your connectivity requirements and ensure that all servers have a connection. Once a rack is completed, you can save it as a template to be used again.

Defining Resource Pools

All your devices need their underlying resources pools. Apstra has four types of resource pools: IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses, ASN numbers and VLAN IDs. These pools will later be assigned to devices during the deployment stage. You define IPv4 addresses for things such as loopback IPs for BGP Router IDs and link IPs between switches. There are nifty status indicators that will let you know things like how many IP addresses within a subnet are being used. ASN pools are used for your inter-autonomous routing. Once completed, you can then create your routing policies that govern the movement of traffic throughout the data center.

The Final Blueprint

The final blueprint is comprised of the completed data center templates you created throughout the design process. Think of each template as an instance of the final design, with each instance containing the involved configurations that will be deployed. The design process is performed in blueprint staged view, which means that changes are not applied until committed. Only at that point will the incremental configurations be pushed out to your chosen devices using zero-touch-provisioning. The entire process from start to finish is designed for minimal manual intervention.

Conclusion

Designing a future data center is certainly a daunting task, but Juniper Apstra takes the intimidation away by guiding you through the entire process using an inviting GUI. For complex enterprises, cloud providers and service providers deploying more complex EVPN-VXLAN/IP fabric data centers, there is Juniper’s Apstra Automated Data Center Deployment Service. This proven service gives you access to highly experienced data center deployment experts who assist you when needed. Whatever your future data center migration demands, Juniper has the tools to simply and accelerate your project, while ensuring that it meets or exceeds its intended purpose.

Next Steps: Whether you are responding to evolving workloads and performance needs or changing scalability and resiliency requirements, chances are your enterprise will undergo a data center migration at some point. Download our white paper, and learn:

• The challenges of inevitable data center migrations
• How to incrementally build and validate blueprints
• How Juniper Apstra executes your intent
• Apstra automated data center deployment service

The post 5 Ways to Segment Your Next Data Migration Project appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

A data migration project is a huge undertaking. It’s a consuming venture that absorbs considerable resources to complete, which is why you must get it right. So, how will you conclude whether the project was a success or not? There will be multiple determining factors such as whether timetables and schedules were met and if the project stayed within budget. However, there’s one overriding measurement of success that is the most important of all: Does it achieve the business objectives that it was aligned with? In other words, will it fulfill its intended purpose? That’s what truly matters.

If this is your deciding element, then it is critical to accurately define what those intentions are. But that’s only half the equation. Once defined, you need a way to translate those intentions into the network and system configurations that will ensure that all datacenter components work collectively to achieve those intentions. This means that configurations now have a purpose beyond technical requirements. It means that business intent should drive them. Welcome to the intent-based datacenter.

Intent-Based Networking

Let’s first talk about the concept of the intent-based network (IBN). According to , IBN is a software-enabled automation process that uses high levels of intelligence, analytics, and orchestration to improve network operations and uptime. Its premise is simple. Operators state the business objectives that must be met, and the IBN translates those objectives into the required configurations that are then deployed throughout the network. This conversion process is completed without human intervention. Gone are the days when datacenter management relied on CLI commands, scripts, and SNMP managers. IBN replaces those labor intensive and unscalable approaches with automated intelligence, thus lessoning the dependence on highly trained specialists.

SDN Evolves Into IBN

IBN is considered the next evolutionary step of software-defined networking (SDN). SDN utilized software-based controllers within a central controller that communicated with the underlying network using application programming interfaces (APIs). This software-based architecture made the network nimbler and gave admins the ability to control all network components through a single pane of glass. This gave us the software-defined datacenter in which virtualized components were provisioned, monitored, and managed programmatically.

SDN could provision additional resources, servers, or bandwidth to accommodate dynamic workloads without human intervention. IBN goes beyond the task of configuring network changes to accommodate the adjusting needs of workloads. It adjusts to the dynamic nature of your business objectives. Once configuration changes are deployed, they are validated to determine if they are achieving their intended purpose and alter them if necessary. IBN will then continue to monitor and verify that the intent of those configurations are continually being met and act accordingly if not. If the desired intent isn’t being met, the IBN system can take corrective action, which could include the modification of a QoS policy, VLAN or ACL. The result is not only a more objective-based network, but a more compliant one as well.

