Apstra Presents at Networking Field Day 13

Apstra Who We Are with Derick Winkworth

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Derick Winkworth, Systems Engineer at Apstra, introduces the company at Networking Field Day 13, emphasizing that the organization views networking primarily as a data problem. He reveals that their goal is to provide tools for managing and acting upon the immense amount of interconnected data present in networks, which involves considering various states such as route tables, ARP tables, and interface information. Winkworth underscores the complexity of distributing and automating this data, likening it to a difficult computational problem.

Winkworth then draws an analogy between the human brain’s ability to recognize faces and network automation. He discusses a neurological condition known as face blindness to illustrate how important context is for understanding and automating networks. Much like how people with face blindness see facial features but cannot recognize faces due to a lack of holistic vision, network automation without context is fragmented and incomplete. He suggests that traditional network automation can understand and act on isolated data points but lacks the comprehensive insight needed to achieve effective network automation without a well-integrated model.

Apstra’s unique approach to network automation seeks to solve this by defining the network as an ideal or expected state. They leverage their Apstra Operating System (AOS) to capture the intended state of a network and use this model to guide automation processes comprehensively. Winkworth presented how AOS can simplify network automation by breaking down the complexities into manageable parts, maintaining context throughout the operations from design to implementation. The overarching message is that having a clear, holistic model of the network allows for more effective automation and management of network data, which Apstra aims to achieve with its tools and systems.

Personnel: Derick Winkworth

Apstra Situational Awareness with Jeremy Schulman

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Derick Winkworth, Systems Engineer at Apstra, starts the presentation by framing networking as a data problem, focusing on providing tools that manage and automate the distribution of complex, interconnected data within networks. This data includes elements such as route tables, ARP tables, and interface information. Apstra aims to simplify the management of this data through innovative tools that can handle the immense volume and intricacies, which Winkworth compares to solving a challenging computational problem.

Jeremy Schulman, the Head of Customer Enablement at Apstra, elaborates on this concept by introducing Apstra’s solution for network situational awareness. He demonstrates how Apstra’s platform offers both a high-level Iron Man-style heads-up display and detailed telemetry views, providing comprehensive insights into network states. Schulman walks through a deployment scenario involving a data center with a spine-and-leaf architecture, highlighting how Apstra monitors and validates various network elements, such as BGP neighbor relationships and cable connections. He emphasizes that Apstra ensures continuous validation, akin to having CCIEs constantly verifying configurations and states, thus significantly reducing troubleshooting time and efforts.

During the demo, Schulman showcases the platform’s ability to detect and diagnose issues when hardware configurations deviate from expectations, such as swapping cables and the ripple effects on BGP sessions and routing. He discusses the broader implications of Apstra’s tools in enhancing network engineers’ capabilities by automating tedious tasks and providing real-time, actionable insights. This not only supports efficient network management but also mitigates the risk of manual errors, thereby ensuring the network operates as intended.

Personnel: Derick Winkworth, Jeremy Schulman

Apstra AOS Demo with Jeremy Schulman

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Jeremy Schulman, Head of Customer Enablement at Apstra, showcases the Apstra Operating System (AOS) running on an on-prem server rack. He highlights the configuration flexibility and extensive hardware support of AOS, emphasizing its focus on creating network service abstractions rather than device-level abstractions. Schulman demonstrates how AOS allows seamless hardware replacement by configuring network services via a series of parameters, independent of specific devices.

In his demonstration, Schulman replaces a Dell Cumulus switch with a Cisco switch, illustrating how AOS generates and manages configurations using Jinja templates. These templates help in creating custom configurations that can be extended as needed. A key feature demonstrated is the ability of AOS to adapt configurations dynamically based on the device models registered in the system, ensuring compatibility and operational consistency across different hardware platforms. This flexibility is further enhanced by AOS’s support for multiple vendors such as NXOS, Arista, and Cumulus.

Schulman also addresses how AOS handles real-time monitoring and troubleshooting, showing how the system quickly detects configuration deviations and alerts the user. He showcases the system’s ability to provide situational awareness and actionable insights to network engineers, enabling quick resolution of issues such as interface errors or routing anomalies. Additionally, Schulman mentions Apstra’s efforts in open-sourcing key components like their universal ZTP server, promoting community engagement and extending the system’s capabilities through customization and extensibility.

