Arista boosts agility for modern enterprises

Arista Networks has introduced CloudVision® 2021, a further expansion of Arista's software-driven approach for modern enterprises. CloudVision 2021 delivers new automation capabilities designed to improve network agility and streamline enterprise business outcomes.

“Arista’s solution provided us with the ability to deploy quickly through automation combined with high-level visibility. It saved us a lot of time, and we met the goals, which included moving the entire organization to the new headquarters by the set date. The CloudVision system provides us with a single unified observation point for the end-to-end network - and in combination with end-to-end automation, we have achieved significant advantages over the old system, including many tangible advantages. In light of the project’s success, Bezeq decided to install Arista’s solutions in some of its data centers as well,” said Eldad Piles, Director of Engineering and Cyber, Bezeq.

CloudVision is a modern software platform designed to bring cloud network operations to enterprise customers through a network-wide suite of automation, telemetry, and analytics. Available for on-premises and SaaS-based delivery, CloudVision is a multi-domain management plane, enabling operations consistency across data center, campus wired and wireless, and public cloud use cases. This uniform approach dramatically simplifies network operations for Arista customers and channel partners by breaking down the traditional network management silos. CloudVision 2021 specifically focuses on Arista’s cognitive campus solution with new capabilities that link user and application experience to network deployments and operations.

Agility for the Evolving Enterprise

In today’s COVID environment, enterprise network operations teams have had to adapt their approach for rolling out new network services to meet changing business needs. To do this in an automated way, the underlying network needs to evolve from legacy models based on brittle, command line device control to modern, abstracted models providing network-wide control.

“Enterprise customers are looking for solutions that maximize performance, lower operational costs, and enable automation for today’s distributed workspaces,” said Russ Brown, Sales VP of Computacenter US. “Arista’s CloudVision 2021 for enterprise workspaces brings compelling innovation and delivers new ways to solve end-user requirements using the latest AI, cloud, and networking technologies."

CloudVision’s existing network configuration management approach delivers streamlined network provisioning through a centralized ‘configlet’ model that leverages configuration inheritance and reuse principles. Building on this, Arista introduces CloudVision Studios: new capabilities for automating configuration workflows within CloudVision and providing a flexible abstraction between the business and the underlying network.

CloudVision Studios provides day zero, day one, and day two workflows through an easy-to-use, point-and-click user interface without requiring configuration syntax expertise. This expands the administrative scope to include operators at all levels of ability to make changes confidently and quickly through the simple GUI forms. At the same time, operators have the controls to review, validate, and approve the changes for accuracy and deployment assurance. CloudVision Studios provide a flexible workspace approach, starting with built-in workflows for many common configuration-related tasks, including templating for initial campus build-outs, workflows for adding incremental network capacity, and basic day-to-day helpdesk-driven changes. In addition, CloudVision Studios can be created or customized for any feature set, avoiding the inflexible ‘wizard’ user-interface approach found in legacy network management systems.

CloudVision Studios also delivers an abstraction of the network through modern and network-wide data models. This approach allows enterprises to automate their day-to-day deployment and operational networking tasks through a well-defined and flexible framework by translating their business needs directly into network semantics and ultimately improving the enterprise experience.

Cognitive Telemetry for Deeper Observability

Arista’s cognitive campus leverages the latest telemetry capabilities to enable modern network observability. Today’s network telemetry capabilities have evolved from the traditional SNMP-based polling models and include state-streaming for real-time access to continuous network state, predictive analytics for automated baselining of network trends, and automatic traffic recording and replay of specific network flows. 

A key component of Arista’s cognitive AI-driven approach, this functionality employs granular data plane telemetry and deep packet inspection for input into supervised training models used to baseline the user experience of a particular application. Once the models have been trained and the baselines are understood, CloudVision can alert the enterprise network operator of any application performance issues with automated remediation recommendations.

CloudVision 2021 now expands our suite of cognitive capabilities, including:

• New network latency and path selection dashboards - CloudVision can now receive Inband Network Telemetry (INT) data, a standards-based capability for exporting latency and path telemetry and is now available across a suite of Arista’s latest switching platforms. CloudVision then provides the operator with views of network congestion hotspots with an unmatched level of granularity, providing visibility that helps to root-cause network performance problems across campus and data center networks.
• Quality of Experience (QoE) Dashboard - In addition to video collaboration tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, CloudVision now supports QoE monitoring for up to 25 applications, including Office 365, Google Workspace, Workday, Salesforce, and other enterprise application suites.
• A Performance Dashboard utilizing a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Engine to deliver client-specific views on the end user experience, including application, radio frequency interference, network, and client-specific analytics such as DNS and DHCP state to provide a unified view of the end user experience and automated remedial action recommendations.
• CloudVision’s Radio Frequency (RF) Explorer delivers in-depth, live and historical views across the entire WiFi RF spectrum, delivering a comprehensive tool for monitoring, managing, and proactively troubleshooting RF-related issues.
• A suite of additional enhancements, including new dashboards for customizable infrastructure views, an updated events app, additions to the continuous compliance app for expert insights and product lifecycle tracking, and integrations with the Arista TAC knowledge base.