After presenting IP Fabric at Networking Field Day 23, a number of Twitter threads started probing at the idea of Intent-Based Networking (IBN) - is it simply a marketing term that vendors use to sell more gear or does it have a deeper meaning? And what impact does it have on the network team? Does it automate them out of a job?
It’s safe to say that every modern business depends on its IT, and the network provides the underpinning to all the systems on which we rely. Business needs IT to just “be”. It should be permanently available, supporting business process with a minimal operational overhead. But it’s obvious to anyone in IT just how big a stretch that is due to many factors, not least:
Automating regularly occurring network tasks helps reduce the operational overhead of running the network, of course. You might use controllers or scripts, templates, zero-touch provisioning and automated change mechanisms. There are plenty of benefits in being able to treat a network domain as a macro entity and allow the micro tasks that are required to maintain the environment be taken care of by automated processes.
However, it's vital that we fully understand the networks we build. This ensures that the automation platform is deploying configuration with the expected outcome. Configuration still happens in a network domain on a box-by-box basis. The process uses configuration detail from a knowledgeable and experienced network engineer. In reality, the automation system functions like a fast, consistent network analyst. It makes and tests changes and fetches data about operations, based on rules defined by its "superiors"!
IBN takes the automation approach to the next level. Given the business intent for the network, you first translate it to a set of technical capabilities, then:
What we’re really doing here though is subtly evolving the roles of the network architect, designer and engineer.
The business intent may include such abstract ideas as “make sure that my critical applications are always available”. The traditional approach would involve a network architect in translating that intent to some design criteria: “always use High Availability, no SPOFs, converge my routing protocol within x seconds, define QoS across the network” and so on. A network designer will then take those principles, and looking at each network domain in turn, consider how to turn out specific bills of material, Layers 1, 2 and 3 topologies and designs using specific vendor platforms. The network engineer would finally deploy this. They would turn the designs into actual configuration, and then manage and maintain the resulting network.
IBN automates much of this process, taking business intent and delivering a self-regulating, self-healing network environment.
It centres on a “Source of Truth” (SoT) – a picture of the network as it is intended to look, developed from the business intent using logic defined by the network architects and designers. It is then used as a central reference point for all intended configuration data – often referring to other “Systems of Record” as definitive reference sources where necessary.
Updating intent in the SoT triggers orchestration workflows to render the configuration in the different network domains. These configurations might include organisational or industry Best Practice templates, security policy data or specific network domain detail to support the intent. And typically the orchestration workflows then kick off automation tasks in controllers or as scripts to interact with different sets of network devices, potentially from different families from different vendors. Subsequently, they might also update policy engines which devices are using to refer to without having to keep local copies of configuration or policy.
Assurance workflows are built first to harvest state information from the network devices and controllers. They then analyse that data to ensure that they are meeting the intent.
And if intent is not being met, the assurance element then triggers a feedback loop into the orchestration platform to update configuration through the automation layer.
There are of course a few words of caution.
And so you can see, the network architect, designer and engineer are still key - they simply demonstrate their knowledge and experience in different ways.
As we mentioned in our earlier post, IP Fabric is not well-positioned as the SSoT for intent, simply because the product focus is on being the informational reference for the actual network state.
IP Fabric can sit squarely at the heart of your intent-based networking ecosystem however. As it provides full inventory, configuration and state visibility of the entire network, it then becomes well-placed to serve as the System of Record for those elements. It would be used to carry out an initial population of the Source of Truth, and then as a regular source of true-up data to ensure that the SoT genuinely represents the active network.
As IP Fabric is already harvesting all the network data, it is in a great position to begin carrying out the assurance elements of the IBN system. We would define rules in IP Fabric that validate elements of configuration and state, which are checked at every snapshot. Rules are not only created through the UI but also through the API. This means that they can then be pushed to the platform from an agent acting for the Source of Truth. Webhooks can then be fired from IP Fabric at calculation of those intent verification rules, to provide a feedback mechanism to the orchestration platform should intent not be met.
The real beauty of using IP Fabric with its complete network database and open API is that it can then serve as a reference source for whoever else needs that network data. The same system operating as part of the IBN platform could thus be used to keep monitoring platforms up to date, feed data to ITSM tickets at creation time, and later be queried through slash commands in Slack.
And so, the network engineer already has all the detailed configuration and state data they need to maintain, troubleshoot and deploy the networks they run. The network designer has an understanding of inventory, and topology relatinships at all layers. And the network architect can then get a picture very quickly of the current state of the interoperation of the network domains to help plan for transformation.
If you have found this article helpful, please follow our company’s LinkedIn or Blog, where more content will be emerging. If you would like to test our solution to see for yourself how IP Fabric can help you manage your network more effectively, please contact us through www.ipfabric.io.
