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In Today’s episode we are highlighting Unified Network Fabric, or UNF. Unified Network Fabric is not a vendor solution, it is not a marketing pitch (at least not yet)… it is a transformational concept that we will explain in detail that fully meets business priorities, requirements and goals. Lets Dig in my friends
Setting the Stage for Unified Network Fabric
This will require you to shift your mindset and some of your thought processes here.
Today we have Software Define Solutions, they are Multiple Independent Fabrics, lets call these Micro-Fabrics. We have a Micro-Fabric in the Data Center, Campus, Wide Area Network, and Cloud. These Micro-Fabrics have the following capabilities within their own space:
- Micro Segmentation
- Policy Enforcement
- Single Point of Truth
- Single Pane of Glass
When we are talking about one Micro-Fabric all of these capabilities exist and much more, but when we combine all of the Micro-Fabrics together into one logical Fabric, we lack these capabilities:
- No Native End to End Segmentation
- Inconsistent policy enforcement between Fabrics
- No Single point of truth
- Multiple fabric types
- Disparate Tool
- Multiple “Single Panes of Glass”, one for each Micro-Fabric
Enter Unified Network Fabric
What we are truly lacking in this industry is the interconnection between these Micro-fabrics with the associated capabilities included. Image for a second that you have a single point of truth for the entire enterprise, not four different “single panes of glass” each in their own Micro-Fabric. Image a true end to end segmentation strategy that isn’t limited to a single fabric but is incorporated throughout all fabrics. Image a full end to end quality of experience framework. Forget about the technical “how” to do this for a minute with the stitching together of the different micro-fabrics with VXLAN, VRFs, and Virtual Networks…think of the potential possibilities that a capability just like this can provide.
This is where the transformational concept of a Unified Network Fabric comes into the picture.
When we start to talk about all of the different Micro-fabrics together holistically, which we are calling a Unified Network Fabric, we can start to characterize what this truly means to our business, to our customers, and to the industry from a capability perspective.
- Ability to be administered as a single administrative domain
- Ubiquitous Connectivity
- Consistent Policy Enforcement
- End-To-End Segmentation
- Enhanced Programmability
- Cloud Enablement
Remember here, that all of these capabilities are end to end throughout the entire Unified Network Fabric, spanning the different Micro-Fabrics of Data Center, Campus, Wide Area Network, and Cloud
Manager for a Unified Network Fabric
Today, Each Micro-fabric has its own manager or controller. What we are taking about here is a higher level manager that fully managers each Micro-fabric’s manager. Thus defining this as a true Manager of Mangers. This could also be called a Controller of Controllers or Brain of Brains! 🙂 Here are some of the required capabilities for the Manager of Managers:
- Must be highly available
- Must operate at global scale
- Must be responsive in real-time to network events
- Must accommodate multiple IT operations groups
- Must support different operational models
- Must support multiple tenants within a domain
- Must support tenants of tenants
- Must support a distributed, tiered deployment
- Must allow for a tiered model for policies and standards
Unified Network Fabric Security
With a true Unified Network Fabric we can administer our entire enterprise from one single administrative domain. Once again I will reiterate here, UNF is not a vendor solution, it is not a marketing pitch (at least not yet)… it is a transformational concept. We talked about the different Micro-fabrics within a Unified Network Fabric but I intentionally left something out…Security. Security and the shift in philosophy to a Zero Trust model is a topic in its own right that rates its own episode. For now, I leave you with the understanding that within a Unified Network Fabric Zero Trust is pervasive End to End!
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