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Aruba EdgeConnect Simplifying the Last Mile for the Hybrid Workplace

Published by Shaun Neal

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Aruba recently presented their vision of the SilverPeak integration into the Aruba family, now branded as EdgeConnect Enterprise and augmented a number existing solutions to round out the offering with EdgeConnect SD-Branch, Microbranch, and Mobile. The mix of solutions here enables use-case based right sizing of the hardware. Aruba's pivot to support this space and expand the existing footprint from mostly on-premises solutions to enabling robust solutions for the entire spectrum of work environments from large enterprise to remote worker and SOHO spaces is necessary in today's environment as the traditional practice of "protecting four walls" is antiquated as users connect from everywhere, with a much larger percentage now remote.


Adjusting from the traditional thinking of each device role to its role in this environment makes sense when following the use case:

  • EdgeConnect Mobile - VIA for remote VPN users
  • EdgeConnect Microbranch - RAP/IAP for SOHO users
  • EdgeConnect SD-Branch - "Office in a Box" style use cases
  • EdgeConnect Enterprise - large office, enterprise use cases

Tying together known device types leveraging AOS10 and Aruba's policy engines and creating intent-based profiles that seamlessly work across the LAN, SD-WAN, endpoints, and now extend out to SASE platforms creates a great opportunity to meet customers where they are at in their journey and a point of differentiation for Aruba, who has always leaned in to the best of breed space. This step is an important shift in the paradigm of providing NAC-like solutions in the corporate environment, while many home connections go unsecured. A holistic approach that weaves these use cases together in a simplified way might take a little adjusting to, however is absolutely necessary in today's hybrid work environment.


The Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Fabric Orchestrator enables the extension of role-based policy controls and infusion into the SD-WAN environment through Aruba ClearPass or through options like radius snooping or proxies, or VXLAN to enforce roles out at the enterprise edge. Leveraging existing technologies to then intelligently apply policies to create this net new functionality offers network security engineers with numerous new ways to segment and secure traffic. Additionally, being able to dynamically recognize devices and drive them to a user profile based off of known characteristics simplifies tasks of dealing with IoT type devices in all cases.

Building upon this strategy, there is room for adding numerous capabilities to the environment, support workflows, and provide nuanced control of the network. Enabling an organization to spend more time to focus on the policy and the intent of its enforcement can enable more reliable delivery of applications, create better and more customized user experience. Aruba's solution also address some of the concerns left by some manufacturers as legacy WAN Optimization is no longer enough, the need to distribute internet access and provide control at the edge can facilitate a migration to the cloud.

The Edge to Cloud story highlights that these solutions provide the last mile of connectivity from application to user, and if it can be done such that it enables the users to consume that data on their own terms from location to device to media type, it is a big win for everyone. Looking forward to watching this solution continue to be refined and mature to be even further integrated into the Aruba product portfolio. The approach used for EdgeConnect should be able to pair with the existing mobility overlay methods that Aruba is using and allow for automated, yet complex, network topologies that are created by policy rather than extensive engineering.





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Technology in the Shape of You

Published by Shaun Neal

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Technology in the Shape of You

I recently watched a TED Talk by Marc Kushner on how technology and social media have connected the general public to architects and how it has enabled a closed feedback loop for their business. Marc highlights a pendulum that swings between innovation and symbolism that has been accelerated to a blur through technology. so much so that buildings are becoming an icon before they are even complete and firms have a chance to understand the impact of their design on a community faster than ever before. He postulates that as a result of this acceleration "now we can make nearly instantaneous emotionally charged symbols out of something that is brand new." Engagement with the community enables faster and better decision making.


It doesn't matter how we build, it matters what we build. -Marc Kushner


Throughout the presentation I couldn't help but drawing parallels to what is happening with technology in architecture today as every new building should be built with engagement in mind and continue this trend of closing the feedback loop. Merging traditional forms of engagement such as wireless infrastructure and digital signage with Internet of Things (IOT) and Operational Technologies (OT) and merging the data with the enterprise data warehouse and CRM information is the start of the process, however there is much more to be done. Making the technology relatively invisible, yet present and natural is critical to successful outcomes. When we blend engagement and interactions in with the background through preference driven lighting, signage dynamically presented in your native language, and personalized human interactions such as being greeted by name or recollection of and being handed a glass of of your favorite wine, this is when we move the needle substantially for our customers. Technical architects should strive to create visceral experiences for the users that indelibly write memories for the users of these spaces.

It is critical that these conversations are happening early in the process and that desired outcomes are clearly in focus. Creating a space that conveys the organizational message and meets goals, yet allows users to consume technology on their terms is not an easy task and does require substantial planning, intelligent product selection, commitment to integration, and creative vision. At EVOTEK we are doing this daily for our customers as a trusted advisor, system integrator, and technical architect. Reach out to learn more about our Digital Experience vision.



