The Fastest Way to the Cloud.

Whitepaper

Whitepaper - Harnessing Nertwork Infrastructure-as-Code with Alkira & Terraform

Automation is Foundational
Enterprises deploy and manage network infrastructure in many ways using various
approaches and tooling. With the rate of change increasing exponentially, network
engineers are faced with an increasing number of choices for which tools to use andhow to maintain them. Recent years have seen a massive increase in public cloudconsumption from enterprises. One of many reasons for this is, being able to sidestep
an accumulation of legacy technology, design, culture, and thinking. Effectively
automating infrastructure is no longer a luxury but a staple in the enterprise movethrough future transformation. Despite this, network automation is still lagging behind
other technical disciplines.

The State Of Network Automation

The NetDevOps - Survey states that participants

Before outlining the benefits of using Hashicorp

platforms. In addition, up to 6 different solutions

Terraform with Alkira Cloud Area Networking, it isvital to understand the current state of network
automation. As the complexity and challenges
become more evident, it becomes easier tounderstand the practical use-casesof treating the whole domain of networking as
Infrastructure-as-Code.
Numerous surveys exist in the realm of DevOps,
one such survey being The State of DevOps. A
community-driven survey called The NetDevOps- Survey aims to take similar criteria and feedback
but applied to how network operators anduse 5.31 avg (24 max) unique vendor devices/
are being used across participants for generating
and/or deploying configuration. With thosesolutions, as many as 6 unique methods are usedto interact with devices and platforms.

Causal ExplanationBy adding additional vendor devices, platforms,orchestration tools, and unique protocols andtransports over which communication occurs, theopportunity for consistent, repeatable, and reliable
automation steadily decreases.

engineers use automation to run their networks.

2©2022 Alkira, Inc. All rights reserved

Whitepaper - Harnessing Nertwork Infrastructure-as-Code with Alkira & Terraform

The following attributes provide insight as to why.
● Tight Coupling
Components have a heavy dependence on eachother, causing cascading impact. The blast radius
is large in outage events, causing a decrease in
overall changes leading to less frequent releases● Mutable Infrastructure
Physical or virtual network devices are configured,updated, or modified in place at runtime. This
causes significant configuration drift over time,leading to environment inconsistency

Complex dependencies exist onpremises between software layers,
physical hardware, and security
components. To respond to market
demand and release features
quicker and more reliably, endto-end automation is mandatory.
What are the underlying attributes
that enable this for compute andapplication delivery in the Cloud?

● Vertical Scaling (Scale-Up)
Legacy network infrastructure scales byincreasing the capacity of individual nodes on thenetwork. Scaling-up focuses on maximizing thepower of individual devices like a single set of

Components are detached, enabling them to work

firewalls or routers

independently of each other as part of a larger● Inconsistent Interaction Surfaces

significantly, causing an increase of changes

Enterprise networks consist of numerous vendors,
hardware models, and software versions. CLIand API interaction surfaces vary in functionality
and interoperability, leading to a combination ofmanual intervention, scripts, and disjointed tooling

How has Cloud Transformed
Automation?
Cloud has driven a shift to thinking in termsof fully software-defined, automated, andabstracted.

3● Loose Couplinggroup of systems. The blast radius is reduced
which leads to more frequent releases.
● Immutable Infrastructure
Cloud infrastructure is configured at build time.
This reduces the number of moving pieces at
run time, increasing environment consistency,reliability, and grounded DR capabilities.
● Horizontal Scaling (Scale-Out)In the cloud, overall capacity is increased byadding additional nodes, usually of equivalentcapacity. Scaling-out shifts focus to combining
the resources of many nodes together.

©2022 Alkira, Inc. All rights reserved

Whitepaper - Harnessing Nertwork Infrastructure-as-Code with Alkira & Terraform● Consistent Interaction Surfaces

capabilities. In addition, treating all aspects ofCloud infrastructure is provisioned by a console,a given system as code provides an excellent

proprietary provisioning tool, or cloud-agnostic

opportunity for standardization and repeatability.

tool. In AWS, Terraform would use a provider
plugin that leverages the AWS GO SDK to build
infrastructure. This provides the same interaction
experience across all AWS infrastructure
products.

The Alkira Cloud Area Networking
Alkira Cloud Area Networking, like the public
cloud providers, presents a consistent interaction

Driving the Cloud Area
Networking with Terraform
Why Terraform?
Managing cloud infrastructure with Terraform byHashicorp has steadily gained popularity as moreorganizations move to the cloud. As multi-cloud
becomes more prominent, securing, governing,
and auditing infrastructure is critical. Having
a single workflow to manage heterogeneous

surface for the entire network. Segmentation andpolicy work consistently across all networking,creating a single architecture across all clouds
and traditional networks. For the first time, core,edge, and cloud networking can be provisioned
with a common workflow. Adding in version
control, coupled with the immutable nature ofTerraform, and your whole network from end-toend becomes manageable, just like the publiccloud.

infrastructure enhances and simplifies these4©2022 Alkira, Inc. All rights reserved

Whitepaper - Harnessing Nertwork Infrastructure-as-Code with Alkira & Terraform

A Single Pipeline
Organizations that mature or seek additional
maturity surrounding automation capabilities in
the cloud aim to leverage Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) to deploy cloudinfrastructure. While Alkira’s platform already
reduces build time significantly, leveraging
Terraform to drive Alkira’s platform can be added
to complement existing workflows and pipelinesthat already exist.

The following benefits can be achieved:● Complete codification of core, edge and cloud● One interaction surface for the whole domainof networking creating a natural evolution toimmutable infrastructure for the network● Entire network infrastructure hosting anapplication or supporting a business imperativeis delivered intact between remote sites, publiccloud, data center, network services, and SaaS/
Internet connectivity● Elastic network infrastructure deployed atscale, driven by modern CI/CD platforms, with thesame velocity as public cloud

networking deployed and maintained with cloudgrade infrastructure-as-code

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