Customer Case Study: Advania Chooses Juniper Apstra for Simplified Data Center Operations

00:00 today on the techbytes podcast sponsored

00:02 by juniper we talk with a customer of

00:04 juniper's abstra intent based networking

00:06 data center software our guest is darko

00:08 petrovic he is principal engineer at

00:10 advania iceland avani is an i.t

00:12 solutions company offering managed and

00:13 professional services and i.t

00:15 infrastructure and integration uh darko

00:17 welcome to the podcast so what drew your

00:19 interest to appstore's product

00:21 first off like you said that vanier is

00:24 working for advania managed service

00:26 provider we are one of the biggest if

00:29 not the biggest in

00:30 msp in iceland

00:33 our main goal going with abstract was we

00:36 wanted to automate our data center as

00:39 much as possible and go away from the

00:41 traditional layer twos that many data

00:44 centers are having trouble

00:46 in the past years

00:47 so we were looking at different

00:49 solutions vendors um uh even thinking

00:53 about doing ourselves with some kind of

00:56 habitation with ansible

00:58 okay so you're looking for an automation

01:00 solution you maybe investigated a little

01:03 bit of doing it yourself but what was

01:04 there something that about appstore that

01:06 you thought oh wait this is going to go

01:08 better for us so

01:09 the first

01:11 impressions from abstract i had a couple

01:13 of years ago when i was doing my

01:15 investigation about uh

01:17 similar solutions that are out there but

01:19 it it went

01:21 uh to the to the side that abstract is

01:24 way more than and offering way more than

01:27 other solutions and vendors there

01:30 just because

01:32 the level of automation and the level

01:35 that

01:36 it's doing the provisioning and the

01:38 whole networking bits and pieces that

01:41 are under the bonnet it's

01:43 so easy and it's effortless basically

01:46 effortless so what you've found is that

01:49 putting abstract into your managed

01:51 services network into the underlay of

01:53 that data center environment has really

01:55 just reduced the friction about making

01:57 changes right not even that the margin

02:00 of human error is minimal so

02:04 how the abstract does that is

02:06 it has basically every in each scenario

02:09 that you can have in your data center

02:12 and based on your inputs he's going to

02:14 calculate the option we're going to

02:16 calculate is that feasible or not if

02:18 it's visible it's going to apply it on

02:21 your network

02:22 it's like pre-applying the configuration

02:25 the app calculates is the the links are

02:28 okay is the routing okay and based on

02:31 all that pre-calculated stuff it expects

02:34 some results when you commit that

02:36 changes so the human

02:39 when it's the engineer when it's uh

02:41 provisioning vlans vague slangs or links

02:45 servers new servers it's basically four

02:48 clicks to provision that so what you're

02:50 saying is actually sanity checking if

02:52 you're trying to make a configuration i

02:53 want this vlan here to be connected to

02:56 this vlan but it also needs to connect

02:58 to this

02:59 segment of the network it's actually

03:01 going to sanity check that everything

03:03 that you want or you think you want to

03:05 configure is actually possible

03:07 correct even the ips the vlans it's

03:10 going to cross-check the vagus lines the

03:12 v-lines it's going to complain if you're

03:14 using the same vlan

03:16 or the same ip addresses ranges or

03:18 scenes right correct that's that's

03:20 really cool what can i ask just for a

03:22 second here what because it's obviously

03:25 you as a managed service provider you've

03:26 got a choice of switches and you're

03:27 probably operating at a reasonable sort

03:29 of scale

03:30 what sort of switches physical switches

03:32 did you go with so

03:34 one of the huge elements that we wanted

03:37 from our fabric is that we don't want to

03:41 do

03:42 vendor lock that's especially important

03:44 for the larger data centers

03:46 when they have multiple vendors inside

03:49 their network and juggling between the

03:51 features you know

03:54 so we wanted something that's going to

03:56 give us the freedom of choice in the

03:59 future years if we don't like or we are

04:02 going to have a bad relationship at that

04:04 moment with someone wender

04:06 all right we have an alternative so it's

