automation vs orchestration - internet2...2019/12/11  · automation != orchestration 3 automation...

AUTOMATION VS ORCHESTRATIONWhy automation is good, but orchestration is better. – Peter.Boers@surfnet.nl

Bio

Peter Boers

Network Engineer/Software Engineer

@SURFnet +/- 3 years

Responsible for the automation stack together with:

Hans Trompert

Migiel de Vos

Team of 7 Software engineers + 3 SURFnet

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Automation != Orchestration

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Automation

START

END

PLAN

DO

CHECK

ACT

Orchestration

2 years and counting…

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2934 workflows ran in the past 2 years3267 subscriptions in the database; nodes, corelinks, prefixes, services3700 background workflows per day verifying the network86 supported workflows102 products available in the orchestrator2094 SURFnet7 customer services294 SURFnet8 customer services

Key take-aways

Orchestration is the heart of SURFnet8 service delivery and blocking forour migration

The SURFnet network A&O platform is used for all customer services on SURFnet 7 & 8

Orchestration can only be achieved by cleaning up your OSS/BSS adminstration and maintaining data integrity

Provisioning through programmable workflows

Orchestration requires new internal processes

Orchestration allows multi-resource provisioning

No CLI provisioning for SURFnet8

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Why?

Why?

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Short term

Long Term

Gaining insight into processes

Cleaning up our service administration

Single point of truth for service delivery

More flexible service types

Easy service life-cycle management

Composed services

Self-service

Faster service delivery (?!)

Why?

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Start of customer migration

End of customer migration

4 minutes

The answer is…

For SURFnet the answers is not either/or, but both.

We need automation to do the heavy lifting

We need orchestration to coordinate the heavy lifting

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How?

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How does the process work?

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Customer has a request

Ticket to NOC engineer

NOC engineer starts workflow for a product

All other provisioning will be done by the orchestrator:

IPAM

Inventory

CRM

NSO

Customer Dashboard and API

Statistics

Customer receives an email confirming the service

How does the orchestrator work?Home grown application

Python and Postgres

Workflows for products that createsubscriptions

Well defined domain products

Well defined domain objects

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Demonstration

Scenario 1

Client has a LightPath (layer 2 circuit) and wants to change the vlans 1000 to 1001 on both physical interfaces.

Client does not want to enforce speed-policing anymore.

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Demo Setup (1)

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Scenario 2

Client does not need layer 2 circuit anymore.

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Demo Setup (2)

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Key take-aways and future work

Not only automation provisioning to the network, but to all subsystems

Where is check and act in this process? And is it really orchestration?

Check and act happen multiple times a day with the same functions that create the object.

Yes it is orchestration as we also fix things automatically (!)

Automation and Orchestration is hard work and requires a strong vision

Firewall as a service and cloud integration

AI-ML PoC’s

K8s operator?

Improved Self-Service for end-users.

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QUESTIONS?

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Peter Boers

E-mail: peter.boers@surfnet.nl

www.surf.nl

Social media: linkedin.com/in/boerspeter

Driving innovation together