Founded in 1945, U-Haul stands as one of North America’s most recognized and trusted brands in moving and storage. From their corporate datacenter in Phoenix, the network operations team oversees more than 2,000 brick-and-mortar locations, along with the sprawling network that connects them.

As U-Haul looked to the next 75 years and beyond, they sought to expand their network visibility, automate their security and compliance workflows, and accelerate project delivery.

IP Fabric was the key to doing all three.

How do you accelerate audit prep from months to minutes?

Every six months, U-Haul’s team was faced with a daunting task: Documenting dozens of switches, firewalls, and other devices to prove compliance with strict regulatory standards like PCI-DSS and HIPAA. Each audit cycle could take a month or more, and consumed valuable time that could have been spent on more strategic projects.

“Audit time was definitely a crunch. It would tie up one or two of my senior engineers going back and forth with auditors and security teams,” explains Chris Hammond, Manager of IT Network Operations and Engineering. “Other projects would have to go on hold, even if it was something we really needed.”

While U-Haul already had a network monitoring solution in place, they knew there was an easier way to prove and maintain compliance.

“IP Fabric really transformed the audit process for us,” says Hammond. “We’ve immediately been able to find value in the platform, especially when it comes to getting a bird’s eye view of our infrastructure.”

After connecting with IP Fabric, the change felt almost instant. With IP Fabric’s digital twin capabilities, U-Haul was able to map their entire network from core to edge to cloud in just a few minutes. Leveraging this on-demand visibility, U-Haul was able to take a more proactive approach to compliance workflows, from lifecycle management to audit prep.

Now, U-Haul runs network-wide snapshots several times a day. In each snapshot, IP Fabric gathers a complete inventory of devices, and runs a series of security and compliance checks to ensure that U-Haul’s network is behaving according to business intent. For instance, these checks flag when a device is reaching End-of-Life (EoL), End-of-Maintenance (EoM), or End-of-Sale (EoS), so that U-Haul can proactively meet the strict security controls outlined by PCI-DSS and HIPAA.

The results of all checks are presented in a standardized, timestamped format, so they can be evaluated at a glance; network managers can check for compliance over their morning coffee, and network engineers can export audit-ready reports to auditors on demand.

What if you could see network changes before you make them? 

Last year, 45% of all surveyed IT projects were over budget and off schedule—in part, due to a lack of understanding network behavior. If you don’t have a comprehensive view of the network, it can be difficult to plan and budget for a project accurately.

As U-Haul geared up for major changes—bringing a new HQ online, rolling out new firewalls and switches, updating their critical environments—they knew they would need a centralized view of their cloud, core, and edge environments.

“The most challenging aspect of starting a new project is discovery,” Hammond explains. “IP Fabric helps us to consolidate our network and stay organized. It gives us a snapshot every few hours to see if there are any changes, which gives us wider insights that feed into planning.”

In addition to network-wide snapshots, IP Fabric also delivers dynamic end-to-end path lookups to simulate network behavior both before and after changes are made. With this capability, U-Haul can confidently plan their digital transformation projects, and proactively address policy drift before it causes risks to security or compliance.

“Installing new servers? How many interfaces do we have free? What are capabilities? Do they meet PCI hardware requirements?” asks Hammond. “We can quickly look at a chart, pull out an export, and be done.”

Serving as a centralized source of truth, IP Fabric normalizes all network insights and shares them in a user-friendly GUI. The platform also offers seamless API-first integrations with tools like Infoblox for up-to-date Domain Name System (DNS) and IP Address Management (IPAM). With self-serve access to network data, U-Haul was able to eliminate a bottleneck of requests for the network operations team, and free them up to focus on the projects that mattered most.

What’s next at U-Haul?

With IP Fabric’s foundation in place, U-Haul is ready to take advantage of more advanced capabilities, starting with network automation. Looking forward, they’re planning to create intelligent thresholds and build custom intent rules that will identify configuration issues, cabling problems, and non-certified components. When an intelligent threshold is met, or a risk is spotted, IP Fabric can automatically create and populate tickets in U-Haul’s CMDB so that engineers and automation platforms alike have enough context for quick remediation.

U-Haul’s automation strategy starts with trust in their network data. IP Fabric delivers that trust, setting the stage for fast and reliable security and compliance workflows that will take their network into this next phase of digital transformation.

Ready to take control of your network? Talk to one of our experts or try IP Fabric for yourself with our self-guided demo.