04:09 giving us leverage basically in the

04:12 negotiations for the underlay hardware

04:15 at this point we went for the dell

04:18 and where and with their enterprise

04:20 sonic

04:21 distribution

04:22 sonic is based on the fr so like the

04:26 majority of vendors are i know the

04:29 vmware also uses the facebook

04:32 um so yeah

04:34 the the the sonic is so del owen

04:37 dell's open networking switches with the

04:39 sonic

04:40 uh distribution that they've got which

04:42 is supported right dell supports that

04:45 and then you're running abstract on top

04:46 of that so you correct you've actually

04:48 stopped not taps on top abstraction just

04:51 let's say a controller you know yeah so

04:54 the the operating system is sonic

04:57 the the dell itself is shipping so that

05:00 has two flavors of of operating systems

05:03 they have their stock operating system

05:05 os 10 or nine

05:07 um and then there is an enterprise grid

05:10 for their operating system that's sonic

05:12 okay so you've got dell sonic underneath

05:14 and you've got some flexibility there

05:16 because you could either replace the

05:17 dell hardware with another open switch

05:18 running a sonic you could replace the

05:20 sonic with another os but more

05:22 importantly abstra

05:23 over the top here gives you the freedom

05:25 to change the hardware underneath

05:27 i guess that the idea here is that

05:29 appstre is doing the provisioning of the

05:30 switches for you you're not

05:33 using the command line or excel

05:34 spreadsheets or text files to configure

05:36 them right

05:37 nothing nothing so not it's not just

05:40 giving you freedom to change the

05:42 hardware it's you can keep the same

05:44 topology same ip same everything so

05:48 everything is the same from your

05:49 perspective but the hardware you can

05:51 swap

05:52 of course it's not that easy in uh in uh

05:55 in the real world in sense you need uh

05:58 good planning and migration scenario and

06:00 everything but

06:01 at the bottom line yeah

06:03 it's everything that you have everything

06:05 that's running right now

06:07 you can change and keep the same

06:10 topology same layer 3 configurations

06:13 when you finish migrating to another

06:15 vendor okay so i think that's something

06:16 key to talk about is that what you're

06:18 getting with abstra is not just this

06:21 uh sanity check this help with

06:23 configuration this automation lever

06:25 layer but you're also essentially

06:26 ensuring that you've got uh you can run

06:29 a multi-vendor network

06:31 that's correct how are you multiple data

06:33 centers can be connected seamlessly

06:36 really seamlessly i mean i'm telling

06:38 this from my experience that i had

06:41 before with other vendors i was working

06:44 before advani i was working for a global

06:47 integrator so i went through a lot of

06:50 different products based on the for the

06:52 sdn solutions in the data centers and

06:55 appstra is

06:57 maybe the best choice

06:59 if you want to go

07:01 having something nice easy

07:04 uh and managing many manageable

07:07 so it actually works because one of the

07:09 stories i hear a lot is with sdn

07:11 controllers is that people spend an

07:13 awful lot of time keeping the controller

07:15 running or installed or maintained

07:17 and they actually don't have a lot of

07:19 time left over to do other work because

07:21 you're also running an nsx you're

07:23 running a vmware nsx deployment for the

07:25 second part of the networking is there

07:27 an integration between the two what's

07:29 that like with nsx and apps working

07:30 together

07:32 so our current

07:35 network is compromised of three

07:38 different

07:39 key components one of them is nsxt the

07:43 other one is the data center fabric

07:45 that's running on apps and then we have

07:47 that traditional mpls core for

07:51 interconnection with other carriers and

07:53 customers

07:54 so the thing that's appsha giving us uh

07:58 in in the middle is connectivity between

08:01 the data centers

08:03 we're not touching the mpls core in that

08:05 perspective so we can stretch a vlan or

08:07 l3 even through multiple data centers so

08:11 anycast gateway is also there and

08:15 it doesn't even hit the core so the core

08:18 is there just a transport network no

08:20 configuration there

08:22 from the configuration perspective of

08:24 the nsxt so appsha is doing read-only

08:29 queries to the nsxt manager where can

