DEVOPSdigest

Gluware announced Gluware Automation v3.6, which extends the platform API capabilities including integrations with the Mist and Ansible platforms and introduces lifecycle management and infrastructure integration enhancements.

The new version was developed in response to a growing list of global enterprise customers seeking to scale their network automation capabilities to work in their current environment and across more nodes to be faster within their complex networks. Gluware offers Intent-Based network automation capabilities without coding or scripting and in support of a tapestry of automation solutions for multi-vendor, brownfield and greenfield networks.

Gluware Automation v3.6 brings improved lifecycle management to customers. Companies can use the new Intelligent Model Discovery (IMD) Workflow in the Gluware platform to read in an existing device configuration. IMD dynamically data-models the features configured on the fly, turning them into internal or external policy and able to automate changes across hundreds or thousands of nodes – without any programming. This puts the power of "infrastructure as code" into the hands of network engineers enabling powerful automation with no IT staff coding required. Gluware's intelligent platform reads in and identifies specific configuration parameters – like standard globals including Banner, DNS, NTP, SNMP, SYSLOG, etc. – and easily assign those "standard golden policies" to hundreds or thousands of nodes to ensure configuration consistency. Gluware has also added the ability to perform state assessment to perform pre- and post-checks to ensure devices are in the proper operational state before and after a change or OS upgrade.

In v3.6, Gluware has enhanced its published API, adding full support for its Config Drift and Audit app capability. Enabled through the API, Gluware has enabled Juniper Networks AI- driven Mist platform to deliver an integrated solution enhancing the experience of the end user from the Mist wireless edge across a multi-vendor, brownfield network infrastructure. The combined Mist-Gluware solution executes automated network tasks when degraded performance related to the network is measured from the Mist cloud.

Also in v3.6 Gluware has published an Ansible plug-in enabling Ansible to use Gluware's dynamic inventory and create the required inventory files to run Ansible playbooks, which were previously manually created and maintained. Gluware is committed to releasing a growing suite of Ansible integrations including a broad spectrum of modules providing a bridge between DevOps and NetOps enterprise teams. This empowers enterprises to continue to leverage Ansible, but can now also implement the intelligence of Gluware declarative automation into their frameworks.

The latest Gluware Intelligent Network Automation release offers:

■ Improved Lifecycle Management

- New OS Manager Application: Enhances Gluware's current OS upgrade capability to simplify the process for IT operations to define and run policies for operating system patches, upgrades and downgrades reliably and at scale. The new app introduces an integrated distributed file server to most effectively deliver the desired software image to the network devices around the world.

- Intelligent Model Discovery Workflow: this powerful new Workflow enables a network engineer to use Gluware to read in network features and their configurations off an existing network device and dynamically created automated network policy to use network wide. This significantly minimizes the onboarding time to create network features and configuration policy.

- State Assessment: Gluware enables the ability to perform pre/post checks of the operational state and incorporate into every configuration change and OS upgrade. The result of the state assessment can be used to compare pre/post change operations and can be used to verify expected state or a value for a parameter, like number of neighbors or routes.

■ Enhanced Infrastructure Integration

- Enhanced published GluAPI enabling the full capability of the Config Drift and Audit app

- Mist API Integration – enables the Mist system to make API calls to Gluware to perform drift and audit of the network to correlate a change or mis-configuration which can be affecting wireless performance

- Ansible plug-in leveraging Gluware's Device Inventory, enabling automatic, real-time creation of the inventory file required for each playbook

■ Expanded vendor support

- Blue Coat ProxySG OS

- Cisco ACI

- Dell DNOS9

Jeff Gray, CEO and co-founder, Gluware, said: "IT organizations increasingly struggle to keep up with efficiently and effectively automating and orchestrating their complex, global networks. Gluware 3.6 opens the door for companies that need to unlock the potential of their unique enterprise network architecture including those working with Mist or Ansible."