Boost Operational Consistency with DX NetOps

For today’s network operations teams, change is a constant. Applications, app delivery chains, software-defined and physical infrastructures, cloud services, and more are in continuous flux. Further, as organizations continue to pursue ever more strategic digital transformation efforts, the pace of this change only accelerates.

These days, about the only constant is the demand being placed on network operations teams. In spite of so much rapid change, these teams are always on the hook for ensuring continuous availability and high-performance digital experiences.

The only way to meet these demands for quality digital experiences amidst all this change is by establishing optimized operational efficiency—and maximizing consistency is key to making that happen. To achieve these optimized operations, teams must address the following three imperatives.

1. Establish a single source of truth

The problem

One survey found that 70% of companies are using four to 15 different network management tools.  This reliance on so many tools presents a range of challenges. Fundamentally, these disparate tools make collaboration and information sharing between teams difficult, inefficient, and time consuming.

When issues arise, many teams need to be involved. Administrators from different groups have to work independently and use their own tools to try and find the location of the issue.

These challenges only grow more pronounced as more dynamic, modern technologies are employed. For example, after deploying SD-WAN technologies, teams often start working with their SD-WAN vendors’ monitoring tools. While these tools can provide useful coverage of the SD-WAN overlay, that’s all they offer. They do not correlate overlay visibility with the underlying infrastructure, or underlay, that SD-WAN services rely upon. The end result is that another tool gets added to the mix, but teams still lack the unified visibility they need.

The requirements

Today, network operations teams need to leverage monitoring solutions that provide complete observability of modern networks, both today and as these environments continue to evolve. Teams require scalable, unified coverage that spans all these domains:

• Multi-vendor, multi-technology environments.
• Internally managed data center infrastructure and externally managed environments of cloud providers and ISPs.  
• Software-defined environments, including SD-WAN and software-defined data centers (SDDC), with correlated visibility of physical and application layers.  

2. Track network configuration changes

The problem

According to a recent EMA report, 30% of network issues were caused by network configuration errors.  One primary reason for these common issues is that teams lack a central, advanced way to manage configurations.

All too often, it is only when an issue arises, such as an outage, performance issue, or a failed compliance audit, that teams realize a configuration change was made that violated policies.

The requirements

Teams need to be able to move away from reacting to configuration issues. To do so, they require a way to centrally govern configurations. They must be able to establish policies for groups and types of devices and apply those policies efficiently and consistently.

It is vital for administrators to have visibility into any changes that are made and to have alerts generated when those modifications violate policies. In addition, it is crucial to establish performance baselines before configuration changes are made. These measurements are essential. They provide teams with a valid reference point for establishing correlations between configuration changes and performance problems. These insights are key for addressing issues proactively.

3. Create standard operating procedures

The problem

Currently, network engineers spend more than one-third, 39%, of their time on basic troubleshooting.  Every time alerts arrive, teams are forced to spend significant amounts of time and manual effort to get a handle on the cause of the problem, and even to determine whether there’s actually a problem at all. Too often, approaches are inconsistent, time consuming, and inefficient. As networks continue to grow more complex and dynamic, these labor-intensive approaches are increasingly unsustainable.

The requirements

It is critical to have teams move away from being forced to resort to one-off, ad hoc efforts in issue detection and remediation. Teams need to establish consistent, optimized, and highly standardized operating procedures. This helps promote consistency and predictability in operations. In addition, this streamlines training and it enables less experienced operators to resolve more issues, without having to escalate to senior team members.

How DX NetOps helps

DX NetOps by Broadcom is a scalable network observability solution that delivers advanced capabilities in such areas as network analytics, root cause analysis, noise reduction, and user experience insights.

The solution provides the key capabilities teams need to establish optimized, standardized network operations. With DX NetOps, network operations teams can address the key imperatives associated with maximizing operational consistency. The following sections outline how.

Establish a single source of truth

DX NetOps provides at-a-glance views of the entire global network infrastructure, including across multi-vendor technologies and traditional and new cloud and software-defined environments. The solution offers the integration capabilities, flexibility, and scalability that enable teams to manage the largest, most complex networks, today and as those environments evolve.

DX NetOps enables teams to monitor internal and externally managed networks, including cloud, ISP, and other third-party environments. The solution offers one portal for complete, correlated visibility into configurations, faults, performance, flows, and network experience. DX NetOps delivers topological views that help administrators quickly see their complete inventory of network elements and how devices are related.

Track network configuration changes

DX NetOps features network configuration management capabilities that are seamlessly integrated—no third-party tools or integrations required. The solution supports network configuration management efforts in several ways:

• Contextual alerts. DX NetOps can detect changes to configuration policies and trigger an alert if those changes are counter to policies. These alerts provide vital context in terms of where the issue arose and which policy was violated.
• Rapid, automated response. DX NetOps can trigger alerts based on violations, so administrators can roll back to a prior state. Based on these alerts, the solution can launch a ticket in the organization’s service desk that includes all relevant details on the violation. The solution can even automatically launch repair operations to fix specific configuration issues, without manual involvement.
• Group administration. With DX NetOps, teams can efficiently and effectively manage policies for groups of devices. Teams can establish policies for specific device types and then apply policies to all relevant devices.

Example

From a DX NetOps dashboard, administrators can view different sites and immediately spot where configuration changes were made. They can quickly drill down to review specific changes for potential violations. For example, on a given device, a specific interface may need to be kept disabled to prevent potential unauthorized access. The solution can detect that the interface was enabled, and facilitate rapid response, either by issuing an alert, opening a ticket, or executing an automated command to disable the interface.

Create standard operating procedures

By offering comprehensive coverage and capabilities, DX NetOps helps teams establish a single, unified platform for network operations. With the solution, teams can avoid the cumbersome handoffs and inefficient troubleshooting associated with using multiple disjointed tools to manage networks. With these capabilities, DX NetOps helps teams establish standardized, optimized workflows for administration, troubleshooting, and remediation.

Through the establishment of standard operating procedures, teams can accelerate the onboarding of new team members. Less experienced level-one and level-two operators can address a wider range of issues, without having to escalate to senior engineers. In this way, teams can more effectively contend with the skill gaps that are plaguing many organizations today.

Conclusion

With DX NetOps, teams can establish unified visibility, advanced configuration management, and standardized operational workflows. The solution helps teams maximize operational consistency and efficiency and minimize the occurrence of network issues associated with misconfigurations. To learn more, be sure to view our Small Bytes webcast, Three Keys to Maximizing Operational Consistency in Modern Networking. This webcast features a demonstration of DX NetOps, highlighting its advanced network configuration management capabilities. In addition, you can also download an in-depth white paper, Three Keys to Maximizing Operational Consistency in Modern Networking Environments.