Solution Overview c22 731815

8/12/2019 Solution Overview c22 731815

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Solution Overview

2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 1 of 9

Cisco WAN Automation Engine: Greater Traffic andBandwidth Awareness for Easier Programmability

What You Will Learn

The desire to simplify and speed service delivery and management through software-defined networking (SDN)

and other approaches to automation and orchestration has captured the attention of service providers. They know

that their ongoing success depends on the ability to deploy services faster, more efficiently, more cost-effectively,

and with greater agility. At the same time, they must optimize networks, running them more dynamically and with

fewer support staff.

These abilities are not luxuries; theyre competitive necessities. The CiscoWAN Automation Engine is a powerful

and flexible SDN platform that automates the engineering and operations of multivendor physical and virtual WAN

infrastructure. By abstracting and simplifying the network domain while making it fully open and programmable, the

Cisco WAN Automation Engine provides a consistent operational experience for optimizing and deploying new

services such as global load balancing, bandwidth on demand, and premium network routing. It allows service

providers to optimize their network infrastructure through the continual monitoring and analysis of networking

elements and applications and to offer new services being delivered. To stay competitive, service providers need to

do more than just re-engineer their networks. Service providers need to rethink how they engage with their

customers to meet their business needs.

The Challenge

Today, the ability of service providers to deliver services flexibly, efficiently, and cost-effectively is hampered by

rising operational costs and infrastructure with inefficient utilization levels. Service providers need a solution that

overcomes these operational challenges, one that facilitates innovation, agility, and responsiveness, and the ability

to rapidly introduce new services or to modify existing ones. The planning, engineering, and operations of provider

networks must move from manually intensive workflows to automated and more time-efficient, agile processes and

methods.

Cisco WAN Automation Engine Overview

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine is a powerful and flexible SDN component of the Evolved Services Platform

(ESP) that automates the engineering and operations of multivendor physical and virtual infrastructure. It abstracts

and simplifies the WAN environment while making it fully open and programmable, providing a consistent

operational experience for optimizing and deploying innovative new services such as global load balancing,

bandwidth calendaring, bandwidth on demand, and premium network routing. The Cisco WAN Automation Engine

is a key component within the Cisco ESP layer of the Cisco Open Network Environment.

The Cisco Evolved Services Platform uses SDN, predictive modeling and analytics with path optimization, and

advanced orchestration capabilities to forge a flexible and modular platform. With the Cisco ESP, service providers

can quickly deploy new personalized offerings through services modules. Figure 1 shows the Cisco WAN

Automation Engine in the context of the Cisco ESP, as an orchestration engine for the WAN.


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Figure 1. Cisco WAN Automation Engine in the Evolved Services Platform

Imagine offering prepackaged tiers of enterprise services with default features, security, and service-level

agreements (SLAs) that customers can select from an online portal and activate with a click of a mouse.

Programmatic interfaces allow software-to-network interaction, promoting agility and service velocity while helping

to increase efficiency without the necessity of a highly skilled team of network engineers.

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine reflects an evolutionary approach that combines the best of both distributed

control plane and server based control approaches. Distributed control planes are utilized for normal traffic and

server-based software for the ever-increasing quantity of traffic that requires special handling.

Server software brings with it the benefit of being fast to develop and allows the use of open source tools, which

support a GUI-driven front end and ultimately allow the customer to take control and develop capabilities suited to

their unique needs. Policies that are handled today with Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Resource Reservation

Protocol Traffic Engineering (RSVP TE), or Access Control List (ACL)-based forwarding can be handled through a

centralized controller running on a server.

The use of open APIs and standardized protocols (such as Representational State Transfer [REST]) at the

orchestration layer provides a simple means for intelligent interaction between applications and the network.

Applications now have visibility into the global network and can also make requests for specific service levels. This

visibility and automation capability is delivered in a completely non-disruptive way without need for new network

hardware or major infrastructure upgrades.

SDN offers the promise of automated control but must coexist with todays complex multivendor environment and

technologies. In the service provider WAN, an orchestration engine is needed to dynamically provision these

heterogeneous networks while accounting for up-to-the-minute traffic, topology, and equipment status in multilayer

IP Multiprotocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) over dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) environments.

