This blog is authored by Scott Ferguson, Principal Product Manager at HPE Aruba Networking with responsibility for HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer and data center orchestration, telemetry, automation, and security.
Running a data center network can be hardโฆ.
There are a lot of moving parts to a data center network, with constant demands from users, customers and partners for new services, access to applications/data and reported issues. In many ways the data center is one of the most critical components for business success. What the user sees are applications and data, but at the heart of the data center is a complex array of switches and routers that make up the physical network. Without a data center network there is no data center.
There is much more to it than just having a network. Networks are large complex sprawling webs that have grown over long periods of time with a mix of newer equipment and older equipment. Network IT is often understaffed and can lack the specialized skills required to keep networks up and running 24x7. Downtime is not an optionโif the data center network goes down it will cause major disruption to the business, user dissatisfaction, and cost money. The days of โthat personโ in the back room holding things together with CLI, complex scripts, network diagrams in their heads and insights known only to them no longer cuts it.
Todayโs data center networks can span large campuses and cover large geographical areas and manual methods for data center network management do not work. Modern data center networks require tools on a centralized platform that provide automation, insight, visualization, and third-party integrations that eliminate errors caused by manual methods and save time.
โฆ.But it doesnโt have to beโwith HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer
HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer (AFC) installs on VMs, with no expensive appliances required.
Fabric Composer is a graphical orchestration, automation, telemetry, and monitoring application for todayโs modern data centerโ installing on many of the most popular virtual machines such as VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and KVM, for ease-of-use and less cost than expensive hardware-based solutions. Fabric Composer can be installed in brownfield or greenfield situations without disruption to new or existing data center environments.
HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer is the data center network application for orchestration, visibility configuration and automation for all HPE Aruba Networking data center switch solutions, including the industry-leading HPE Aruba Networking CX 10000.
Open systems for flexibility and automation
AFC is built using APIs to communicate with HPE Aruba Networking data center switches and third-party integrations (VMware, AMD Pensando, Nutanix, and more). These APIs are also available via a web-based API explorer accessible through HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer. This can help administrators build additional automation for use by other tools such as Ansible. For more information see the HPE Aruba Networking Developer Hub.
For those who require CLI scripts HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer has a built-in CLI configurator. Admins can pull CLI-based configurations from one or many data center switches, edit one CLI configuration and push to many data center switches, or just archive CLI based configurations.
Stand up a large data center in minutes verses hours or days
HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composerโs powerful workflows abstract and automate complex orchestration tasks by walking the administrator through the simultaneous set up of multiple switches across one or multiple data center fabrics in minutes verses hours. These workflows abstract hundreds of commands and eliminate errors caused by time consuming manual methods such as CLI.
Another example of an easy-to-use workflow is Fabric Composerโs ability to quickly and easily set up microsegmentation. Microsegmentation has been around for a while and helps prevent security exploits from spreading across VMs by dividing the network into small VM segments, thus limiting attack surfaces. Fabric Composer sets up the PVLAN, CX switch and CX 10000 policy in a single workflow. Manually doing this would normally require hundreds of commands and take considerable time and is susceptible to configuration errors.
Telemetry for troubleshooting, analysis, and monitoring
HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer telemetry provides deep insights with graphical visualizations of fabrics, topologies, statistics through tables or graphs, event/alarm logs, and much more. Fabric Composer also supports setup and collection for HPE Aruba Networking Network Analytics Engine (NAE), a comprehensive tool for granular root-cause analysis of data center switching issues. Lastly, information can be exported to external syslog servers for more detailed analysis, archiving or compliance requirements.
HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer brings NetOps and SecOps together under a single management framework
Fabric Composer combines the data center network with stateful firewall policies under a single management framework. Additionally for other HPE Aruba Networking data center switches Fabric Composer will configure ACLs along with the network setup.
Customer use cases
- A leading company in satellite Earth Observation (EO) services is building a private data center to simplify and automate operations and increase security with microsegmentation. They chose the HPE Aruba Networking CX 10000 for firewall policy services and HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer for data center automation, network/firewall setup and creation of microsegmentation. They were sold on the unique value of the HPE Aruba Networking CX 10000 and HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer. They estimate significant cost savings on licensing and elimination of external firewalls while delivering automation, security, and visibility in a single solution.
- A large global service integrator has a huge number of data center sites located throughout the world. Their previous deployments were comprised of multiple switch architectures, external firewalls, and multiple orchestration applications, with firewall licensing and appliances representing a huge cost. They were looking to save money, consolidate products, and combine network and security orchestration with a single vendor solution.
The solution they selected was the HPE Aruba Networking CX 10000 and HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer. Fabric Composer will be used to centrally configure the switches and firewall, set up micro-segmentation, orchestration, automation, and telemetry. The CX 10000 will secure data center eastโwest traffic and eliminate expensive external firewalls. This will also improve application performance and latency by no longer having to hairpin traffic to an external firewall, as stateful policies will be done in line with the switch port. This HPE Aruba Networking data center solution will enable the system integrator to better work with their customers to help design, deploy, and orchestrate large data center networks throughout the world.
A good way to see HPE Aruba Networking Fabric composer is to check out the interactive demo. This demo has a guided mode (recommend using this first) that walks you through various HPE Aruba Networking Fabric Composer features and an interactive mode which allows you to walk through the features yourself.
Some other useful assets include:
