Change Management w/ Intent

SOLUTION BRIEF Automate Network Change Management with Intent In today’s fast-paced world, change is inevitable. In the networking business, advances in ® technologies causes new devices to replace older ones, software updates continuously occur for nearly every component, new applications are introduced to support the business, companies merge, and corporate sites are added or removed as business plans change. All of this results in hybrid network infrastructures that are more expansive and complex than ever before and even the smallest change can have unforeseen and, in some cases, disastrous effects. Add to this the pace at which IT now operates and it’s no NetBrain PDAS Change Management surprise that the demand for robust, bet-your-business change management has grown dramatically over the Part of its PDA System, NetBrain’s Intent-Based Change last few years. Change windows are short and making Management capabilities go far beyond traditional changes to anything in an infrastructure is now a change management solutions by focusing on the mission-critical process. Even successful device-level performance of the network caused by changing changes using traditional approaches can result in individual devices. unintended consequences. The result is usually extended periods of unplanned downtime. NetBrain change management encompasses 5 stages that ensure network changes don’t negatively impact According to Uptime Institute, more than 70% of all data the network, its supported applications, or cause center outages are caused by human error; either other outages. incorrectly applied changes, or changes that were applied 1. Define the desired change and the network intents correctly but for some reason not what was intended. This is in contrast to what most people assume is the main 2. Benchmark/Baseline the network based on the cause of outages - hardware or software failures. intended performance goals 3. Execute the change and verify it has been completed NetBrain keeps you highly informed on how your changes 4. Benchmark the performance and verify design will impact the production network, reducing risk and cost compliance to network intents through intent-based network automation. Intents allow 5. Compare the resulting performance versus the you to verify network changes with network design and original benchmark to support acceptance policies both before and after you execute every change.

SOLUTION BRIEF Automate Network Change Management with Intent Even if changes to devices are successful, the unintended consequences of that change on the network and its apps could still result in an outage or service degradation. Feature Highlights Change management automation Change Management should not be a CLI command or NetBrain allows you to avoid the consequences (including a script of multiple commands. It should be a highly costly outages) that result in downtime by verifying defendable process that executes changes with changes with network design intents to preserve and confidence, can scale over an enterprise infrastructure assure application traffic flows. Network engineers can and is defendable over the long term. quickly identify any change’s impact on an infrastructure by enabling the capturing of before and after snapshots NetBrain’s Change Management enables you to to benchmark and analyze comparisons of performance. automate the entire change management process And changes must be supportable, so with just a couple including visualization of the live network with maps, of clicks, NetBrain allows you to document the work that documenting and executing changes, approvals, was performed and share additional operational notes verification of the change and against the design intent, with other operators and engineers. and resulting performance. By leveraging intent-based automation, NetBrain allows you to create and execute Rollback unintended network changes changes across your entire network while preserving the network’s design intentions. Engineers can formulate and Enforce design intentions for network device changes apply configuration changes by defining the Intents they and the resulting connectivity changes. want to achieve, including the desired benchmarks expected after making the change. And whether the change is executed correctly or incorrectly, it’s the application performance that matters, In addition, NetBrain integrates with third-party ticketing so NetBrain allows you to have your rollback process systems (e.g., ServiceNow) to trigger approvals for network locked and loaded, ready to execute — all at once, changes, linking the original service tickets directly to device by device or line by line - to quickly restore any NetBrain and updating the ticket as its status changes. previous configuration. Intent-based automatic change management verification Even with the best intentions, changes can have a ripple effect across the hybrid network which may be hard to predict unless carefully architected in the context of the entire infrastructure and precisely executed. Even the smallest of errant changes on a single component can wreak havoc on an enterprise and its applications.

SOLUTION BRIEF Automate Network Change Management with Intent Automatic audit documentation Benefits Automatically record all changes for future audit - Make network changes every detail (including who made the changes, without fear of what was the desired change, and when the change disruption was executed). All data is referenceable including impacted devices, execution logs, and benchmark Take before and after data and adherent to existing business approval snapshots to verify the processes. Document a network change task, impact and to ensure no including definition, device data and results, and adverse conditions occurred. export every detail to Microsoft Word. See all changes highlighted in a side-by-side intelligent comparison of “before” and “after” snapshots of config files, routing tables, MAC/ARP tables or any specific CLI commands. Verify existing application and traffic flows with network intents, run diagnostics, and leave notes for other operators and engineers. And NetBrain’s award-winning real-time Dynamic Maps show you exactly what’s going on immediately. Quickly see results, including any unexpected impacts resulting from any change. Safeguard the network from human error Change archive In cases of conflict, easily revert changes that may NetBrain improves existing network change adversely affect the network and its applications. NetBrain management procedures by creating detailed helps you keep track of every change detail in perpetuity. documentation of every change made through And, if you need to roll back a change, it stores all rollback NetBrain with a single click. Then, attach this processes and commands so you can quickly undo any documentation to other change management unintended changes. records in other systems if needed. NetBrain also maintains a complete history of change online, Maintain design compliance with ease so subsequent users can interactively query the NetBrain helps you maintain design compliance of the NetBrain system to review changes that had been entire production hybrid network. Proactively guard against made. Engineers can reference archived impacted misconfiguration by triggering automatic validation of devices, execution logs, benchmark data, and network changes against “golden baselines.” Automatically more and when reviewing a change. run a series of security compliance steps to ensure that changes haven’t caused “compliance drift.”

The ultimate benefit – Scale At the end of the day, IBA is scaling what network operations teams already do - collect and analyze data,investigate and diagnose network problems, and monitor and validate that the network is achieving the outcomes it has been built to achieve. By decoding infrastructure complexities to measure and validate the inner workings of the network’s services, IBA sets networkoperations on a path to automation that scales for every IT person, every network (no matter what it’s made of), and every task (no matter how complex). SOLUTION BRIEF Automate Network Change Management with Intent Speed configuration updates Intent-Based Change Management Historically, once the change window closes, nobody Whether you want to schedule a configuration change takes the time to go back and document exactly what during your maintenance window or execute it on- was done. Now, you can execute script-less device demand, NetBrain Change Management uses commands in real-time which are fully documented. intent-based automation to maintain your network Quickly visualize any change’s impact on the network design by leveraging network intents to preserve and execute the change across all devices. Templates application availability while safeguarding network from allow you to save frequently used network changes human or design errors. NetBrain’s intent-based change tasks for standardization and to quickly create other management is different in that it understands what network change tasks. change is expected to accomplish and verifies that the resulting infrastructure conforms to those desired goals. NetBrain’s intent-based change management allows you to prevent costly outages from impacting your organization, ensuring maximum uptime and improving operational efficiency and productivity. NetBrain’s revolutionary automated change management solution assures that your hybrid network is fully compliant with your enterprise architects’ application and design intents. About NetBrain Technologies Founded in 2004, NetBrain is the market leader for NetOps automation, providing network operators and engineers with dynamic visibility across their hybrid networks and low-code/no-code automation for key tasks across IT workflows. Today, more than 2,500 of the world’s largest enterprises and managed service providers use NetBrain to automate network problem diagnosis, generate real-time documentation, accelerate troubleshooting, and enforce enterprise architectural rules. +1 (800) 605-7964 Copyright © 2022 NetBrain Technologies, Inc. All trademarks referenced herein belong to NetBrain Technologies, Inc [email protected] NB-SB-ANCMWI-072722 www.netbraintech.com