Importantly, existing heterogeneous infrastructure, utilizing distributed protocols on multivendor equipment, stays in

place. New protocols such as PCEP and BGP-LS enable a WAN SDN that is based entirely on industry standards.


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The Cisco WAN Automation Engine allows network operators to optimize their network infrastructure through the

continual monitoring and analysis of the equipment itself and the demands being placed upon it. The WAN

workflows consist of ongoing collection, predictive analytics, and deployment of the application and service

requirements directly onto the infrastructure. This automated feedback loop from infrastructure to application takes

full global visibility into account, helping to ensure that the rollout of any new optimization or monetization service

does not impact existing network operations.

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine provides a cross-sectional view of traffic, topology and equipment state and

takes advantage of a predictive analytical model that performs what-if analysis based on failure impacts. These

simulations can be performed at the rate of hundreds of thousands per second, and they provide a centralized,

high-fidelity view of the network. This allows operators to predict the behavior of the network across planned and

unplanned changes.

The explicit handling of new traffic demands based on how they affect the current network state helps ensure that

networks can run at their optimal utilization, with predictable performance and around link or node failures. As new

demands are added to the network, the Cisco WAN Automation Engine promotes end-to-end optimization and load

balancing within specified constraints in conformance with policies to help ensure compliance with SLAs.

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine is based on open standards, with published interfaces using web-based open

RESTful APIs for rapid application development, IETF-standard protocols for collection, and NETCONF/YANG and

Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP) for deployment to and from the infrastructure. This promotes smooth

and rapid integration into multivendor infrastructure and existing management and operations support systems,

business support systems, and element management systems (OSS, BSS, EMS) supporting best of breed service

offerings.

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine works smoothly with existing distributed network control planes. Using the

engine, service providers can increase the level of automation in their network to eliminate the manual provisioning

of services. Even if programmatic control is not needed today, the engine can provide unprecedented levels of

visibility to the network as well as planning and business intelligence. A hybrid approach to SDN allows customers

to take advantage of existing investments in platforms while elevating more sophisticated tasks for handling by the

engine. This allows customers to use the proven distributed control plane to perform routine convergence and local

repairs while allowing this centralized engine to run global and tactical optimization with resiliency against failures.

Key Benefits

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine delivers significant business value to service providers, including:

Real-time, on-line network visibility which can support innovative new service offerings

Efficient asset utilization that reduces both operational and capital costs

Easy-to-use automation capabilities allowing rapid innovation and service deployment

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine is available via flexible buying models packaged according to service provider

needs, allowing services to be delivered in the way that customers and subscribers desire. The software modules

are easy to deploy, requiring fewer operational tools and based on entirely open interfaces to eliminate vendor

lock-in. Customers can now build their own applications to communicate with the network and automate formerly

arduous tasks. Cisco WAN automation and orchestration capabilities help simplify network planning, support

creation of new services, accelerate the sales process, and improve time to market, while increasing revenue

growth from innovative high-value services. Service providers using the Cisco WAN Automation Engine can

dynamically shift application and service workloads between network resources to reduce costs.


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Architecture and Workflow

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine provides a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for the WAN, with specific

functional components that are connectable using a software development kit (SDK) comprised of open, publishedAPIs. This architecture provides application developers with total independence and flexibility to build applications

using any language (e.g., Python, Ruby or Java) that supports REST APIs.

The engine builds on the Path Computation Element (PCE) architecture as defined in RFC 5440 and adds

comprehensive historical, real-time and predictive models to the decision making process. It provides deep insight

into the historical and present network, as well as the forecasted future network after new demands or applications

are added.

The engine has a flexible architecture and is Linux server based. It is also highly extensible with linear scaling

properties, providing transaction rates of hundreds of thousands of queries per second and beyond.

Figure 2. Architecture and Workflow

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine has a modular, open design and implements integrated functions including

collection, analytic processing, optimization and prediction, scheduling, and deployment. The collection

mechanisms, built originally for Cisco MATE

, are already deployed worldwide in multivendor environments.

Numerous collection drivers provide visibility into the network infrastructure. Periodic and continuous collection

mechanisms are possible with a standards based approach supporting Simple Network Management Protocol

(SNMP), NetFlow, BGP-LS and command line interface (CLI).

The analytic processing capability is based on the worst-case and failure impact analysis available in Cisco MATE.

