Automating and Orchestrating Large Enterprise Networks with AppViewX and Ansible
Automating and Orchestrating Large Enterprise Networks with AppViewX and Ansible
Automation is an essential component to running large, multi-platform, multi-vendor enterprise networks. Many organizations have already invested in simple IT infrastructure automation solutions, and have had initial success turning repetitive environment provisioning and application deployment tasks into reusable playbooks.
A leading global Financial Services corporation has effectively implemented Ansible for configuration management, but needed to add a governance and advanced orchestration layer to achieve true zero-touch, end-to-end automation of their key processes. The company’s Infrastructure and Operations leaders chose AppViewX for its seamless integration with Ansible playbooks, which allowed business users and other IT teams to gain access to an array of service orchestration workflows.
- Ansible is an IT automation engine, designed to accelerate DevOps processes. It is quickly becoming a go-to automation platform for organizations who are ready to embark on an automation journey.
- AppViewX is an end-to-end low-code network automation and orchestration solution. It handles high-level network operations like real-time monitoring and reporting, compliance and governance, context-aware troubleshooting and auto-remediation, and self-servicing capabilities.
- The integrated solution works by allowing users to call Ansible playbooks from AppViewX (Northbound) to perform automation tasks, or by triggering AppViewX orchestration workflows from Ansible (Southbound).
Zero Touch Provisioning of Appviewx Multi-node
The most commonly used scenario for the Financial Services company is to spin production environments with a specified number of nodes. AppViewX created playbooks and visual workflows that would automatically provision all required resources and input predefined parameters, such as CPU, RAM, storage, VM location, DNS, and more. AppViewX would automatically assign the resources, log into devices, set up host names and IP addresses, and verify that the environment is ready for production.
The entire process is completely automated. All that users need to do is log into the user-friendly AppViewX interface and select the right workflow. The new environment is automatically set up, allowing engineers to make changes, scale it up and down, and add devices, as needed.
Restoring the Environment After a Security Breach Event
The entire financial services industry is extremely security-conscious, and companies, especially large institutions who work with sensitive customer and transaction data, are required to have detailed plans on what to do in case of a security breach. Depending on the nature of a breach and the type of malware that has been discovered, a common course of action by SecOps is to scrap all devices on the network and restore complete environments based on the last known good configuration (prior to the breach).
AppViewX creates a nightly backup of the entire network, including the database and the configurations, and is able to trigger workflows to restore it in a matter of minutes. So, even in case of a breach, once the security team discovers the intrusion, AppViewX can get all environments, including the DB, back up with minimal data loss (the only items lost might be changes made since the last backup).
Right-sizing Networks for Capacity Planning
In response to fluctuating demand, the Financial Services company needed a way to quickly scale up and down the number of nodes. AppViewX gave them a way to automate this process, with minimal input from the user (requiring only to specify the number of nodes), to accommodate changes in traffic and keep applications available and responsive to any number of users.
The integration between AppViewX and Ansible allowed the Financial Services company to automate key processes and increase the agility of their infrastructure without adding complexity or increasing operating costs. The intuitive and user-friendly orchestration capabilities offered by AppViewX helped accelerate network provisioning tasks throughout the large corporation, freeing up IT resources and helping the company achieve their digital transformation goals.
Want to learn more about what AppViewX can do for your business? Contact us today and schedule your free demo.
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*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Blogs – AppViewX authored by George Samual Paul. Read the original post at: https://www.appviewx.com/blogs/automating-and-orchestrating-large-enterprise-networks-with-appviewx-and-ansible/
