Just as applications have evolved and modernized, the network also is evolving. Today’s Modern Network is complex and includes virtual and physical infrastructure in public cloud, on-premises data centers, co-located resources, SaaS services, campus, branch, the SD-WAN that ties components together. Today’s networks also have layers of encapsulation with views of both underlay and overlay (VxLAN, SD-WAN tunnels). Having network visibility to this complexity is only possible with modern tools like vRealize Network Insight and vRealize Network Insight Cloud. Using modern tools, a simple user-focused design to provide easy to understand end-to-end network visibility and analytics across this disparate infrastructure is possible. Applications traverse from user to the actual resource with many infrastructure connections along the way. Understanding performance issues with metrics visible from latency, jitter, or re-transmits requires the end-to-end view.
Modern Network
There are 3 pillars discussed in the Modern Network launch. vRealize Network Insight’s end-to-end network visibility and analytics helps network, security, and infrastructure teams look into each of the 3 pillars.
Modern App Connectivity Services with user and application experience as most important.
Multi-Cloud Network Virtualization across any infrastructure with security and scale that is consistent.
Physical Network Infrastructure is everywhere and visibility is provided with all the integrations that vRealize Network Insight provides.
Figure 1 vRealize Network Insight view which simplifies the complex underlay and overlay network path.
Today’s Modern Networks are extremely complex if managed by traditional methods, but with VMware tools like vRealize Network Insight, that complexity is simplified. The Modern Network no longer needs to be built or managed in a traditional box by box approach. The entire environment today is seen as an end-to-end system which gives a complete view and takes the multi-vendor infrastructure into a unified Modern Network. vRealize Network Insight uses machine learning techniques to discover application boundaries to better understand and correlate the complex interactions between applications, IP traffic, containers, virtual machines, devices, and users.
Figure 2 vRealize Network Insight Assurance and Verification topology view
vRealize Network Insight Assurance and Verification
New techniques like Formal Verification are now applied to the Modern Network. Formal Verification is used in other fields like chip design, space exploration, or aerospace where using mathematical modeling detects issues early in complex systems with exposure to corner cases of disparate components interacting. These modern techniques are built into vRealize Network Insight Assurance and Verification capabilities to understand not only what is happening in the network, but also to predict what could happen to the network. These tools help build networks that essentially manage themselves using modern networking principles.
To deliver superior application experience to users, business need to move quickly which also means rapid network provisioning. As changes in the network compound over time, deviations can start to occur which cause failures. A Modern Network needs to continually validate that original business intent is still being followed. Using vRealize Network Insight Assurance and Verification, this dynamic check validates best practices and user defined business intents and notifies staff remediation is required. An example of this pro-active behavior is a continual business intent verification which ensures external web resources never have access to internal financial resources. As access-lists or other configurations may change over time, a periodic check from vRealize Network Insight Assurance and Verification will validate the business intent and if the intent is not longer passing, will then alert the operators.
Just as IT network operators have evolved from being command line interface (CLI) experts to now adopting scripts, APIs, DevOps, and other modern ways to scale so they can manage more and more infrastructure with greater precision, the network has evolved at a rapid pace as well. Solutions like vRealize Network Insight will continue to adapt to what IT users will need and use for the Modern Network.
Here are additional resources to explore:
-VMware Modern Network Solutions, Future of Networking webpage
-The Modern Network, The Case for Self-Healing Networks blog
-Modern Network Launch webpage
-Proactively Manage Your Network with Business Intent eBook
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