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine analyzes, in near-real-time, thousands of models and scenarios on the

network topology to make decisions on optimization and admission of new demands, or to generate customized

reports for traffic trends.


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Additionally, the Cisco WAN Automation Engine performs global or tactical Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) metric

modification for non-MPLS networks or Label Switched Path (LSP) optimization to run networks at higher levels of

sustained utilization and resiliency. A built-in scheduler reserves bandwidth and schedules configuration for future

consumption. Additionally the engine will support Segment Routing in the future.

Finally, a deployer configures and modifies LSPs and/or IGP metrics using a set of flexible programming options

including PCEP, configlets, NETCONF/YANG, OpenFlow and Interface to the Routing System (I2RS), thus offering

comprehensive control of the network. As with the collection protocols, deployment options are completely

standards based and independent of the underlying multivendor infrastructure.

Service-Based Use Cases

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine allows customers and third party partners to write and develop applications to

allow new service offerings. A sample of the potential service capabilities that may be augmented or built via an

easy to use web-based GUI interface of the Cisco WAN Automation Engine are described in Table 1. Several of

these service capabilities are discussed in greater detail later in the paper.

Table 1. Example Services for the Cisco WAN Automation Engine

Service Description

Bandwidth Scheduling Provides visibility and reservations of network resources across t ime. Applications that may take advantageof this include data center replication (either on-demand or calendared), video streaming, and virtual privateor hybrid cloud service migration.

Global Load Balancer Rebalances traffic flows across multiple groups of circuits with a single action.

Coordinated Maintenance Optimizes traffic flows around planned downtime for network upgrades (for example, performs worst-caseutilization and failure impact during a change window, finds best time to shut down, selectively reroutescircuits per time zone ).

Load Placement Informs applications of availability of network resources in different locations and allows them to placedemands accordingly.

Premium Network Routing Enhances high availability by enforcing latency constraints carried out through policy-based routing ormaintaining diversity of multiple paths for traffic demands.

Segment Routing - ApplicationEnabled Forwarding

Based on application demands, segment routing paths are calculated in conjunction with the pathcomputation elements of the Cisco WAN Automation Engine, allowing routing segments to be moved.dynamically to the sectors where they are most needed.

Multilayer Optimization andRestoration

Provides the ability to rapidly calculate, and make immediate changes to, Layer 1 and Layer 3 paths tooptimize or restore the converged IP and optical transport network.

Business Intelligence Allows infrastructure intelligence components to be imported to other business systems via open APIs,allowing access to what was formerly opaque (e.g. sales pricing for new services can be based on realnetwork impact).

Network Autobandwidth Allows maintenance of LSP sizes at a manageable level and eventually takes over auto-bandwidthfunctions currently implemented in the router control plane. Drives higher utilization of traffic in the network.

DDoS Detection The feature allows detection of anomalous traffic patterns using NetFlow data and uses controlmechanisms to divert suspicious traffic to a scrubber.


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Bandwidth Calendaring

Figure 3 illustrates a bandwidth scheduling workflow for bandwidth calendaring using the Cisco WAN Automation

Engine.

Figure 3. Bandwidth Calendaring Workflow

Bandwidth scheduling provides visibility and reservations of network resources over time allowing more than 30

percent ROI for new services. Applications that may take advantage of this include data center replication

(either on-demand or, as shown here, calendared), video streaming, and virtual private or hybrid cloud service

migration.

In this example, the business customer has a request for a data center backup connection or to move content

between their data centers and the Cisco WAN Automation Engine handles the customer request as follows:

Network conditions are reported continuously to a collection module.

Customer requests bandwidth between the two data centers at a specified future date.

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine helps ensure that the request is appropriate for the calendar; closer to

the actual backup, it verifies this again.

Customer demand is placed on Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) or explicit path (traffic engineering [TE]

tunnel).

Load BalancingThe Cisco WAN Automation Engine eliminates congestion scenarios in which traffic streams are inefficiently

mapped onto available resources causing overutilization of some resources and underutilization of others. This is

particularly important for zones in the network with high-cost assets such as transoceanic links. The engine has

proven returns of up to 45 percent reduction in TCO.