IBN simplifies troubleshooting with its ability to perform root cause analysis thanks to powerful analytics. Its boundless visibility across the IT estate allows it to keep operators aware of what’s happening in the network in real time. Don’t think of IBN as a giant alert mechanism, however. It can discern what’s important and what’s just noise so IT personnel aren’t inundated with alerts.

IBN isn’t about technology for the sake of technology. It’s about preventing your network from straying off the disciplined path that aligns with the needs of the business. It’s a business-first mindset of creating, operating, and managing your network.

Do Right From The Start

While IBN provides the automation and intelligence to ensure that your network is working as intended, the creation of a new datacenter presents the invaluable opportunity to define what its purposeful objectives are at the very beginning. That’s where comes in. Juniper Apstra is a multi-vendor, intent-based networking software solution that both automates and validates the processes of designing, implementing, and operating a datacenter. It converts the stated intent of the project and converts it into objects, which are then translated into configurations that are deployed to all the systems across the network.

Juniper Apstra takes you through the entire design process step by step, from designing your rack space to creating your VLANs and security policies. Because your migration project isn’t Apstra’s first rodeo, architects and administrators can use existing templates or choose from vetted configuration options to accelerate the design process. Every configuration is validated before giving the go ahead for deployment. This limits the impact and scope of a possible failure following the initial deployment. If need be, configurations can be instantly rolled back or rolled forward on command.

Conclusion

The age of intent-based networking is here, and it represents a new era in which the datacenter and the business work cohesively with one another. The only way to truly ensure that your future network is intention-based is to integrate it from the very beginning starting with the design process. Juniper is a leader in intent-based networking technology and Apstra is the tool that ensures that your datacenter operates with business intended purpose.

Next Steps: Whether you are responding to evolving workloads and performance needs or changing scalability and resiliency requirements, chances are your enterprise will undergo a data center migration at some point. Download our white paper, and learn:

• The challenges of inevitable data center migrations
• How to incrementally build and validate blueprints
• How Juniper Apstra executes your intent
• Apstra automated data center deployment service

The post Simplify Your Next Data Migration Project With Intent-Based Networking appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Almost every enterprise has accumulated thousands of digital files over the years. Everything from customer records to logo graphics is data that needs to be stored in a secure, easy-to-access place. As organizations embark on their digital transformations, it’s important to think about storage infrastructure enhancements to reduce costs while optimizing company performance and security. Companies should consider data storage solutions such as HPE Nimble Storage to help reach this goal. Let’s cover exactly what it is and five reasons why companies should use this particular data storage solution.

What Is HPE Nimble Storage?

explains, “HPE Nimble Storage is a flash-optimized, intelligent, self-managing storage portfolio that delivers the simplest storage experience with enterprise functionality.” This data storage solution utilizes innovative technology to keep continuous track of your IT infrastructure while also protecting your organization from cybersecurity risks.

Nimble Storage has three main products that include all-flash arrays, adaptive flash arrays, and secondary flash arrays. Powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, Nimble Storage can make systems quicker and more reliable to assist with the IT needs many organizations have. IDC states: “HPE customers are realizing significant value by utilizing HPE Nimble Storage to improve their IT agility and application performance and availability. These benefits are worth an average of $3.06 million per year, which would result in a five-year ROI of 487%.” Those statistics alone are some of the many reasons Nimble Storage is an excellent data storage solution for businesses.

Five Benefits Of HPE Nimble Storage

Nimble Storage, along with , is designed to provide flexibility and consistency for enterprise storage, especially for those with varying IT needs. Here are the key benefits of HPE Nimble Storage for modernizing your data storage infrastructure.

