Project Description
The challenge was to deliver a state of the art modernizing the Infrastructure.
IT infrastructure isn’t as readily able to keep up with business demands, needs to modernize infrastructure
Documenting Network is crucial to be able to manage, maintain as well as increase the reliability and functionality of the company Infrastructure
Here the Practice SC4T developed to address this for a Financial Customer:
The case was for 1000 network devices, two Data Centers, over 100 cabinets, Cyber Security structure and over 500 physical Servers, running VMware and OpenStack.
Proper network documentation is key for: troubleshooting, inventory and resource management, software updates, implementation of new services, support contract, etc…
Upgrading a network, security, unified communications, server device to a different software version can also be a daunting task!
You can’t manage what you don’t know !
DevOps Network and Data Center Process.
At SC4T we have developed a Service tool ease this assessment. We developed, the automatic Discovery functions from cabling to level 3 for the customer’s infrastructure.
This Asset Management Service identifies all devices with the related information.
In-depth ICT resources management will enable you to make data-driven decisions in conjunction with the SC4T assessment service Mapping the whole Network and documenting Asset analysis The Network discovery function works at a low level by acquiring the configuration data through the Management VLAN of the network:
- creating a complete overview of the physical,
- logical and SVI interfaces,
These details, properly formatted, are stored in a database and can be managed by Excel, JSON, or another specific data representation model.
It is currently available on Cisco Systems, (IOS, IOS-XE, NX-OS and IOS-XR), Arista EOS as well as Juniper JunOS devices.
Key Services: Relationships between devices, including:
- Routers with their WAN interfaces and links,
- Firewalls,
- Wireless systems,
- Cloud-based services
A Network Snapshot useful for Maintenance, Migration plan and/or to design a new architecture.
How does our tool work?
Starting from the physical layer, we extract the interface data from the device configuration files and operational values, compile the summary excel files that list the interface parameters of each device
interface names, description, IP address / mask, VLAN, VRF, SVI VxLAN
We create scripts extract relevant information taking the advantage of L3 LLDP, CDP protocols to represent the physical and logical network infrastructure as a graph.
Phase 1: Our software gathers configurations of the network device; extract node resource data with Model, serial, S / W version, up-time….
Phase 2: We go thru a Network and Connections Assessment, checking all wired connections too.
We extract interface configuration parameters (Intf, sub-Intf, SVI, L2) IP addr / mask, VLAN-id, VRF, trunk /access, desc. Then we identify the CDP / LLDP links.
Finally we build the graph (network devices = vertex, connections = edges)
The SC4T Assessment service continues with the graphical map at levels 1, 2 and 3 of the entire network infrastructure, security, unified communications, data server with Rack, server, virtual machine, VMWARE NSX structures, Red Hat OpenStack, Cisco ACI, Juniper and Arista.
