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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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The Rise of the Machine Learning Solutions

Published by Shaun Neal

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Heading into Aruba Atmosphere this year I was most excited to see Aruba’s new Niara solution in action and learn more about this product as it solves a very real need in every network. Inherently any network policy grants some sort of access to the network and users are free to work within the confines of that policy. Even using 802.1X-based authentication and dynamically provisioned VLANs, access roles, downloadable ACLs, etc. isn’t necessarily enough. Niara solves for these issues in an appealing way and lessens the workloads for SecOps teams.

Case #1: Stolen Credentials
A known valid user can operate within their policy, but what happens if they are compromised either through social engineering, weak passwords, poor password management, etc.? Niara builds a profile of what is typical behavior of a specific user, if their patterns change this will be identified by the system. Perhaps the user starts attempting to access new areas or is visiting new websites—by a change in behavior, it is possible to identify a need for a change in policy, alert the SecOps team, or eventually automate remediation or lockdown of the user. Comparing to a baseline as well as other similar users gives Niara a frame of reference for the user under evaluation.

Case #2: Malware and Viruses
Both malware and viruses are capable of changing the behavior of network attached clients, while numerous tools already exist to help combat these Niara could serve as a welcome tool to identify and isolate infected clients or in a perfect world learn about how a Day Zero Attack might attempt to compromise the network and automatically harden the network in anticipation of this attack. The combination of these capabilities along with Aruba’s open APIs using Aruba’s Exchange offers some very interesting possibilities by enabling the collection of data from ecosystem partners with a greater speciality in the malware and virus arena. Imagine a world in which your firewall vendor has detected a new type of malware, shares that data with Aruba ClearPass and Niara via APIs, syslog, SIEM, or other similar routes and then the network automatically reacts to prevent the spread of that malware at the same time you are being notified.

Case #3: Software Bugs/Anomalous Behavior
If an application is updated and begins to operate differently on the network, Niara can identify this and enable teams to understand the new behavior. New behaviors deemed as risky can be mitigated against and feedback can be provided to the company’s development team. A specific example of this was provided at the conference in a popular file share company who’s update generated unwanted traffic on the network. Niara’s machine learning was able to identify and allow this undesirable behavior to be stopped.

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company opens the door to a world of possibilities with the addition of machine learning and extends those capabilities elegantly through their open architecture in Aruba Exchange. I would anticipate that this field of machine learning is going to explode in the networking world as IT teams are facing increasingly difficult security challenges and are being asked to do more with less people and less resources. Automation of detection and defense should be able to solve 75-80% of the issues out there, enabling IT to focus on the most challenging and highest value problems out there.

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Investing in Others

Published by Shaun Neal

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February is an exciting month this year as there are two of my favorite conferences held back to back weeks—Wireless LAN Pros Conference in Phoenix, AZ and then Aruba Atmosphere in Nashville, TN. This year I have opted to present at the WLPC conference on the WLAN Engineer’s role in Digital Disruption and was invited to participate in the Tech Field Day live panel for Atmosphere. I have allocated a portion of my weekends in preparing for these events to ensure that I do my best and that the group benefits from the time that I have been allocated. Despite this being my third year doing these events, I am always amazed how much I learn from preparing to teach others. My goals for these two events for this year are the following:

Keeping it Simple
We have a varied demographic at these events, so one of my goals is to explain the content in a simple way without “dumbing it down". I’ve found this to be a great source of my own personal learning as I need to ensure that I fully understand the topic first to do so without destroying what it is that I am trying to get across.

Share Perspective
Everyone that attends these events comes from a different background and has their own life experiences that contribute to their value base and their viewpoints. I strive to share my perspective in my presentations and when I have the opportunity to field questions or discuss the content, learn from others perspectives.

Challenge Others
My first presentations were the result of Keith Parsons challenging people to step up and share. There are guys who present on some amazing technical material and it can be intimidating, however real world experience is what these conferences are all about and sharing experiences either through a presentation, through the questions that get asked, or even social discussions at the bar are welcome.

I look forward to the discussions ahead and both sharing with and learning from the other attendees.

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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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