1. Enhanced Business Performance

Nimble Storage delivers fast, reliable IT support as common issues that pop up across IT environments can be typically solved. This data storage solution compares your issues with previous ones to resolve problems, allowing you to avoid downtime. IT leaders know that downtime impacts both IT and the enterprise, so it is reassuring to know that Nimble Storage can reduce unplanned downtime by 69%.

HPE Nimble Storage also automatically predicts and resolves 86% of problems before you even know they exist. This will give your IT team time to focus on more important projects. This gained agility leads to improved performance and better business productivity.

2. Lower Costs

HPE Nimble Storage can help organizations find significant cost savings through its adaptive intelligence. It lowers the cost of operations since it offers an on-demand, pay-as-you-go service instead of large upfront payments. Your data storage budget can be aligned to usage, saving you money in the long run. In fact, this data storage solution shows impressive numbers such as a 49% reduction in the total cost of operations.

3. Improved Security

Nimble Storage is powered by , which is a cloud-based platform that checks systems for any possible security or downtime issues. This proactive AI cybersecurity service helps you identify any vulnerabilities before they affect your business. HPE reports that 86% of issues detected are automatically resolved without the need for additional IT support. This ultimately lowers risk and boosts the efficiency of your IT infrastructure and work performance.

4. Flexibility

The HPE Nimble Storage is a unique platform with a scale-to-fit architecture that allows customers to scale up performance and capacity independently. Not only can this data storage solution scale up, but it can also scale out. This means your data storage can have improved performance and capacity. This flexible platform gives organizations the option to add or remove resources as they see fit.

5. Streamlined Process

Implementing HPE Nimble Storage lets your IT team access data whenever it’s needed. In fact, it has a 99.9999% availability rate for that purpose. This platform also has one of the quickest provisioning times, allowing your organization to set up your storage selection almost instantly so you can resume operations as soon as possible and expand your IT environment faster.

Conclusion

With HPE Nimble Storage, you don’t need to deal with unexpected data storage surprises such as unplanned downtime and expensive support costs. Organizations can have high expectations with lower costs and improved performance. This efficient data storage solution can help IT teams devote more time to innovation.

If you are looking to change your data storage system, contact WEI today. Our team of professionals can work with you on finding which data storage solutions your business needs, as well as go over how Nimble Storage solutions may be the perfect fit for your enterprise.

Next Steps: AI is an important aspect of data center modernization. Download our tech brief titled, “” to learn how AI can enhance your IT environment.

The post Top Five Reasons To Consider HPE Nimble Storage appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Regardless of the industry, all enterprises are looking for strategies to improve their organizations and stay competitive in the market. However, when it comes to technological innovation, there’s one piece in particular that often blocks the way forward: the human element. While computers may still lack the creativity that sets the human mind apart, artificial intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly important part of modern computing, especially when it comes to processing and managing data.

This has never been more apparent than over the last year and half. In the midst of a global pandemic, enterprises utilizing AI in ways that reduced in-person hours reported that repetitive, day-to-day tasks, especially within the data center architecture, faired the storm far better than other organizations. AI was also a critical component when it came to implementing and managing remote workforces.

A conducted by IBM shows that as a result of the global pandemic, many enterprises accelerated the adoption of AI in the workplace However, some have yet to implement AI in a significant way, citing barriers to adoption such as a lack of proper knowledge amongst the IT team and difficulties identifying where AI solutions will make the most impact within the digital environment.

If these challenges sound familiar, ‘s AI solutions can help. Keep reading to find out how!

Determine Your AI Strategy in 5 Steps

The first step to implementing any new technology is building your strategy. According to Dell, there are five steps that are essential to every artificial intelligence project.

1. Define your use case. How are you going to utilize AI? What are your goals? How will you measure success? Are your goals and implementation strategy feasible?
2. Assess data. What data will be involved in your AI initiatives? Where does that data live? How will it be accessed and how does it need to be prepared for your project?
3. Identify model. Determine which AI model will work best for your use case. Which tools are needed to create, train, and prove this model?
4. Optimize software ecosystem. How will you move your model into production? What is your development process going to look like?
5. Determine IT environment. Your desired outcomes will determine the type of deployment that will work best, whether that’s private, public, edge, or hybrid cloud. You should also determine your latency and throughput requirements, as well as any other specifications.