08:32 you where you can see all the vms the

08:34 vlans the

08:36 the vds's the the the

08:38 the port groups and based on that you

08:40 can map out your abstract switches

08:43 vlans uh the policies or whatever you

08:46 want so you what you're actually saying

08:48 there is that you're actually

08:49 integrating the nsx and the abstract

08:50 together it's not a it's not a a a read

08:54 write and everything's coming together

08:56 and you know mystical magic happens it's

08:58 abstract looks at the nsx configuration

09:00 and knows what's happening in the

09:01 overlay and can work to help you with

09:03 that is that right

09:05 correct

09:06 well it gives you information

09:08 it doesn't do the configuration actual

09:10 configuration of the nsxd that's done

09:13 separately right but it's done in nsx

09:16 right yeah right yeah but the everything

09:18 that you configured there on the net on

09:20 the on the the segments on the t ones

09:23 the t zero t one everything is visible

09:26 in yapstra i mean the the the vms to

09:29 which uh uh network adapter is connected

09:32 then you can map out that you can even

09:34 forbid traffic of course that's also

09:36 possible in the nsxt but additional

09:38 security is available for you on the

09:42 aperture level so you can right so you

09:44 can actually integrate the micro

09:45 segmentation policy that you've got from

09:47 nsx with what's in abstract it's not

09:49 that appstore is going to configure the

09:51 nsx but it's aware of what the nsx

09:53 configuration looks like and you can see

09:55 it

09:55 yeah and that means a lot to your

09:57 network guys i mean to see what's what

10:00 they're working with also the telemetry

10:02 of the abstract is fantastic it's a

10:06 the telemetry is way better than

10:08 anything that then you're going to use

10:10 on your nms

10:12 it's a go-to platform for for your

10:14 insights on your fabric you can see

10:17 there everything from the bandwidth to

10:19 the errors to the dropouts to the

10:22 notification to

10:23 even

10:25 even the the the the

10:27 microbursts are seen there

10:29 so what you're actually saying is your

10:31 whole underlay is run by abstract it's

10:33 monitoring the cable performance by

10:34 looking for drops and signal changes

10:37 on the optical because it actually

10:38 watches the optical state of the fiber

10:40 optic connections to see if they're

10:41 working same for copper slightly

10:43 different though depending on the type

10:45 of operating system and so forth but if

10:46 you want to know uh you know is my spine

10:48 running at capacity is there a hot is

10:50 there links

10:51 in the ecmps

10:54 you know leaf spine architecture that

10:55 are running too hot you can find out

10:57 it's all just part of apps you don't

10:58 have to go and find another system to

11:00 watch that

11:01 that's correct i don't know for copper

11:03 though because we don't have anything on

11:05 copper these days

11:07 but yeah for the fiber yeah and there is

11:10 like a really nice graphic

11:12 on appshop for your link you know for

11:14 this for the spinal leaf links and it's

11:17 as your throughput go as your bandwidth

11:19 goes high the that visualization

11:21 visualization of the that link goes

11:23 thicker you know

11:25 so

11:26 you have all the numbers they're

11:29 running but yeah when you see the visual

11:31 capacity what's your limit oh and that's

11:34 that's really nice and really helpful

11:36 the really yeah because you know where

11:38 you are you're like you're mean time to

11:39 innocence like it's not the network and

11:41 you can prove it because you can look at

11:42 everything and go like bandwidth fine

11:44 interfaces

11:46 it evens it even draws out your entire

11:48 topology how your current topology looks

11:51 like all the links are there between the

11:53 spines the leaves and the servers

11:55 everything is there like

11:57 real lines you know i didn't you didn't

11:59 have to draw it or configure it or yeah

12:02 so i mean the only thing that that's

12:04 needed is when you build out your fabric

12:08 so you're gonna click and on a lot of

12:11 stuff uh rename a lot of stuff so that

12:14 initial setup is is a little bit

12:17 nasty as in never so that's like

12:20 mandatory inevitably

12:22 each and every solution but

12:24 the nice thing is that

12:26 it's going the abstract we're going to

12:27 build out your entire fabric just based

12:30 on the lldp

12:31 so that's it you can