Personnel: Jeremy Schulman

Apstra Describing the Network with Derick Winkworth

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Derick Winkworth, a Systems Engineer at Apstra, presented at Networking Field Day 13 in Palo Alto, California, where he discussed how to define a network within the Apstra Operating System (AOS) without requiring direct interaction with command-line interfaces (CLI). The aim is to create a network environment that is as vendor-agnostic as possible, allowing flexibility in switch and vendor choice. Winkworth highlighted the traditional approach where the selection of vendors and switch models is often locked in during the network design phase, which makes future changes cumbersome and limits the potential for automated network management.

Winkworth elaborated on the decoupling of network design from switch and vendor selection using AOS, describing this as essential for achieving true network automation. The approach allows network designers to conceptualize their topology in abstract terms, without prematurely committing to specific vendors or models. This separation means that choices about hardware can be made later during implementation, allowing for more flexibility and potentially cost savings as different vendor options are evaluated based on current needs and availability. By doing so, networks can adopt a more fluid and adaptive approach, changing vendors or models as needed without being confined by the initial design constraints.

Furthermore, Winkworth emphasized that Apstra’s AOS supports a wide range of hardware platforms, making the process of multi-vendor integration seamless. This extensibility is critical, as it allows users to customize their networks to meet specific requirements without being bound to a single vendor’s ecosystem. This method includes building generic port representations for switches, facilitating easier deployment and implementation. Through this process, network operations become more streamlined, enabling engineers to focus on design and performance optimization rather than on specific hardware configurations, ultimately enhancing efficiency and adaptability in network management.

Personnel: Derick Winkworth

Apstra Logical Devices with Jeremy Schulman and Derick Winkworth

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Jeremy Schulman and Derick Winkworth from Apstra conducted a presentation during Networking Field Day 13, demonstrating the creation of logical devices using Apstra’s AOS on an on-prem rack server. They highlighted how AOS enables network engineers to design and deploy networks with vendor-agnostic principles. This approach allows engineers to focus more on the network’s design and functionality rather than being constrained by specific vendor technologies.

During the presentation, Schulman and Winkworth demonstrated the process of creating logical devices from scratch. They explained the concept of logical devices in AOS, which are generic descriptions of the port layout and roles for different kinds of network devices such as spines and leaf switches. These devices can then be used to dynamically build various network topologies, all without choosing specific hardware vendors at the design stage. This method enhances flexibility in network planning, allowing multiple design topologies to be evaluated and optimized for various requirements without the immediate need to commit to vendor-specific hardware.

The session also detailed how AOS can compute optimal network designs based on parameters such as the number of servers and uplink ports. Using a catalog of predefined device abstractions, Apstra’s software can suggest multiple network solutions, helping network architects make informed decisions that best suit their specific technical and business needs. Additionally, the presentation covered how logical devices can later be mapped to physical hardware, such as Dell or Celestica switches, showcasing AOS’s ability to transform theoretical designs into actionable blueprints ready for implementation.

Personnel: Derick Winkworth, Jeremy Schulman

Apstra Network Blueprints with Jeremy Schulman and Derick Winkworth

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Jeremy Schulman, Head of Customer Enablement at Apstra, and Derick Winkworth, Systems Engineer, demonstrate their network blueprint tools. This allows the design principals to be open for all future engineers working on the network to see both the layout and purpose of the network as a whole.

The presentation emphasizes the importance of structured network design, using Apstra’s network blueprint tools to simplify and automate the process. Schulman explains that network architects may design logical network topologies without needing to decide specific hardware models upfront. At the time of physical network deployment, the Apstra Operating System (AOS) automatically manages resources like IP addresses and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) to align the network layout and configurations with the initial design. The speakers demonstrate how AOS integrates with Ansible to automate configuration processes efficiently, showcasing how various predefined templates and resource pools can be used to streamline network deployments.

A significant benefit highlighted is the solution’s capability to manage and distribute complex configurations systematically, eliminating the need for manual entry and the potential for human error typically associated with spreadsheet-driven network management. The system generates all necessary configurations and even cabling maps, which are often tedious tasks for network engineers. The solution ensures that all configurations and resource allocations are stored and updated in a central place, thus serving as the single source of truth and preventing inconsistencies. The speakers discuss how AOS verifies topology through protocols like LLDP before final deployment, emphasizing a staged and validated deployment approach to ensure network stability and integrity.

