Previous PostIn this article, we'll take a brief look at Aruba Central and its foundation, Aruba ESP.
In this post, we will take a closer look at each of the features provided by Aruba Central.
End-to-end automation and orchestration
For years, networking has been maintained manually. The problem is that configuration changes become more frequent and the risk of human error increases as networks continue to grow and become more complex.
We've already experienced numerous IT service outages in 2023, many of which were caused by human error.
In fact, all network outages, including 35%, are directly related to human error. This could be due to a network administrator making an incorrect configuration change using CLI commands, resulting in inaccessibility to a network device or service. Or, an improperly configured ACL rule could have allowed a malicious attacker unintentional access to the network.
In any case, human errors like these are bound to occur. And when they do occur, it can potentially cause network outages or, at the very least, temporary interruptions in user access. This type of business interruption is costly.
In fact, of all the business costs associated with network downtime, 78% are related to lost productivity, which results in lost revenue when employees cannot access critical resources or customers cannot complete business transactions.
However, with a cloud networking solution like Aruba Central, IT administrators can remotely control, configure, and push any necessary changes to all devices on the network from a single management console. This allows for network-wide Automate and orchestrate workflowsBecause you can Dramatically simplify operations from equipment installation to monitoring.You can do it.
Simplify new network setup with onboarding and zero-touch.
Setup Wizard and Mobile appYou can add new network devices or entire sites without being an IT professional. Central has built-in validation to ensure these operations are successful and compliant with compliance policies. The setup wizard automatically adds account subscriptions, synchronizes device inventory, and assigns subscriptions to devices.
This saves time, improves accuracy, and makes it easier to onboard devices into your environment.
Zero Touch ProvisioningCentrally define configuration parameters for HPE Aruba access points, switches, and SD-WAN gateways. Once each device boots up and connects to the internet, it communicates with Central and automatically receives configuration, regardless of its location.
Similar efficiencies can be achieved when maintaining and modifying.
Making configuration changes, updating policy settings, or upgrading firmware to devices on your network can now be done seamlessly from the cloud with Aruba Central, saving time and minimizing the risk of errors.
For customers developing network automation frameworks, Aruba Central API 및 WebhookIt provides extensibility with other major IT platforms and solutions. Network operators can programmatically trigger actions based on specific events or thresholds by automatically importing data from Aruba Central to third-party solutions.
In this way, Central can further automate common workflows that span multiple systems, such as collecting diagnostics and creating IT tickets in ServiceNow, or orchestrating configuration changes across hundreds of devices using Ansible.
Improving wired, wireless, and WAN quality through AIOps
Another key feature is the application of AI-powered insights to monitor network issues and proactively address or prevent them.
Research shows that reactive troubleshooting contributes significantly to IT operating costs.
Approximately 75% of IT staff time is spent tracking and resolving issues that impact users and the business.
Even experienced IT staff spend most of their time reactive, trying to resolve user complaints.
Unfortunately, these problems aren't always easy to track down.
IT departments must quickly identify and resolve these issues to minimize downtime, lost productivity, and lost revenue.
This is why networks need artificial intelligence (AI).
AI can help transform IT operations from a reactive to a proactive approach.
Aruba Central has three core elements of AI-driven intelligence:
- AI Insight: Powerful AI learning insights that automatically identify and highlight issues when your network deviates from its normal operating range.
This includes the ability to automatically account for changing network usage conditions, such as peak times or seasonal usage.
This means baselines are automatically adjusted to account for various conditions, so you can focus on the issues that need the highest priority based on business or user impact without receiving unnecessary alarms. - AI Assist: When an anomaly is detected, diagnostic information is automatically collected, notifications are sent to IT administrators via various channels, including email, and tickets are automatically created in ServiceNow or other ITSM tools. This provides operators with all the diagnostic information necessary to resolve the issue.
Additionally, all relevant diagnostics are pre-populated so you can notify Aruba TAC (Technical Assistance Center) about recurring issues. - AI Search: A natural language processing engine for the Data Lake within Aruba Central.
This engine dramatically simplifies the time it takes to identify the root cause of an issue and reduces mean time to resolution (MTTR).
Aruba Central customers can now redefine IT performance with Aruba's AIOps portfolio by:
- Respond to and resolve issues and problems faster.
- Anticipate and resolve issues before they impact your business or users.
- Continuously optimize network performance and, in some cases, increase capacity by 25% without adding hardware.
The most important thing about Aruba AIOps is that it identifies the cause of the issue and provides recommended action.
And we can provide these with an accuracy of 95% or better.
When you apply recommended actions for network settings or configurations provided by AI Insight, you can immediately verify that you achieved the desired results by viewing performance data before and after the change.
Aruba AIOps delivers new IT and business outcomes, including faster problem resolution, prevention of future issues, and the best user experience, all while reducing IT staff effort and continuously optimizing performance.
Strengthen security simply
From a security perspective, Aruba Central provides powerful capabilities to tightly control your network based on user-specific access privileges.
For all devices connected to the network (including IoT) Ensure real-time visibilityAnd, what network resources are being utilized by the terminal and what such usage is. Powerful insights into compliance with appropriate security policiescan be obtained through Aruba Central.
You can also use role-based policies in Central to control access to users or endpoints regardless of their location.
This feature allows users to freely access apps and data even when they move around without exposing the network to security vulnerabilities. Micro-segmentation strategyThis feature is based on Key Elements of HPE Aruba's Zero Trust Frameworkno see.
So, we've learned about the special features Aruba Central offers.
More than just a network management system (NMS) that monitors and manages network devices in the cloud, Aruba Central is an all-in-one solution that includes features that differentiate it from other solutions, including security and AI.
In the next post, we'll learn about licensing and technical support for using Aruba Central.
