Simplifying network management is a challenging task for any organization, especially those that have chosen a best of breed route and have a mix of vendors. I ask my customers to strive for these things when looking to improve their network management and gain some efficiency.

  1. Strive for a Single Source of Truth—As an administrator there should be a single place that you manage information about a specific set of users or devices (e.g. Active Directory as the only user database). Everything else on the network should reference that source for its specific information. Multiple domains or maintaining a mix of LDAP and RADIUS users makes authentication complicated and arguably may make your organization less secure as maintaining these multiple sources is burdensome. Invest in doing one right and exclusively.
  2. Standardization—A tremendous amount of time savings can be found by eliminating one-off configurations/sites, situations, etc. An often overlooked part in this time savings is in consulting and contractor costs, the easier it is for an internal team to quickly identify a location, IDF, device, etc. the easier it will be for your hired guns as well. A system should be in place for IP address schemes, VLAN numbering, naming conventions, low voltage cabling, switch port usage, redundancy, etc.
  3. Configuration Management—Creating a plan for standardization is one thing, ensuring it gets executed is tougher. There are numerous tools that allow for template-based configuration or script-based configuration. If your organization is going to take the time to standardize the network, it is critical that it gets followed through on the configuration side. DevOps environments may turn to products like Chef, Puppet or Ansible to help with this sort of management.
  4. Auditing and Accountability—Being proactive about policing these efforts is important and to do that some sort of accountability needs to be in place. This should happen in change control meetings to ensure changes are well thought out and meet the design standards, safeguards are in place to ensure the right people are making the changes and that those changes can be tracked back to a specific person (no shared “admin" or “root" accounts!) to help ensure that all of the hard work put in to this point is actually maintained. New hires should be trained and indoctrinated in the system to ensure that they follow the process.

Following these steps will simplify the network, increase visibility, speed troubleshooting, and even help security. What steps have you taken in your environment to simplify network management? We’d love to hear it!