By following these five steps, you can be sure that you will be properly prepared when it comes time to actually implement your AI strategy.

Dell’s AI Solutions Can Help You Find Success

Once your plan is in place, it’s time to begin your implementation journey. Finding the right vendor to partner with is just as important as planning your strategy, so it’s something that should be carefully considered.

that support digital transformation and innovation efforts, Dell can assist you in all your AI initiatives, from the implementation phase to ongoing maintenance and security efforts.

As a Dell customer, you’ll also have access to the , Dell’s dedicated group of computer scientists, data scientists, engineers, and subject matter experts, all of whom are constantly pushing the boundaries and exploring new ways of utilizing these technologies.

Dell’s portfolio of AI and data solutions is also available in either direct or as-a-service management models, letting you choose the option that best suits your needs and budget.

If you’re looking for a partner to join you on your journey to AI implementation, look no further than Dell Technologies.

Are You Interested In Dell’s AI Solutions?

is committed to helping enterprises transform the way they do business. To support this, innovation is at the forefront of all their solutions, enabling you to transform your infrastructure and accelerate the innovation you need to stay competitive. If you’re ready to make AI work for your business, contact WEI to learn more about how we can help architect the right solution to power your AI initiatives. We have expertise across all Dell systems and can help build the right solution to achieve your desired business outcomes.

NEXT STEPS: Many of our customers choose to run their business on Dell VxRail. Find out the TOP TEN reasons why in our tech brief about the benefits of VxRail below. 

The post Why You Should Choose Dell For Your AI Initiatives appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

In years past, IT teams were generally squirrelled away and largely forgotten by other departments. Today, the digital economy and increased use of technology in the workplace have made IT a center point of daily operations and forced enterprises to focus on modernizing their .

To keep up with evolving business objectives and increasingly complex and growing workloads, today’s IT teams need to be flexible, agile, and efficient, but that hinges on whether the infrastructure is flexible enough to respond to the speed of business.

So how can enterprises give IT teams the tools they need to be successful? By choosing solutions that also prioritize these attributes.

Nutanix enterprise cloud and HPE GreenLake

Separately, and are supporting enterprises through a variety of digital transformation and modernization solutions.

, a fully managed, scalable IT infrastructure service, offers enterprises a cloud-like consumption model for on-premises infrastructure. HPE also offers flexible pay-as-go models and makes it easy for enterprises to scale to their exact needs.

HPE GreenLake has cast aside the one-size-fits-all approach to supported technology by allowing enterprises to choose the most appropriate HPE or third-party technology, which now includes .

As a complete IT infrastructure, the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform provides the agility, scalability, and simplicity of the cloud, and the security, performance, and cost predictability of traditional on-premises infrastructure.

An additional benefit can be found in the way Nutanix Enterprise Cloud spreads all data and processes across the entire cluster, which improves resource utilization, scalability, and performance predictability.

So why is Nutanix and HPE together critical to modernization success?

Through this partnership, Nutanix and HPE are offering customers additional strategies for modernizing IT and transforming operations through two key methods. The first is a portfolio of running the Nutanix software stack, and the second expands HPE GreenLake to run the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud as-a-service to support key areas.

Throughout their partnership, Nutanix and HPE have focused on end-user computing and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), databases, and private cloud infrastructures.

In terms of end-user computing, HPE GreenLake with Nutanix offers enterprises faster and easier deployment and management of VDI, as well as desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) infrastructure. HPE GreenLake with Nutanix also simplifies bring-your-own-device and choose-your-own-device programs through the distribution of applications through SaaS models.

For databases, HPE GreenLake with Nutanix mitigates common management challenges that come about due to the use of traditional infrastructure to support high-performance database operations. By streamlining database deployment, management, and operations, HPE GreenLake frees up IT for more complex and strategic projects.

