"Cloud Network Management"-Building a network automation system on the cloud

Introduction to cloud network management is a cloud intelligent network management operation and maintenance platform based on Alibaba Cloud Network’s years of technology and experience. It provides enterprise network lifecycle management and operation and maintenance capabilities, making deployment faster, operation and maintenance more efficient, and network More transparent.

More about cloud network management: https://yqh.aliyun.com/live/cmn\_release

1. Background

Cloud network management is a cloud-based intelligent network management operation and maintenance platform built on the accumulation of many years of technology and experience of Alibaba Cloud Network. It provides the ability to manage and maintain the entire life cycle of the enterprise network, making deployment faster, operation and maintenance more efficient, and the network more transparent.

1.1 User pain points

1. Difficult to install and deploy
Traditional network management is mostly deployed locally. Users need to be responsible for physical resource planning, middleware installation, installation package deployment, etc. It usually requires professional network and IT maintenance personnel for several days or even weeks to deploy and go online.
2. Centralized management is difficult
The vendor's own network management system for network equipment can generally only provide local web access, not centralized management, or cross-vendor management, and cannot provide users with a unified management perspective. It requires switching between multiple network management systems.
3. Network expansion is difficult
With the expansion of business, offices and retail places often need to quickly open stores across the country. At present, network delivery is performed by network engineers logging in through the console port to configure and deliver them, which is inefficient and error-prone.

2. Product introduction

2.1 Scope of network management

The following figure defines the full life cycle of network management. The traditional network management system mainly focuses on network management during the service phase of the network, and is oriented to the resource management and operation and maintenance monitoring of online network elements. It cannot achieve the full life cycle of network equipment. manage.

Figure 1 The whole life cycle of network management

Cloud network management runs through the entire life cycle of the network. When the network is not online, you can plan and design offline to define the network architecture; when construction is delivered, the defined network architecture is implemented as a project, and the entire delivery The process flow is controllable and the quality is manageable; after the acceptance, the network officially enters the service stage. At this stage, the core requirements of the network are stable operation, fewer failures, and rapid location and recovery after failures, as well as monitoring and change of cloud network management. , Inspection and other modules to ensure the stable operation of the network during the service phase until the network goes offline. Throughout the network life cycle, resource management ensures the consistency of network resources with the real network.

2.2 Product function introduction

2.2.1 Construction delivery

• architecture design

Network planning can be carried out in advance when the network is not online. The network architecture is used to define the interconnection specifications and technical specifications of the network networking, provide graphical architecture design and management functions, and perform flexible layout of the networking topology in a graphical manner, and Configure the specific specifications of each network component.
As shown in the figure, the network architecture design is carried out in a visual way, and the number of network modules and the connection relationship are defined.

Figure 2 Network architecture design

Combined with the designed network planning and configuration specifications, a standard configuration file that can be imported with one click is automatically generated.

Figure 3 Configuration file generation

• Construction delivery

The construction delivery is to deliver the network solution in the form of a project and to control the delivery process and ensure the quality in the form of a work order in each project.

Figure 3 Implementation of construction delivery project

2.2.2 Intelligent operation and maintenance

• Situational awareness

Real-time perception of the overall state of the network through the global perspective and branch perspective.
Health: Combine equipment alarm conditions, network inspection status, monitoring coverage and other dimensions to score network conditions.

Dynamic topology: Quasi-real-time topology update through LLDP and MAC scanning technology, real-time display of device connection relations and port information.

• integrated monitoring

The network of an office branch or store generally covers multiple levels of network and includes devices of various network forms. It usually includes the gateway equipment of the access operator, the network equipment (router or switch) for data forwarding, the wireless equipment that provides WLAN, and a wide variety of terminal applications. A set of monitoring solutions covering the entire link from the network to the end is necessary, because often end-side abnormalities may be a problem with the wired network, and wired-side failures will affect the use of multiple terminals or applications on the downstream end.

Cloud network management monitors the network operation status from the gateway to the terminal through multiple monitoring technologies such as active collection, event reception, plug-in deployment, and active dialing for equipment at different network levels such as wired networks, wireless networks, and terminal applications. In the following monitoring view, monitor the wired and wireless indicators such as the connection port traffic on the switch, the egress traffic to the operator, the number of AP terminal connections, and the terminal monitoring information in one view.

• Network Orchestration

Cloud network management provides a visual process orchestration engine, and users connect the atomic capabilities of network operations in a drag-and-drop manner to ensure the integrity and security of transactions when the business is issued.

1. Complete business process orchestration definition

2. Visual distribution of single-step configuration process

• Fault self-healing

For daily high-frequency failure scenarios, based on the cloud network management's network orchestration capabilities, the alarm linkage processing solution can be used to quickly achieve failure hemostasis and business recovery.

3. Architecture introduction

3.1 Technical architecture

• protocol plug-in

The cloud network management protocol plug-in integrates the ssh, telnet, netconf, snmp, grpc and other protocols needed to manage the network, and supports the management of common commercial network equipment in the market.
The protocol plug-in communicates with the cloud collection control instance through an encrypted secure channel, efficiently executes the device operation instructions and collection tasks issued by the cloud, and compresses the data and feeds it back to the cloud for analysis and display in real time.
The Agent of the protocol plug-in supports multiple output modes such as cloud network management's own hardware, software installation package, integrated SDWAN gateway, etc.

• acquisition control

The collection control instance is deployed in the cloud, and plays a connecting role in the overall architecture of the cloud network management.
The workflow of the scheduling engine: 1. Receiving the tasks issued by the network scheduling, according to the task priority, scheduling plan and other strategies, the tasks are reasonably disassembled and scheduled. 2. According to the dimensions of the device manufacturer's model and other dimensions, the instructions are mapped into specific instructions for operating the device through template translation. 3. Send the instructions to the Agent for execution and wait for the execution results to be received 4. Task execution results analysis and assembly
Template management: Templates are divided into two types: "user template" and "device template". "User template" has only business meaning and shields manufacturer differences. It is directly quoted in network layout. "Device template" is refined to manufacturers and models. There are obvious differences in granularity between different manufacturers. For example: "ACL policy" equipment template, Cisco and Huawei are different instructions.

• Network Orchestration

Network orchestration is responsible for the unified abstraction and definition of business models. Network orchestration connects atomic capabilities according to business processes to form specific network solutions. The network solution uses the process engine to drive the collection and control instance to execute each step of the atomic operation, and controls the transaction integrity and link tracking in the form of work orders.

• application

Network orchestration provides capabilities and data interfaces to applications in the form of APIs. The application layer implements specific "resource management", "network inspection", "network changes", "failure recovery" and other capabilities to support operations and maintenance personnel in daily networking Operation and maintenance, business configuration, etc.

3.2 Deployment Architecture

Cloud network management SaaS deployment, the cloud network management instance is opened in minutes, and the user side only needs to deploy the probe (the hardware version only needs to be powered on and the network is reachable).

The computing and storage resources of the cloud network management are all used Alibaba Cloud resources, which can be expanded at any time according to specifications. Based on the CI/CD function implemented by the ASK cluster of Alibaba Cloud, new functions can be iteratively launched at any time.

4. Summary

Cloud network management is committed to creating a deployment-free, easy-to-use, and centralized SaaS network operation and maintenance management platform for complex, heterogeneous, and numerous offline networks. Welcome to apply for trial and join group exchanges.
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Cloud network management service exchange nail group: 35556346

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