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Apstra® Inc., the Intent-Based Data Center
Automation company, introduce significant advancements to the Apstra
Operating System (AOS) including the industry’s first solution to deliver Root
Cause Identification for Intent-Based Networking, support for live in-network
blueprint implementation updates, integration with VMware vSphere and vCenter, and the expansion of the Apstra open and vendor-agnostic overlay to include
enterprise-class SONiC support and Junos OS support.

Apstra Intent-Based Data Center Automation enables businesses to build an
Intent-Based Data Center that increases application reliability and availability,
automates and simplifies deployments and operations, and reduces costs (OpEx and
CapEx). Apstra is able to do this through three key technologies.

1. Intent-Based Networking delivers real-time automation of formal design,
validation, and policy translation, and self-documentation

2. Graph datastore delivers a single source of truth, continuous closed-looped
automation, and analytics

3. Open and vendor-agnostic overlay

Enterprises deploying Apstra Intent-Based Data Center Automation are able to take
advantage of a single point of support by contacting Apstra directly in the event of
any underlying data center network issues. Apstra also eliminates the need to earn
new vendor certifications to be able to deploy alternative network devices and
operating systems. Apstra automates the design, build, deployment, operations and
troubleshooting of data centers.

AOS is a turnkey application for data center networks that enables network engineers
to quickly and reliably design-build-operate a spine-leaf network. It applies to any
size network, and scales to the largest data centers. AOS enables enterprise, cloud
service provider, and telco organizations to reduce cost, manage the health of the
network, accelerate time to delivery of applications and services — without the
headaches that exist today deploying and operating business-critical data center
network infrastructure.

New and enhanced features in AOS 2.3 include:

– Advanced Fabric Operations:

• Device Maintenance Mode – Additional support for traffic draining and
undraining allowing operators to perform hitless upgrades remove an active switch
without impacting existing flows any time of day with no need for disabling for
manual changes. Mitigating downtime for system operation, visibility and
reliability.

• Fabric Expansion – Fabrics can be expanded seamlessly without interruption,
enabling on-the-fly capacity additions leveraging live blueprint updates. As racks
or devices are added, they are immediately monitored according to all existing rules
and system checks already in place.

• Device OS Management and Validation – Apstra takes responsibility for
qualification, support, and management of vendor device OS images and devices
through the unified AOS portal. AOS stages new device OS images on each device,
manages the graceful upgrade and reboot process while also ensuring necessary system packages are installed. AOS continuously monitors the device OS levels on all
devices to ensure that older operating systems are not accidentally deployed.

– New Root Cause Identification:

• Apstra identifies root causes responsible for issues, symptoms, anomalies,
failures and events by studying and correlating system telemetry in real time. AOS
understands the intent of the architect or operator and will pinpoint and isolate
problems without a massive influx of false positive alerts. Root Cause
Identification continuously studies to find root causes for anomalies such as gray
failures, performance degradation, and any new outages.

– Intent-Based Analytics Enhancements:

• Network operators can now pause, import and export existing IBA probes through
the user interface. Apstra has developed nearly 50 probes which are all publicly
available on GitHub and can easily be implemented to live systems in minutes. Probes
can be customized for each environment and tailored to the business SLA (service
level agreement) requirements.

– New Enterprise Features:

• VMware vSphere Integration – AOS eliminates integration problems by
incorporating vSphere’s view of the network with the actual physical and overlay
network configuration. As an example, missing or misaligned VLANs will trigger
anomalies in AOS that inform the operator that there is an inconsistency between the
network policies. AOS can then be used to rectify any issues that exist in the
physical network.

• Open and Vendor-Agnostic Overlay – Apstra extends support for multiple vendor
platforms with the addition of SONiC and Junos OS.

– Security Compliance Requirements:

• Network Operating System (NOS) upgrades and compliance checks to meet network security compliance.