After presenting IP Fabric at Networking Field Day 23, a number of Twitter threads started probing at the idea of Intent-Based Networking (IBN) - is it simply a marketing term that vendors use to sell more gear or does it have a deeper meaning? And what impact does it have on the network team? Does it automate them out of a job?
It’s safe to say that every modern business depends on its IT, and the network provides the underpinning to all the systems on which we rely. Business needs IT to just “be”. It should be permanently available, supporting business process with a minimal operational overhead. But it’s obvious to anyone in IT just how big a stretch that is due to many factors, not least:
Automating regularly occurring network tasks helps reduce the operational overhead of running the network, of course. You might use controllers or scripts, templates, zero-touch provisioning and automated change mechanisms. There are plenty of benefits in being able to treat a network domain as a macro entity and allow the micro tasks that are required to maintain the environment be taken care of by automated processes.
However, it's vital that we fully understand the networks we build. This ensures that the automation platform is deploying configuration with the expected outcome. Configuration still happens in a network domain on a box-by-box basis. The process uses configuration detail from a knowledgeable and experienced network engineer. In reality, the automation system functions like a fast, consistent network analyst. It makes and tests changes and fetches data about operations, based on rules defined by its "superiors"!
IBN takes the automation approach to the next level. Given the business intent for the network, you first translate it to a set of technical capabilities, then:
What we’re really doing here though is subtly evolving the roles of the network architect, designer and engineer.
The business intent may include such abstract ideas as “make sure that my critical applications are always available”. The traditional approach would involve a network architect in translating that intent to some design criteria: “always use High Availability, no SPOFs, converge my routing protocol within x seconds, define QoS across the network” and so on. A network designer will then take those principles, and looking at each network domain in turn, consider how to turn out specific bills of material, Layers 1, 2 and 3 topologies and designs using specific vendor platforms. The network engineer would finally deploy this. They would turn the designs into actual configuration, and then manage and maintain the resulting network.
IBN automates much of this process, taking business intent and delivering a self-regulating, self-healing network environment.
It centres on a “Source of Truth” (SoT) – a picture of the network as it is intended to look, developed from the business intent using logic defined by the network architects and designers. It is then used as a central reference point for all intended configuration data – often referring to other “Systems of Record” as definitive reference sources where necessary.
Updating intent in the SoT triggers orchestration workflows to render the configuration in the different network domains. These configurations might include organisational or industry Best Practice templates, security policy data or specific network domain detail to support the intent. And typically the orchestration workflows then kick off automation tasks in controllers or as scripts to interact with different sets of network devices, potentially from different families from different vendors. Subsequently, they might also update policy engines which devices are using to refer to without having to keep local copies of configuration or policy.
Assurance workflows are built first to harvest state information from the network devices and controllers. They then analyse that data to ensure that they are meeting the intent.
And if intent is not being met, the assurance element then triggers a feedback loop into the orchestration platform to update configuration through the automation layer.
There are of course a few words of caution.
And so you can see, the network architect, designer and engineer are still key - they simply demonstrate their knowledge and experience in different ways.
As we mentioned in our earlier post, IP Fabric is not well-positioned as the SSoT for intent, simply because the product focus is on being the informational reference for the actual network state.
IP Fabric can sit squarely at the heart of your intent-based networking ecosystem however. As it provides full inventory, configuration and state visibility of the entire network, it then becomes well-placed to serve as the System of Record for those elements. It would be used to carry out an initial population of the Source of Truth, and then as a regular source of true-up data to ensure that the SoT genuinely represents the active network.
As IP Fabric is already harvesting all the network data, it is in a great position to begin carrying out the assurance elements of the IBN system. We would define rules in IP Fabric that validate elements of configuration and state, which are checked at every snapshot. Rules are not only created through the UI but also through the API. This means that they can then be pushed to the platform from an agent acting for the Source of Truth. Webhooks can then be fired from IP Fabric at calculation of those intent verification rules, to provide a feedback mechanism to the orchestration platform should intent not be met.
The real beauty of using IP Fabric with its complete network database and open API is that it can then serve as a reference source for whoever else needs that network data. The same system operating as part of the IBN platform could thus be used to keep monitoring platforms up to date, feed data to ITSM tickets at creation time, and later be queried through slash commands in Slack.
And so, the network engineer already has all the detailed configuration and state data they need to maintain, troubleshoot and deploy the networks they run. The network designer has an understanding of inventory, and topology relatinships at all layers. And the network architect can then get a picture very quickly of the current state of the interoperation of the network domains to help plan for transformation.
If you have found this article helpful, please follow our company’s LinkedIn or Blog, where more content will be emerging. If you would like to test our solution to see for yourself how IP Fabric can help you manage your network more effectively, please contact us through www.ipfabric.io.