Harness Network Infrastructure as Code With Terraform and Alkira Cloud Area Networking.
Overview
Effectively automating infrastructure is no longer a luxury but a staple in the enterprise move through digital transformation. Automation has evolved beyond the configuration of individual nodes or groups of a particular type of node. Today, Infrastructure as Code extends this to the whole environment that supports an application or service, including compute, storage, network, and security.
Benefits
Consistent and Repeatable Networking
Eliminate configuration drift by adopting Infrastructure as Code for the network. Managing the network in code enables consistent, repeatable, and predictable outcomes for modern infrastructure management.
Delivered with Cloud Velocity
Significantly reduce Time-To-Provision by harnessing Alkira’s Terraform Provider to deploy and manage network infrastructure with modern CI/CD tooling and practices with the same velocity as public cloud.
Scaled at the Speed of Business
Bring elasticity to the network using Terraform to drive Alkira Cloud Area Networking. Introduce clouds, scale to additional regions or continents, and increase capacity on-demand to scale with the speed of the business.
Micro-Segmentation Delivered in Code
Define uniform security policy in code and enforce across on-premises and multi-cloud networking. Micro segmentation can easily be defined and applied as new workloads are provisioned.
The Challenge
In the cloud era, the rate of change coupled with increasing complexity has set automation as a critical business imperative. Building a repeatable, predictable, and reliable network that also scales with the demands of the business is now considered business as usual. Today, the network is being asked to do more things than ever before while also keeping up with the rapid iteration of application delivery.
Performance is a must. If the network is slow, everything is slow. If the network isn’t continuously available, it gets noticed. If the network can’t recover from failures quickly, the whole business is impacted.
Capacity can make or break the user experience. Adequate capacity must be available to meet customer demand. The capacity must increase with additional demand, and as the demand subsides, so must the capacity.
Physical Hardware creates obstacles and limits flexibility with how Infrastructure as Code is approached, and increased engineering overhead is required with additional hardware platforms, software versions, and interaction surfaces.
Solution
Alkira Cloud Area Networking offers global unified network infrastructure as-a-service. With Alkira’s robust API and rich integration with industry-leading Infrastructure as Code tools like HashiCorp’s Terraform, end-to-end cloud grade automation for the network is now within reach. The joint solution provides the following elements for network infrastructure:
Alkira Cloud Area Networking enables the same benefits for multi-cloud networking that HashiCorp’s Terraform provides for multi-cloud automation. Operating these products together unleashes the full power of Infrastructure as Code to deliver consistent, agile, and reliable networking to meet technical demands and deliver business outcomes.
How it works?
- Declare the desired state of Alkira Cloud Area Networking in code
- Run Terraform Plan in desired CI/CD tooling
- Apply as-a-service network in minutes
