Armature Systems Resources
April 09, 2020
UPDATING FLEX’S DATA CENTER TO BE FULLY SCALABLE FOR CONTINUED GROWTH
Our Key Challenge
Our key challenge was upgrading their legacy data center infrastructure that was not programable to a fully software-defined next-gen network. We had to migrate from legacy and proprietary technology to a full ecosystem that was agile, flexible, secure, and scalable. This was important to meet the increased customer demand while maintaining security for intellectual property.
The new design is managed by an automation stack driven by Ansible and integrations between ticket systems such as service now and network components such as switches, routers, and firewalls. This requires minimal network admin and engineering time for deploying configurations as all configuration tasks are carried out automatically.
Our Pathway to a Solution
Step 1
The updated Data Center needed to seamlessly connect the Flex business, its customers, and its partners.
Step 2
In testing, we used VXLAN on a massive scale to achieve layer 3 networking, while still supporting layer 2 at the rack level. This was important as layer 2 segmentation was widely implemented in Flex’s server infrastructure requiring layer 2 hand off to be available at the rack level.
Step 3
Then we built orchestration workflows for automating network operations using available modules to automate day to day network operation tasks.
Creating a Custom Solution for Flex
Ongoing Support for Legacy Infrastructure
We created a full layer 3 network with VXLAN to support the current server layer.
Centralize Management
We centralized management of all the network components for configuration and monitoring, using Arista Cloudvision and Palo Alto Panorama.
Automate Security Provisioning
We fully-automated networking and security-provisioning system using Ansible, with integrations built into ServiceNow and networking components to provision ethernet ports and security policies on demand.