Finally, the focus on private cloud infrastructure, supported by hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), allows enterprises to consolidate siloed workloads into just one management platform. Additionally, IT teams love the one-click database deployment, management, and operations, as well as a pay-per-use billing structure.

Are you interested in modernizing your IT strategy?

To keep up with the demands of this new digital world, enterprises must prioritize efficiency as the key focal point of their IT modernization strategy. HPE GreenLake with Nutanix enables enterprise IT teams to use the tools they need to be successful on their own terms. Take a closer look at how these two solutions work together and it will be easy to spot opportunities for efficiency gains and reduce complexity. Contact the WEI team today to learn more about how these solutions can work in your environment. WEI is an HPE Platinum Partner and we have several resident Nutanix experts on our engineering team that can help you navigate toward the right infrastructure solution for your company.

NEXT STEPS: Modernizing the data center essentially starts with virtualization. And yes, you can virtualize it all! We are now living in a software-defined world, and the companies that had adopted software defined infrastructure early are also the industry innovators of today. Read our eBook below to better understand what’s required for a successful journey to software defined infrastructure.

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Over the past decade, drastic changes have taken place within the data center. Technological advances and innovative new products have revolutionized the way data centers operate. Virtualization is now a vital part of the modern software-defined data center (SDDC). While virtualization is enormously beneficial, it comes with a new set of challenges. Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) resolves many of the efficiency, security, and scalability issues facing today’s data centers.

What is HCI?

HCI is a next-generation architecture designed to meet the needs of the modern SDDC. Created to support cloud and software-first methods, HCI unites every aspect of the data center. Servers, hypervisors, storage, and data management are controlled from a central platform. HCI provides high scalability and agility while simplifying data center management. With HCI, enterprises can take a cloud-first approach without sacrificing availability and performance.

Data center convergence is not a new idea. There are many comprehensive solutions that link storage, networking, and computing devices. However, many of these solutions only serve to simplify infrastructure development and upgrades. Modern SDDCs require a solution that also addresses day-to-day management and operational needs.

Virtualization has become a key data center element. HCI simplifies the management of virtual machines and workloads, and solves many virtualization challenges. With HCI, IT can manage the entire data center from a single interface. HCI permits the clustering of systems, even across separate sites, creating shared resource pools. In turn, this helps maximize availability, agility, performance, and scalability.

Challenges and Industry Trends

Virtualization has redefined the data center, but it has its own challenges. New products and solutions are available each week. Enterprises often rush to employ every new device to ensure that their data centers are state-of-the-art. Many of these solutions are highly beneficial and meet specific needs. For example, deduplication appliances can significantly cut down on the storage space required for backups. The downside is that these devices are not all designed to work together. Each product must be managed separately, and each part of the IT department requires a dedicated specialist. This disconnect has made data center management complicated and inefficient.

IT departments often employ several solutions to maximize data efficiency and storage capacity. However, many of these products utilize the same methods, resulting in CPU intensive redundancies. For example, data sent to storage is deduplicated to maximize storage space. To create a backup, the data must be hydrated or returned to its original state. It is then deduplicated again when the system sends the backup to storage. This repeated deduplication and hydration results in extensive CPU and bandwidth costs. The intended benefits of the solutions are neutralized by the increased demands on the infrastructure.

Virtualization has revolutionized the way enterprises use and manage their servers. Unfortunately, few companies are using virtualization as intended. True virtualization should unite all resources into a single pool that users can access as needed. When IT departments use separate incompatible hardware and software components, the benefits of virtualization are reduced. Each component must be managed through its own interface. The result is separate groups of specialists managing different aspects of the data center. This creates a complex management system that limits the data center’s potential.

Benefits of HCI

HCI seeks to simplify data center management and optimize resources. With HCI, enterprises can eliminate the need for separate management systems and staff. HCI works by linking each aspect of the data center to create a single physical system with one comprehensive management interface. Data center management is drastically simplified, resulting in increased performance. HCI helps enterprises maximize:

• Data efficiency
• Scalability
• Data protection
• Application and workload mobility
• Data availability

Resource and management optimization also lowers operating costs and reduces IT expenses, making HCI a cost-effective solution. With HCI, companies can get more out of their data center investments.