Special thanks to Marc Kushner for his TED Talk and to Dave Allard for making me aware of this presentation.
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An Hour of Opportunity

Published by Shaun Neal

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One of the unique things about EVOTEK is the opportunity for every employee to earn a spot in our partner program. Being a Partner is an opportunity to help steer the direction of the business, participate in the inner workings of the organization, and being a growth catalyst for our customers. My personal journey to partner included making a jump from a very comfortable position as one of the top performers within a good organization into the unknown to build a services organization within a small scrappy startup with what I believed to be great vision and a lot of heart. The ensuing two and a half years have been an incredible journey with many challenges, learning opportunities, and milestones and have yielded incredible personal and financial growth. While it wasn’t the easy path, it has certainly been a remarkable and enjoyable one.
This summer I felt there was another hour of opportunity at hand—making a move out of my comfort zone in beautiful Southern California to the heat and bright lights of Las Vegas. As a Partner and leader within the organization a move away from headquarters may seem counterintuitive, but I believe there is tremendous opportunity for disruption through innovation within Nevada as it caters to user experience and disposable income. I approached our founder, Cesar Enciso, with my idea and desire to make a move and received full support.
EVOTEK has been on an incredible growth curve since its inception and I believe that it can be directly attributed to hiring the right people, believing in them to do what is right, and lastly supporting them in pursuing these opportunities. We are on the hunt for like minded individuals who want more out of their career and need someone to believe in them. There is never a “right" time, but this is an hour of opportunity in which a life changing decision can be made. It was absolutely the correct decision for me and if you are a driven and customer focused individual I am certain it'll be the right place for you as well. Seize this opportunity and make EVOTEK the last job that you will ever have.
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The Spark of Innovation

Published by Shaun Neal

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This week was one of those weeks where I had the opportunity to witness one of the most personally rewarding things in my job and the greatest reason that I do what I do - I saw that spark that lit up my customer's world. We were sharing a narrative of how we could go about providing mobile analytics and business intelligence for our customer. The directors that we were presenting to immediately got what could be accomplished and we were off to the races discussing possible scenarios, story arcs, etc. We were shortly joined by a VP of Operations and the company's Owner who had been asked to join us by their colleagues. Our collective team spent the better part of the next hour and a half hashing out the details of what would make this a successful endeavor. Everyone left the meeting on a natural high sparked by the excitement of innovation and the opportunity to disrupt competition in a major way.

That spark and these moments embody EVOTEK and why I believe so strongly that we are truly bringing something new to our customers. Thank you for everyone in that meeting for creating something truly memorable.



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Aruba Extends Feature Velocity to Partners

Published by Shaun Neal

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One of the most promising announcements at Mobility Field Day Live with Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company for me had to be the introduction of ClearPass Extensions. The concept behind this feature is to leverage a repository within ClearPass, such that new features may be created and ran without compromising the integrity of the system and the underlying code with some sort of “engineering special". This functionality adds substantial value to an already feature rich ClearPass product.


ClearPass Extensions enabled Aruba partners such as Microsoft, Intel Security, Kasada, and Envoy to develop innovative features that may be released ahead of a major release of code which improves feature velocity and more importantly client satisfaction.
Currently this is a relatively closed system with Aruba handling the development as a professional services engagement, but as a service oriented partner we see the light at the end of the tunnel and are looking to truly create some differentiating features for our customers that provide tight integration of ClearPass with the business.
Aruba’s vision for where ClearPass Extensions will go includes a developer community and an “app store" enabling customers to download or purchase apps that have been developed specifically for ClearPass. Customers can also develop their own features, or engage any third party to do the integration for them in the future.
Creating an opportunity for partners to differentiate themselves from each other and rewarding those that truly understand their customer’s business is an appealing idea. Waiting on features that may take six months to be released during a standard release punishes those companies who are creative and forward looking.
This model rewards these organizations instead by giving them a competitive advantage and an option to potentially generate additional revenues depending on how the app stores comes to light. The potential opportunities of these extensions are seemingly infinite and the upside for organizations investing in this are tremendous.
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A Foundation for a Mobile First World

Published by Shaun Neal

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Aruba, a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise company, unveiled their new Mobile First Platform last week and I had a front row seat as one of the Mobility Field Day Live delegates. Aruba’s announcement was made a day prior to our session, so it was pretty exciting to discuss such a fresh topic. The foundation that Aruba is creating here is impressive and the implications are tremendous, especially if we look at extrapolating this in the near future.
Aruba announced the release of AOS version 8.0, which marks the first major overhaul of the code in quite some time. This release is at the center of Aruba’s Mobile First Platform and is designed to handle the next ten years of wireless, which is quite an ambitious goal as the near future has 802.11ax (aka Ten Gigabit Wi-Fi). Aruba highlighted that the intelligent layer of services required to run networks today is reaching its limits on controllers, so they have created a new alternative in the form of a Mobility Master that can run these intelligent services on behalf of the controller hardware. The Aruba Mobility Master has been virtualized so that it can run on an x86 virtual machine in VMWare (KVM coming soon with version 8.0.1). This new role replaces the now legacy Master Controller so most environments will benefit from a reduced amount of hardware on-site and can leverage investments already made for the new architecture where desired. Also of interest for most is that there is zero cost for these virtual machines, the only thing that matters is the number of access points are being managed. The primary tradeoff between a controller-based and virtualized infrastructure today is throughput as the VM-based controllers do not have hardware encryption modules and as a result they cap out around 4-5 Gbps.


