Network orchestration: Bringing automation to the next level

Orchestration automates workflows so both tasks can be carried out programmatically at the same time.

The introduction of virtualisation has enabled some level of agility and flexibility in enterprise IT infrastructure and networking technology.

But network operations today still rely on manual processes that require the expertise of highly-trained professionals, which leaves these processes susceptible to human error.

The truth is this operational reality often leads to higher network management costs which in turn, results in missed opportunities or business loss because of downtime and lack of agility.

Today, applications drive business growth. The modern enterprise must provision/spin out or down new application instances quickly to respond to changing conditions while optimising underlying resources.

To meet this demand for flexibility and agility, servers are virtualised to improve resource utilisation. In the past, deploying a server could take days, if not weeks, but with virtualisation, servers and applications are deployed in seconds, improving business outcomes while reducing operational expenses.

Unfortunately, network transformation has not kept pace with those of virtual machines and applications. For many enterprises, the network has become the choke point because it can take days to provision and configure the network traffic flow to support new application and virtual server performance requirements. The process is often manual and slow.

Ideally, network configuration changes should happen automatically and immediately. When a new virtual machine is spun up, the enterprise wide area network should be configured automatically. But to achieve this kind of integration, the network must transform to provide a level of automation and orchestration to meet present and future network demands of the enterprise.

It is important to understand the distinction between network automation and orchestration.

Automation refers to a single, low-level network management task while orchestration describes a series of repeatable, automated tasks with lots of dependencies. Orchestration allows networks to scale, provisioning network services across multiple devices and deploying resources as needed. It makes the network more agile and responsive.

Orchestration optimises frequent, repeatable processes to deploy applications faster and more accurately.   This is important because the shorter the time-to-market, the more likely that success will follow. When a process is repeatable and its tasks automated, orchestration can optimise the process in order to eliminate redundancies.

Network orchestration can be applied to:

• Configure network interfaces or routing protocols automatically

• Set up overlays for control and forwarding planes

• Provision network services such as deep packet inspection (DPI) and stateful inspection

• Tag, manage and direct network workflows and the ensuing traffic data to the right place

On its own, simple network automation will not make a significant difference to daily operations. But when automation is built into a series of processes and workflows, which are then orchestrated to run automatically, there can be endless benefits, including lower IT costs, increased productivity and standardisation of network processes so they are more reliable and consistent.

In cloud computing, network orchestration is the means through which a framework of repeatable, reliable and predictable processes can be harnessed to deliver network services over a wide variety of physical and virtual network components.

Orchestration is particularly important in a multi-cloud environment, where services and applications are provisioned and delivered from multiple sources.

In more recent times, the advent of software-defined networking (SDN) has taken network automation and orchestration to new levels of efficiency and agility. The programmability of an SDN controller via APIs allow for orchestration across the network to provision, update and manage computing resources and to deliver an application or service.

While you do not need an SDN to automate network tasks, there are two major benefits why enterprises should consider deploying network automation and orchestration in an SDN environment.

SDN offers greater network visibility from a centralised location. By unifying the network components across the control plane, administrators can automate tasks across the entire network using a single automation script. This would have been impossible with legacy network hardware and software.

SDN also enhances network automation and orchestration because it features enhanced network intelligence embedded into the technology. Analytics applied through an SDN delivers end-to-end visibility and control, allowing for intelligent pre-programmed algorithms to route traffic across optimal network paths without additional human intervention. This routing intelligence can be used to build automation tasks (and orchestrate at scale) that activate or deactivate based on thresholds such as network load, latency and jitter.

The goal of network automation and orchestration is to create efficiencies that should free up the network team’s time so it can focus on tasks that cannot be automated, like designing those complex next-generation SDN architectures. The obvious question then is “Where do you start?”

A good place to begin your journey is to analyse and identify where network automation and orchestration will have the greatest impact on your business. And if you need help identifying those areas, contact us here.