HCI allows enterprises to realize the true potential of their modernized data centers. Tech innovations and changing business needs have transformed the data center and brought on new challenges. Incompatible devices and solutions are managed separately and often create intense system demands. IT becomes a multi-department division, with each group managing a different aspect of the system. This separation cancels out the unity that virtualization should bring. With HCI, every part of the data center is connected to and managed by a single interface. HCI turns the modern data center into the comprehensive, streamlined environment it is designed to be.

NEXT STEPS: Explore the major differences between converged and hyperconverged infrastructure in our white paper: Future Ready Data center: Converged vs Hyperconverged infrastructure.

The post The Basics of Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

WEI is committed to helping organizations accelerate their by leveraging their validated services delivery capabilities around advanced VMware technologies. Today we are proud to announce the successful achievements of the Datacenter Virtualization and Desktop and Mobility VMware Master Services Competencies.

“Few VMware partners have earned the distinction of achieving two Master Service Competencies,” said WEI President Belisario Rosas. “WEI is proud to have earned these technical achievements.”

“VMware is pleased to recognize WEI for achieving Data center Virtualization and Desktop and Mobility Master Services Competencies. This achievement shows customers that partners like WEI are dedicated and invested, and have validated expertise in advanced VMware technologies,” said Jenni Flinders, vice president and worldwide channel chief, VMware. “We value WEI as a VMware partner, and appreciate their efforts in achieving this VMware distinction as they work to increase their service delivery capabilities.”

These achievements will assist WEI in developing customer-centric solutions for our clients in four distinct areas:

• Cloud Management and Automation – Designates expertise in delivery of VMware Cloud Management and Automation solutions and services with deep understanding and execution of cloud management design principles and methodologies.
• Data Center Virtualization – Designates expertise in delivery of environments and digital infrastructure services with deep understanding of and execution in Data Center Virtualization design principles and methodologies.
• Desktop and Mobility – Designates expertise in designing, installing, and maintaining and solutions with deep understanding of and execution in desktop and mobility design principles and methodologies to deliver a scalable and reliable digital workspace.
• Network Virtualization – Designates expertise in the delivery of VMware NSX environments and with deployment and optimization of NSX environment capabilities.

Let WEI Help Guide Your Digital Transformation

When it comes to delivering or obtaining the right set of cloud services, WEI routinely pairs industry best practices with top-flight technologies and its own brand of innovation. The result? The right cloud-based solution at just the right time for any enterprise. Contact us today to get started.

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Containers are small, agile, and easy to spin up. As a result, they tend to spread quickly, which can ultimately lead to sprawl. Sprawl exists when containers propagate unfettered, consuming resources and negatively impacting other containers or applications. Since containers work on the concept of shared resources, even small changes can have a widespread impact. By breaking deployments into smaller, more manageable parts, we ultimately increase the number and complexity of items to control. Maintaining a manageable number of containers will prevent mishandling, misconfiguration, and resource fragmentation. Visibility helps to keep container use in check, yet it’s often overlooked in the early stages of container adoption. If your current asset management teams are struggling to keep up with the state of physical machines, patches, and apps, the widespread proliferation of containers will only add to the challenge. Furthermore, unmanaged container use may become a security issue, as it can potentially increase the overall attack surface and make systems more vulnerable to threats.

4 Steps to Maintain Proper Visibility with Containers

The use of containers is on the rise. Maintaining visibility into container usage and growth will bring adopters closer to their benefits by actively seeking to avoid problems before they happen. So, what exactly can a company that is new to the use of containers do to ensure proper visibility before diving deep into their use? Here are some suggestions.

1. Understand your security requirements
2. Document your compliance requirements
3. Recognize your host resource requirements
4. Map out precisely what your container life cycle looks like (or will look like)

Since containers are highly mobile and flexible assets, there must be a way to see precisely where the containers are, what exactly they are doing, and on what data they are operating. There is a need for sufficient controls to apply policies and constraints to each container as they spin up, move around, and shut down. And it has become increasingly important to be able to control data movements within virtual environments, including where it can go and what resources it can consume, all while ensuring encryption and compliance controls remain in place.

Yet, with the proper insight into container use, the data provided can help with provisioning, orchestration, version control, and infrastructure management, and becomes an essential part of an ongoing containerization strategy. Containers allow IT to run services in isolation, with high fault tolerances, and with better management over resource provisioning. have an intentionally short lifetime, averaging about 2.5 days while traditional and cloud-based VMs have an average lifespan of 23 days. Because of their short lifetimes and hardware-agnostic behavior, containers pose to IT requiring the need for additional infrastructure monitoring. The lightweight nature of containers allows them to spin up so frequently and change so rapidly that they become much more difficult to monitor and understand than a physical or even a virtual host.

Check out the video below titled, “.”

Since containers live in the loosely monitored space between hosts and applications, traditional application performance and infrastructure monitoring tools lack the visibility needed to keep containers under control. Gaining insight into container use requires a unique set of monitoring tools not typically available to most technology departments. These specific tools are necessary because container resource management applies all the way through the stack, from physical infrastructure to shared files and operating systems, well beyond the reach of common resource monitoring tools. Since containers share resources, and can even limit access to other applications, there is an increased urgency to understand the exact resources they are consuming. Visibility is not only crucial in monitoring the utilization of physical resources like memory and CPU, but also extends to application, file, and operating system resources.

In response to this growing need of visibility, we see a host of purpose-built container monitoring solutions that help deal with these new complexities, most of which allow for real-time visibility into both virtualized and containerized applications. Not only do they monitor for acute performance indicators such as latency and response time, they also provide visibility into a host of shared resources such as .dll’s, .bin files, and server and network utilization.

Next Steps: Questions about containers? Try to find the answer in this on containers.

Sources:

1. IDG Research commissioned by WEI, November 2017.

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One of the biggest struggles with managing an enterprise data center is the need for various tools with multiple interfaces to manage the different systems associated with IT. This struggle is compounded with the fact that each of these data center systems do not talk to each out of the box, and complex integrations begin to take over. addresses this challenge by delivering an infrastructure that can manage the technical, as well as the organizational side by combining storage, compute, and network equipment into one.

What is Composable Infrastructure?

To put it simply, composable infrastructure treats computing, storage, and devices as resources that can be pooled together and used as needed. You are able to adjust the infrastructure depending on what workloads you require at the time so that you can optimize your IT performance and improve agility within the organization.

Network World compares this type of infrastructure to a public cloud, stating, “The approach is like a public cloud in that resource capacity is requested and provisioned from shared capacity – except composable infrastructure sits on-premises in an enterprise data center.”

Unlike other infrastructure systems, a composable infrastructure does not have pre-configured workloads. This freedom from pre-configured workloads allows your enterprise to reduce its under-utilization and over-provisioning, which in turn creates a more agile data center.

So how can benefit your enterprise? Keep reading for five ways that this composable infrastructure solution can help your organization.

5 Benefits of HPE Synergy for Your Enterprise

1. Run anything: With HPE Synergy you’re able to run resources at any time within a single pool. This allows you to instantly configure your system according to the specific needs of each application.
2. Software defined intelligence: Not only can you instantly configure the system to meet your needs, HPE’s composer uses integrated software-defined intelligence, which is able to accelerate operations using a single interface.
3. Pooling resources: HPE Synergy allows you to pool resources together with their operating system image using repeatable templates. This ability gives you the option to precisely compose and recompose infrastructures almost immediately. As explains, “When a template is launched, it configures the hardware programmatically, without human intervention, according to HPE, reducing the chance for errors and speeding up the process. The management software can also store OS images and apply them when a server is configured, automating that process as well.”
4. Scalability: Auto-integrating infrastructure makes scaling simple and automated. IT can easily assemble the building blocks your enterprise needs. Automatically update firmware, set BIOS settings and configure network connectivity.
5. Open integrations: HPE Synergy provides a fully programmable interface that allows your enterprise to take full advantage of potential vendor partnerships. With open-source automation and DevOps tools such as Chef, Docker, and OpenStack, you’re able to seamlessly integrate multiple management tools and future-proof your data center.