Aruba has also introduced a new UI with AOS 8.0, which is a welcome feature as it had been fairly complicated for a new user. The new UI brings some much needed features such as simplified profiles, tab completion for profile names in the CLI, multithreading in the CLI, etc.
In-Service Upgrades are also new with the advent of AOS 8.0 and the Mobility Master. The increased compute and storage allow for services that now reside on the Mobility Master to be upgraded and impact the environment immediately without requiring an upgrade to access points or controller infrastructure.
Watch more on AOS8 via the Tech Field Day YouTube Channel.
Zero Touch Provisioning
Included in the move to a Mobility Master, is Aruba Zero Touch Provisioning which allows the Mobility Master to handle all configuration for controllers throughout the environment. Additionally, the previous requirement for the Mobility Controller and Access Controllers to be running the same version of code has been removed. The Mobility Master must run the latest code supported in the environment, but will be backwards compatible with older versions of code running on the controllers. This feature will greatly benefit risk adverse customers to quickly take advantage of the new features in administrative buildings, but maybe roll out slowly to a hospital or manufacturing site.
Multizone
The Multizone architecture allows for SSIDs to terminate to multiple controllers, creating an end-to-end encrypted session from client to controller when in tunneled mode. Terminating SSIDs on different controllers extends beyond the data flow and into how the AP is managed. Controller 1, as the primary, gets to set all of the AP settings (IP address, dhcp, etc..). Controller 2 gets to set only the settings for SSID 2. An admin of controller 2 cannot see any of the info for controller 1 including SSIDs, security types, auth servers, users, etc.

Clustering
Aruba AOS8 brings controller clustering to the table. All elements in the cluster must be running the same code and be part of the same family (e.g. All 72XXs running 8.0 code). State information is maintained for clients and access points with a designated backup controller within the cluster. The clusters also participate in user load balancing. Primary and Backup controller per user is maintained in the cluster and will be shared with AirWave later in the year. This is useful across all customer types, but especially those with very large campuses (e.g. higher education or Fortune 500 headquarters, etc.). Clusters scale to 12 controllers with 72XX series and 4 with 70XX controllers.


Clarity
Aruba Clarity allows the access points to associate to another access point and run synthetic tests from the “client AP" to the Clarity server, effectively building a baseline and providing tremendous visibility especially for remote sites. Clarity Live tracks DHCP and DNS requests and responses in real-time to profile the typical health of the network. Clarity Synthetic allows for RF performance testing, iPerf, web page loads to a URL (Salesforce, etc.) Upcoming features that were hinted at but not confirmed include scheduling and wired line monitoring and testing.



Another feature of AOS8 is Aruba’s new AirMatch feature that enables better channel reuse. This feature is important as legacy radio management was designed for a previous era of wireless networks. In today’s high capacity world that needs to support users and things the old way of doing things is not good enough. AirMatch looks at the system as a whole to maximize channel reuse and capacity on a daily basis and determines based on a day of usage what the best wireless combination of radios include. Advanced users will be able to tune AirMatch functionality to meet their needs from the command line, but this will be obscured from the GUI to protect users from causing harm.
APIs
The Mobility Master will have the context aware APIs that exist with Aruba’s Location Engine (ALE) to enable integrations with other systems via REST or published to other resources using a ZeroMQ to move that data to a database. Configuration APIs have also been enabled to allow APIs configure the network, SSIDs, etc.
AppRF
Enhancements have been added that enable categorization of applications and grouping of applications. For instance, a group called “Students" or “Nurses" could be created simplifying management. Custom applications are now supported and AppRF definitions are now treated like antivirus updates and can be updated without impact to the network.
In all I was impressed with what was announced for this release. Our delegate panel kept asking for more, but when you look at what has been accomplished, our requests were in line with what you’d expect this roadmap to look like as it unfolds. The shift to an API driven infrastructure is exactly where the world needs to be heading and abstracting software from hardware is inline with every other major shift in the industry. I am looking forward to the APs themselves running microservices in the future that can be upgraded, restarted, etc. with no impact to end users—it seems to be an inevitability at this point. This Mobile First Platform is well thought out and perfectly aligned with the automated and intelligent future that we are all looking for as it allows us to focus on the core business and offers much needed agility.
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Shaun Neal

Shaun Neal

Technical blog sharing my thoughts on the state of the industry, especially as it pertains to location-enabling wireless, security and the Internet of Things. Posts and opinions here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

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