The Foundation for Modern Network Infrastructure

There was a time where manually maintained records were the norm. Change control involved conversations and handwritten approvals. Workflow management meant teams sending emails and updating tracking systems when they’d finished their steps in the process.

It was a time when there was a choice between a trusted person having access to special systems – meaning that changes couldn’t happen when they were away – or giving everyone access. They were exciting times because there was less control and more risk. Finding out what happened and when could be a challenge.

Fortunately, we don’t need to live in exciting times anymore when it comes to running networks.

The foundational technologies have been integrated in systems. These systems can be configured to meet your organization’s needs and communicate using APIs. That means the computers can speak to each other, doing the drudge work quickly, quietly, and accountably. Your people are free to be creative and deliver innovation. That means you are free to transform your organization.

API-driven DDI enables enterprise-wide initiatives like DevOps, Infrastructure as Code, and multi-cloud deployment.

Technologies

These technologies are called DDI. They are:

• DNS – the naming system for devices on your network and the internet
• DHCP – the system that centralizes assigns IP address to devices.
• IPAM – the system for overall IP address management in your organization

They are tightly linked because IP addresses need to be assigned in blocks. Addresses from these blocks need to be assigned to devices – servers, laptops, or mobile devices – and those devices need names so they can be conveniently identified. When they are integrated you have more than the component parts. You have reliable engineering

Architectural Benefits – a Network Source of Truth

Deploying DDI technologies through an integrated architecture brings benefits not available when they are managed separately. Instead of competing for validity they are transformed into a Network Source of Truth (NSoT). Your network conforms to a policy that’s enforced through APIs. All other tools can reference the NSoT, giving you accurate, consistent, real-time data across your network.

Of course, an API transfers repetitive manual tasks to computers, making provisioning and troubleshooting faster. But APIs deliver much more than speed. There are three key benefits:

• Security and compliance: APIs let you enforce policy consistently, hardening the attack surface. And they give you real-time data for threat detection and response.
• Improved ROI: Reducing manual processes reduces labor costs and lower the error rate. It’s easy to calculate the returns.
• Improved collaboration: APIs help diverse teams collaborate using a shared source of truth. Your developers, network engineers, and security teams can share a single, consistent records system.

Streamline Operations, Deliver Faster, Plan Strategically

Accurate, reliable, timely data is good. But API-driven DDIs deliver more than technology. They can play a key role in transforming your organization. When your DDI technologies are managed manually, your organization doesn’t have a coherent and integrated infrastructure.

APIs, the languages computers use to talk to each other, can bind your DDI infrastructure into a coherent set of services that seamlessly interoperate with others. Changes no longer take days or hours. Your can orchestrate complex workflows and deploy them at the speed of network communication.

Of course, integrated systems give you agility—you can deploy or change swathes of your network quickly and automatically. But API-driven DDIs deliver more than that. An API-driven DDI is a key component in quality service delivery.

• Enhancing collaboration and bridging silos: APIs provide a common language and single, shared data set. Instead of raising tickets with each other and sending emails, teams can design workflows that are implemented by the DDI.
• Ensuring reproducibility and standardization: Automating those workflows in your DDI removes human error from configuration, meaning your records always reflect reality. This improves stability, resilience, and security in your network infrastructure.
• Accelerating service deployment: Eliminating manual steps in service delivery through automation also makes provisioning faster. These are the steps that are most vulnerable to typos or copy and paste errors.

Your teams don’t have to fight fires and when automated workflows perform the repetitive administrative tasks. Instead, they can plan and deploy strategic changes—and innovate. They can be transformed from clerks to architects.

How API-driven DDI Delivers

There are four data elements that give you power when your DDI’s API is engaged. They exist because your data is integrated in a high-performance database designed to conform to your organization’s needs.