5 Questions To Ask Yourself About Composable Infrastructure

While composable infrastructure may seem like the answer to your data center needs, before you jump in head first you need to be aware that a successful move to composable infrastructure won’t happen without careful planning and a team that has the skills needed to take on such a project. To help you know if you’re ready to deploy composable infrastructure in your organization, here are five questions you need to ask:

1. What are your operational and financial goals?
2. What problem are you trying to solve: single and discrete or a systemic?
3. How quickly do you need to deploy your applications?
4. Does average server over-provisioning amount to more than 85 percent?
5. What are your organization’s requirements for data security?

Do you need help answering these questions? Contact WEI to kick off a discussion. We have experience implementing HPE Synergy and have several assessments to help you make the right decisions along your data center modernization journey.

Next Steps: Learn how to drive data center modernization with composable infrastructure by downloading our .

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1. Containers are central to cloud strategy (80%)*
2. Top initiatives revolve around applications (75%)*
3. It is necessary in order to adopt DevOps (44%)*

This infographic covers the top 10 steps all enterprises should take when preparing to adopt a container strategy.

Still have questions? Get started by going to our comprehensive page on .

* Evolution of the ModernSoftware Supply Chain. The Docker Survey. 2016.

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Hyperconverged combines compute and storage resources into a single workload-optimized appliance and added a software layer to the data center. takes it to the next level by disaggregating hardware so it can be provisioned for any workload at any time and then reprovisioned for future needs; and amplifies the software-defined flexibility, agility, stability, automation, efficiency and speed you’ve grown accustomed to. Plus many (many) more benefits.

Composable infrastructure begins here

The promise of composable is easy to see, however taking the next leap in data center modernization isn’t. A move to composable also doesn’t happen (successfully) without careful planning and a team. Before we look at benefits, consider these types of questions:

1. What are your operational and financial goals?
2. What problems are you trying to solve, a single and discrete or a systemic?
3. How quickly do you need to deploy your applications?
4. Does average server overprovisioning amount to more than 85%?
5. What is your organization’s requirements for data security?

Benefits of composable infrastructure

The of composable infrastructure are many and varied, but in short it has the ability to drive innovation, reduce costs, speed time to deploy applications, and ensure business demands can be met in real time. Here are a few more advantages:

• Continuous, streamlined IT delivery
• Updates are made without interrupting regular IT operations
• DevOps can automate applications and accelerate application development
• Infrastructure applications can be replenished in a matter of minutes
• Infrastructure flexibility – The network is dynamically configured, allowing more flexibility
• Single platform – The hybrid environment reduces overhead and increases overall efficiency
• Reduces operational effort – It offers polished operations enabled through software-specific modalities
• Automation for a more simplified system – allows a future-proof data center ready to scale
• Application speed – Automation is used for hardware configuration to service the applications that demand it
• Improved governance – Governance is set by the organization which ensures it’s aligned with and supports business goals

Composable combines compute, storage, and network into centralized compartments. It efficiently delivers resources, meets the demands of your business and saves time for your IT department. It’s not always easy or worth it to be an early adopter, but when it makes sense the payoff can be huge especially when the prize is cost reduction, efficiency, faster time to market, and marketplace differentiators…

These are just a handful of advantages that come with composable. Check out what HPE is currently doing in this new technology with its . WEI’s Chief Architect, Dave Fafel, talks about why this solution is needed for data center modernization, talks about the 5 components of the HPE Synergy platform, and he tells you what you really need to know about this new technology.

Ask WEI for a demo of HPE Synergy to better understand how this new solution can benefit your IT organization.

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