12:33 plug in your your spine and leaf links

12:36 to whatever port and don't even

12:39 put an interface number in abstract it's

12:42 going to do it by for you for you and

12:44 then it's going to draw you out how your

12:46 topology looks like

12:48 so doc i wanted to ask you know whenever

12:50 you bring in any kind of automation

12:51 solution that can there's a learning

12:53 curve it might disrupt the way people

12:55 are used to working was there any

12:56 friction with you in the team trying to

12:58 get used to abstract in this new way of

13:00 working well it was

13:02 on my part because when we started

13:04 testing this on puck it was version

13:06 three we were testing version three a

13:09 major abstract gave a lot of changes in

13:12 version four

13:14 so version four is you'll get a separate

13:17 uh a separate

13:20 sections for configuring connectivity

13:22 for external templates uh route maps et

13:25 cetera et cetera so in that's a sense i

13:28 me personally had some hey you were the

13:30 bottom

13:32 yeah yeah yeah yeah but for the rest of

13:35 the guys it was easy because they they

13:37 don't know anything

13:38 for the

13:40 commenting yes

13:41 they're coming in clean they they're not

13:43 thinking of all the configuration that's

13:44 going on under the hood and trying to

13:46 work out yeah so the learning curve is

13:48 not that steep it does have like i said

13:51 with every new solution that you

13:53 came across it does have any

13:56 a little bit

13:57 a hard time to get around it but with

14:00 this it's not that hard so i guess the

14:03 takeaway is that um

14:05 sort of the intent of my question was

14:07 like it sounds like you can get

14:09 a fairly good time to value a time to

14:11 where you're actually using it as

14:12 opposed to just learning it

14:14 like i said from my experience with

14:16 other vendors

14:17 and if you ask me now i would choose

14:20 appshop or any other vendor anytime it's

14:23 really proven that good for you compared

14:25 and you've got experience like you said

14:26 you came from an integrator

14:28 so you've actually had experiences on

14:29 other systems and you're pretty happy

14:30 with this one well the bottom line is

14:32 you don't need an engineer that's that

14:34 knows cisco juniper i don't know uh dell

14:38 uh huawei whatever you don't need that

14:40 kind of engineer right now in your data

14:42 center you need that not for everyday

14:44 work you only need it when you're making

14:46 critical changes yes yeah so you don't

14:49 you you just need a guide that knows to

14:51 click with a mouse

14:52 [Laughter]

14:54 i mean it's trivial comparison but as in

14:57 a nutshell it's like that basically i

15:00 mean when you're running a managed

15:01 service provider like advania is you

15:03 don't want to have high quality

15:06 highly trained high priced engineers

15:08 doing everyday work

15:10 you want to have them doing deep work

15:12 like

15:13 firewall deployments and rollouts and

15:15 reviews of structural fail like root

15:18 cause analysis and that type of stuff

15:20 and as a senior when i was a senior

15:22 engineer i spent way too much time

15:24 doing sculpture config yeah or just

15:26 configuring vlans because nobody else

15:28 could be trusted to do it and it wasn't

15:30 fun right

15:32 no it wasn't i mean like i said

15:34 absolutely is doing a sanity check for

15:36 you so

15:37 the human error is well minimal

15:41 it it really is

15:43 so

15:43 you don't have to i mean you have to

15:45 worry about when you get some errors on

15:47 the fabric itself and then you're going

15:50 to need one engineer or senior engineer

15:52 to t-shoot that but apart from that yeah

15:55 it's everyday provisioning and that's it

15:57 you just put a good foundations in

16:01 in the in the fresco when you build it

16:04 when you're building your fabric and

16:06 just template it

16:08 all right well that does bring us to the

16:09 end of our conversation darko thanks for

16:11 joining us and if you've peaked people's

16:13 interest in app store and they want to

16:14 find out more they can go to

16:16 juniper.net

16:17 packet pushers slash appstra that's

16:20 juniper.net packet pushers dot abstra

16:22 we'll also have that link in the show

16:24 notes that accompany this podcast again

16:25 darko thanks for joining us and thanks

16:27 to juniper for being a sponsor if you

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