The presentation also addresses typical pain points faced by network implementation engineers, such as managing updates to configurations and ensuring cabling accuracy. By automating these processes, Apstra allows engineers to focus on higher-level design and troubleshooting rather than manual tasks. The ability to control and automate routing policy within the tool illustrates its advanced capabilities, particularly valuable for complex environments like large SaaS providers. Overall, the blueprint tools from Apstra offer an intelligent, automated solution to standardize and simplify network deployments, ensuring that design intentions are accurately and efficiently realized in the physical network infrastructure.

Personnel: Derick Winkworth, Jeremy Schulman

Apstra Network Deployment with Jeremy Schulman

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Jeremy Schulman, Head of Customer Enablement at Apstra, reviews how to deploy a network with the Apstra Operating System. This takes a manual process that takes hours of configuration and automates it.

In his presentation at Networking Field Day 13, Jeremy Schulman demonstrates how Apstra’s Operating System (AOS) significantly simplifies network deployment by automating processes that would traditionally require extensive manual effort. Schulman begins by showcasing the initial steps of validating the physical layer and cabling before deploying configurations to the network switches. He highlights how AOS can automatically execute extensive Manual of Procedures (MOP) for BGP neighbor setups, which are traditionally manual and time-consuming tasks for network engineers, especially when performed during off-hours.

Schulman continues to demonstrate the automation of further configurations using Ansible scripts to provision external routers and DHCP servers. Through detailed steps, he showcases how AOS extracts blueprint data, applies configurations, and validates the deployment by bringing up BGP neighbor relations and confirming their functionality through telemetry data. The automation extends to the server level, where servers register with AOS as they boot up, acquire IP addresses via DHCP, and automatically associate with the right network blueprint, ensuring a seamless and mistake-free configuration.

The demonstration further emphasizes the power of AOS in correlating application load with network load, which Schulman illustrates using a Docker container example. Each container gets its own IP address, and AOS uses BGP and LLDP for network topology mapping, providing unprecedented visibility into network and application correlations. This allows for sophisticated tracking of network resources and simplifies troubleshooting for network engineers. Overall, AOS advances network deployment from a manual, error-prone activity to an automated, efficient, and highly reliable process.

Personnel: Jeremy Schulman

Apstra Sneak Peek with Jeremy Schulman and Derick Winkworth

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Abstract:
In this presentation, Jeremy Schulman and Derick Winkworth of Apstra provide an overview of their newly developed product aimed at augmenting network engineers’ capabilities rather than replacing them. The presentation showcases features from the upcoming 1.1 release, including enhanced situational awareness, telemetry, rack-based design automation, and flexibility in network topology management.

The key objective emphasized by the presenters was that their product is not meant to automate away network engineers’ jobs, but to assist them by handling the tedious and error-prone tasks that can bog down their daily workflow. By discussing their insights and the product’s functionality, the Apstra team aimed to demonstrate the tangible benefits of their innovative solutions to an audience of industry experts including podcasters, speakers, and influencers.

One of the exciting aspects introduced in the presentation was the enhanced situational awareness feature, which streamlines the access to critical information with minimal navigation. Additionally, the 1.1 release offers improvements in telemetry and visualization, giving users quicker access to the operational state of their network. For instance, users can identify issues like a down BGP session right from the topology page. Another major update is the introduction of rack-based design automation, alongside the traditional server-based design, which allows users to define racks and their configurations, making network setup and management more efficient and customizable.

The presentation wrapped up with a discussion on the broader implications and future potentials of Apstra’s automation tools. Emphasizing modularity and flexibility, Jeremy Schulman noted that while the current product supports L3 Clos topologies, future releases aim to support various other designs and allow users to define their own topologies. This expansion is poised to address complexities in different network environments, from large-scale data centers to smaller on-premises setups. Additionally, the emphasis was placed on eliminating the tedious aspects of network management, thus enabling engineers to focus more on strategic tasks.

Personnel: Derick Winkworth, Jeremy Schulman