For example, this Global Load Balancer application is based on TE tunnel information. You can first visualize how

the network load is shared among all circuits and determine their maximum and minimum utilization. When circuits

are lost for any reason, and expensive circuits are underutilized while others are dropping packets, an operator can

quickly rebalance across the remaining circuits.


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The load is now shared across all tunnels. Figure 4 shows the current and rebalanced traffic (left side) and the

utilization before and after the tunnel balancing (right side).

Figure 4. Global Load Balancer: A Simple GUI Allowing Technicians to Complete the Task at the Push of a Button

REST API

Figure 5 illustrates the simplicity of building applications for the Cisco WAN Automation Engine. A customer using a

web-based application requests bandwidth between two sites at a specific date and time. The data becomes the

payload for a REST API call, made to the WAN Automation Engine. The engine checks bandwidth availability and

responds with options to admit this bandwidth in a resilient manner. This illustration reflects the power of this

engine to program applications for new services rather than program networks for new services.

Figure 5. Sample REST API Generation for a Bandwidth calendar portal


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Operational Models

Cisco WAN Automation Engine constructs a near real-time model of the network and its multiple layers. It exposes

the network as a set of abstractions accessible via a set of RESTful APIs. At the highest level, the abstractionsallow programmers to write applications that interact with the network simply by considering services, locations,

and demands. This interaction does not require an understanding of the underlying topology or network protocols,

thus allowing application developers to query and program the network using familiar language mechanisms

Using a global view of the bandwidth demand in the network, the engine performs external path computations after

performing a comprehensive predictive analysis against multiple models of the network. This multivendor modeling

has been used and tested in tier one large-scale networks for over 10 years. The analysis is based on accurate,

always up-to-date topology and traffic models for thousands of network nodes.

The engine takes the service provider from a rigid and static mode of operation to a future mode of operations

(Table 2) that helps ensure optimal network utilization with guaranteed application performance and anytime

service agility.

Table 2. WAN Automation Engine - Accelerating New Operational Models

Goals PRESENT MODE OF OPERATION (PMO) FUTURE MODE OF OPERATION (FMO) Cisco WANAutomation Engine

Accelerate Services

Data center service placement accounts for sparecompute and storage capacity

Add WAN bandwidth visibility to complete the equationfor service placement

Applications and the network infrastructure are unawareof each other. Network response to applications tend tohave a higher degree of latency

Applications interact with the network to allow theinfrastructure to respond to the application demands withgreater agility

Human to network interaction Software to network interaction

Resiliency mechanisms use local network foot print Resiliency mechanisms use site or global network foot

print

Accelerate Automation

Distributed routing protocols for convergence andresponse to topology changes

Centralized algorithms to respond to global policychanges or application needs to augment the distributedcontrol plane running on routers.

Local visibility and automation for local network eventtriggers

Global visibility and automation for applications ornetwork events

Independent per-tier optimization Capable of cross domain and multi-layer optimization

Accelerate Cost Savings

High touch due to complexity Greatly reduced control and management complexity

Overprovisioned Provisioned according to need: much more flexiblepayment options

Underutilized High utilization, assets are used appropriately

Highly skilled Operations team Technicians rather than certified network engineers


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Conclusion

The Cisco WAN Automation Engine is a key component within the Cisco ESP layer of the Cisco Open Network

Environment. Cisco WAN Automation Engine provides an SOA for the WAN, with specific functional components

that are connectable using a SDK comprised of open, published APIs. On the southbound side, a deployer uses

flexible programming options that are standards-based and independent of the underlying multivendor

infrastructure. The Cisco WAN Automation Engine can support numerous optimization and monetization

applications such TE tunnel balancing and bandwidth calendaring.

For More Information

To learn more, contact your Cisco account representative.

Cisco WAN Automation Engine:http://www.cisco.com/go/wae

Cisco Evolved Services Platform:http://www.cisco/com/go/sp

Cisco Evolved Programmable Network:http://www.cisco.com/go/epn

Cisco Open Network Environment:http://www.cisco.com/go/one/sp

Cisco Quantum Software Suite:http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/wireless/quantum/index.html

Cisco Open Network Environment for Service Providers:http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/service-

provider/open-network-environment-service-providers/index.html

Open Network Foundation: SDN Definition:https://www.opennetworking.org/sdn-resources/sdn-definition

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