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Visibility During Cisco ACI Data Center Migration Strengthens Government Trust
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud
Services
- System Integration
- Testing & Certification
The Challenge
The agency’s Network Operations (NetOps) team was tasked with assuring a successful data center operations technology refresh and migration to an on-premises environment. They had relied on NETSCOUT’s nGeniusONE Service Assurance solution with InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) appliances to monitor the agency’s existing network and application activity and knew from trended reports that the new data center was going to require an upgrade to high-speed links in their environment based on increased traffic volumes over time. This would also require that the nGenius Packet Flow Switches (PFSs) and ISNG appliances could monitor at the new network speeds to assure visibility as traffic transitioned to the new network and continue real-time monitoring after the migration. As part of ongoing agency data center transformation planning, NetOps had also identified a Cisco® Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) software-defined networking (SDN) architecture as the next-generation solution best-suited to respond to their evolving network demands. In making the decision to move to Cisco ACI SDN, NetOps was motivated by potential reductions in cost, complexity, and IT overhead in managing performance across their distributed environment. Given the criticality of network performance to this agency’s mission success, NetOps had heightened concerns about outsourcing operations to any third party, particularly focusing on loss of IT control and security, as well as the need to realize performance that complied with the agency’s negotiated Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with contracted third parties.
About The Customer
The agency’s innovative Network Operations (NetOps) team has earned notice for their efforts to maximize annual budget allocations while modernizing the technology platforms used to deliver government services to their employees. Their deployed NETSCOUT Smart Visibility and nGeniusONE real-time analysis solutions had long supported the agency’s network performance monitoring and troubleshooting needs.
The Solution
The NetOps team assured success of their data center operations, SDN migration, and technology upgrade activities by again leveraging NETSCOUT’s performance analytics, smart visibility solutions, and advanced subject matter expertise. As a result of this approach, NetOps incrementally supplemented their installed nGeniusONE investment to include the following: ISNG appliances instrumented in key vantage points to deliver end-through-end visibility into the traffic traversing their data center operations and virtualized Cisco ACI SDN environment. With this deployment, ISNG technology uses NETSCOUT’s patented Adaptive Service Intelligence® (ASI) technology to perform real-time conversion of network packet traffic into the smart data used by nGeniusONE single-pane views into the data center, ACI, applications, and infrastructure services supporting the agency’s mission. nGenius 5000 series PFS appliances supporting high-speed network segments, including 40GB, by distributing wire traffic from network links in the Cisco ACI deployment to ISNG appliances, as well as other downstream third-party monitoring and security tools. The availability of familiar nGeniusONE Service Dashboard and Service Monitor workflows provided NetOps with before, during, and after views and reporting that were used to inform agency leadership that services had not been interrupted by these data center and network transitions. Additionally, NetOps was able to better collaborate and provide as-needed forensic evidence to Cisco to ensure ACI SDN performance was delivered in compliance with an SLA that defined 99.999% service uptimes.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
