Apstra, a pioneer of Intent-Based Networking, unveiled AOS 2.2, including the industry’s first solution automating multi-tenant EVPN across multiple vendors, Apstra’s first supported open source network operating system (NOS), unmatched Intent-Based Analytics(IBA) with extensible telemetry and enterprise class capabilities including RBAC and audit trails.
AOS enables enterprise, web scale, and service providers to reduce cost, manage the health of the network, accelerate time to delivery of applications and services — without the headaches that exist today deploying and operating business-critical data center network infrastructure.
EVPN
AOS 2.2 introduces support for multi-tenancy and enhanced inter-rack L2 connectivity through Ethernet VPN (EVPN). EVPN provides a scalable control plane for VXLAN and enables a multi-tenant deployment via VRFs, creating multiple security zones. However, despite EVPN being an industry standard, current vendor implementations are painful, often incompatible and extremely hard to configure and troubleshoot.
AOS abstracts that complexity and automates all aspects of EVPN configuration and operations, across Cisco and Cumulus implementations, effectively providing an “easy button” for EVPN deployments. This allows customers to continue to address their existing application connectivity requirements as they transition to modern L3 Leaf-Spine Clos architectures for better agility and scale. Users can easily automate their design and configuration of EVPN, benefiting from simplicity, increased agility, scalability and reliability.
In addition to EVPN, additional new and enhanced features in AOS 2.2 include:
Intent-Based Analytics (IBA) enhancements, extensible telemetry, and blueprint discovery:
- Network operators and administrators can now, from the AOS GUI, set-up closed-loop monitoring and actionable alerts for gray failures with 9pre-defined IBA probes that can detect anomalies and process custom telemetry. AOS users can also write their own custom telemetry collectors.
- AOS can now also be deployed in monitoring mode on existing data center deployments. After automated discovery of the network, AOS offers the same continuous validation and intent-based analytics capabilities in a risk-free, read only fashion.
Enterprise Class Features:
- TACACS+ support and customizable RBAC roles – Provides integration with existing authentication systems and allow administrators to customize AOS roles to match organization requirements
- Audit trail – Allows customers to monitor login access to AOS and audit every single change for troubleshooting and compliance.
- Increased choice in hardware and software – Including Dell EMC and Mellanox devices, OpenSwitch (OPX), the latest version of Cumulus (3.6), Ubuntu 16.04 for servers, including the Free-Range-Routing (FRR) routing stack.
- IPv6 Phase 1 – Leverage IPv6 to conserve IPv4 space on fabric links.
- Many other enhancements driven by real customer requests.
“Organizations today require powerful automation that simplifies the operations of data center network infrastructure and enables network operators to conduct their business with confidence as they upgrade their data centers to meet the burgeoning demands of digital transformation, Internet of Things (IoT), and 5G,” said Mansour Karam, CEO and Founder of Apstra. “Apstra continues to drive innovation and empowers network operators with choices and new capabilities in AOS, as they face increasingly complex technology environments made up of a growing landscape of private and public cloud services, as well as data center and edge resources.”