• CRUD operations: These are “create, read, update, delete” and are fundamental and integrated into your workflows and security. For example, a system or user might be given permission to update existing records but never create or delete records. CRUD is a key part of enforcing your security policies.
• Data manipulation:
  • Metadata tagging: Your data reflects your organization’s needs. DDI APIs let you apply the metadata that matters to you to any object in your DDI database. For instance, tag an IP subnet to a department, tag DNS records with a customer account number, and match that tag with the IP addresses they use. And anything that can be tagged can be searched for, filtered, and reported.
  • Filtering and searching: The API, combined with CRUD controls, means you can let some tools or users search and read data without risking that they’ll change it. You can use this to improve support, audit, and capacity planning.
• Security and auditability: APIs enforce security using industry standard protocols, including OAuth2 and digital certificates. They insure that programmatic access is secure and properly authenticated. Every transaction is tracked at the user level, giving a comprehensive audit trails that enable compliance.

IPAM Integration Keys

NPM and Observability Platforms When problems happen, your IPAM can help you resolve them faster and understand the underlying cause. Your Network Performance Monitoring and observability tools can get relevant data about what’s important to your network. It could be hostname, owner, billing status or something else. You’ll configure the metadata tagging you care about to be provided to your team along with the network alerts. Providing context doesn’t just mean you can resolve the immediate situation faster. You’ll be able to get the information you need for a Root Cause Analysis faster, too. That means improving your organization.  

SIEM and Security Platforms

Security depends on situation awareness through a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system. When your SIEM can automatically pull data from your IPAM you can understand the situation much more quickly. Your  IPAM can provide details on the device’s history, user, and location. It empowers your people to understand, respond, and improve your organization much faster.

CMDBs and Inventory Systems Medium and large networks need Configuration Management Databases. But those configurations can only be accurate when they can pull definitively true information from an IPAM. That NSoT is essential for ensuring that other inventory systems are always accurate. Keeping them synchronized prevents data inconsistencies and ensured you have a unified, accurate view of your organization’s network asset inventory.

Orchestration and Automation Tools New services on your network can only deliver value when they’re deployed. So automating deployment with tools like Ansible and VMware Aria Automation is essential. They can use an API-driven DDI system to get IP addresses and get DNS names. And because it’s integrated and automatic you can be confident that all new deployments are policy-compliant and using the right addresses from the start. Error free automated provisioning means no manual errors and faster time-to-value.

Transformation with API-driven Workflows

When your workflows are automated with APIs they can be comprehensive and end-to-end.

• Event-driven automation: External systems can trigger workflows. For instance, a virtual machine in a public cloud could send a webhook or API call to the DDI system. The DDI system could automatically assign it an IP address and create DNS records, along with any internal account records required. In situations like this, the system can ensure the changes are authenticated, keep logs, make the changes automatically, and do it all without involving a human.
• Self-service automation: User friendly portals on an intranet of IT service management platform can trigger APIs from end users who don’t need direct access to the DDI system. For instance, a developer could request an IP address and DNS name using a simple web form. That form would trigger a workflow using the API, recording the end user’s credentials. The IT department would have full visibility of the change while empowering the end user to fulfill their needs instantly.

Best Practices for Deployment and Orchestration

There are three best practices for successful implementation of API-driven DDIs:

• Architectural choice: Starting with simple scripts in friendly languages like Python or Ansible and expand what you automate as your needs develop. Design and management of complex workflows using low-code or no-code graphical interfaces are important. They can simplify the design and management of workflows and they are great for teams with limited software development experience.
• Dedicated test environment: Only deploy well tested automations! This means a dedicated test environment that can test automations and anything they integrate with.
• Security: Use secure authentication methods and log all actions to support audit and compliance.

ProVision

ProVision is a vendor agnostic API-driven DDI. It integrates with your existing tools, so you don’t need to perform a forklift upgrade to your network. You can integrate ProVision and be ready for the future. It has full support for IPv6 built in.

You can extend ProVision to take advantage of its Peering Manager. Simplify connections to other networks with one-click BGP configuration!