No More SDN Blind Spots: Assuring Cisco ACI Rollout Success With NETSCOUT
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- nGeniusONE® Service Assurance platform
- Software-based InfiniStreamNG®
- Packet Flow Switch appliances
- virtual vSTREAM® appliances
Tech Stack
- Cisco ACI SDN
- VMware ESX servers
- 100GB network speeds
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Digital Expertise
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
- Transportation
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- System Integration
- Testing & Certification
About The Customer
The customer is a leading transportation company that has been successfully advancing their digital transformation activities through the assistance of NETSCOUT smart visibility and real-time network, application, and Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring and analysis. The company has long been “ahead of the curve” in the railway innovation discussion, with their information technology (IT) team leading successful project rollouts for Train Yard Execution System (TYES), Positive Train Control (PTC), and Unified Train Controls System (UTCS) solutions – all of which are assured by NETSCOUT’s service edge visibility and nGeniusONE real-time analysis. The company's IT leadership team had strategically planned the company’s transition to a Software-Defined Network (SDN) using a phased approach based on the recommended practices defined by their technology provider for this project, Cisco.
The Challenge
The company was undergoing a transition to a Software-Defined Network (SDN) using a phased approach based on the recommended practices defined by their technology provider for this project, Cisco. The project involved the design of a next-generation leaf-and-spine architecture supporting 100GB network speeds, use of Cisco Equal-Cost Multi-path Routing (ECMP), and new VMware ESX virtual servers. The IT team knew they needed a technology-neutral partner to assist their efforts in closing any blind spots that surfaced in the transformed SDN environment, including both east-west and north-south traffic paths, providing 'over-time' trend analysis and reporting into business service performance before, during, and after the move to SDN, and ensuring business communications continuity and coordination across a multi-phase SDN implementation.
The Solution
The IT team assured their SDN migration by leveraging NETSCOUT’s next-generation performance analytics, smart visibility, and advanced subject matter expertise across the full project timeline. The solution included the NETSCOUT Certified InfiniStreamNG (ISNG) software appliances supporting 100GB network speeds that provided needed smart visibility for the Cisco ACI SDN architecture, Packet Flow Operating System (PFOS) software for Certified Packet Flow Switch 7120 appliances, which supports high performance in the ACI SDN environment by monitoring both logical and physical connections, and vSTREAM virtual appliances, which provided VMware ESX service assurance by monitoring server-to-server traffic in the virtual server environment comprising the IP fabric underlay.
Operational Impact
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