The IP Fabric platform 2.0 is a major new version of the network engineer’s best friend. A number of big changes and customer feedback have made it into the release. From tracking all changes in the network to supporting more networking technologies, and going deeper into the technology stack than any other product.
A single button now discovers the network and takes a thorough snapshot at the same time. Large networks are undergoing constant change. Analyzing partial network does not provide a full picture, while discovery alone was not sufficient to provide valuable insight about the network. Discovery of new devices, new connectivity, and new protocols, is now combined with an in-depth network analysis and assessment, user location mapping, and efficiency and risk metrics.
The IP Fabric platform now allows tracking of dynamic changes across the whole of network infrastructure, not just administrative changes in configuration. See whether someone reconnected a device, added a new device, swapped an SFP module, or standby router became an active one. Historical data from any of the two previous network state snapshots can be compared to find dynamic changes in the network, such as:
Administrative changes, or Configuration Management, is also available and shows when the last change on the device has occurred, allows to view most recent or historical configuration, or use the configuration to restore a failed device.
Diagrams have been significantly improved, enabling to zoom in from site overview to individual user. Diagrams allow to display or hide topology and protocols, collapse or expand links and layers, show wired and wireless users, and much more. One of the more important aspects is that topology can be saved, and that element position is unchanged throughout network changes.
While routers and switches are the backbone of any large network, it was clear that network engineers are interested in more than wired infrastructure. Support for Routers, Switches, and Firewalls was expanded with support for Wireless Controllers, Access Points, and IP Phones.
In a continuous quest to support all major enterprise networking technologies, the analytics support for Routing, Spanning Tree, Aggregation links, Link Layer, ACL, and Gateway redundancy have been expanded with QoS, StackWise, and Power Over Ethernet.
New driver system enables to add support for more vendors more easily. In addition to the Cisco IOS, IOS-XE, NX-OS, IOS-XR support, we have added:
To facilitate integration, we’ve transitioned to a single API which we use internally, and which can be used by users. The new version also features more granular TACACS controls, robust user management, encrypted channel for offline tech-support file handling, JumpHost support, and more.
We’re taking user feedback to heart. When it was clear, that IP awareness is needed for routing and host lookups, we’ve added it right away. We're continuing the trend of incremental improvements, and adding routing protocol overview, ACL entry port lookups, ACL options lookup and hit count, Interface rate to supplement rolling over counters, and many others.
