Anana deploys Pluribus Networks as part of network modernisation project
Anana has deployed the Pluribus Netvisor ONE operating system and Adaptive Cloud Fabric as it looks to unify its two data centers and enable more agile service delivery.
Anana provides omnichannel customer experience solutions, with one of its main aims to ensure its customers can engage with clients more efficiently. According to the company, its network team realised that in order to deliver, it needed a a high-performance, highly automated infrastructure.
As a result, Anana looked to Pluribus Networks, specialists in open networking and software-defined networking. As well as adopting Pluribus' Netvisor ONE operating system and Adaptive Cloud Fabric, Anana deployed Dell EMC Open Networking hardware, as part of a multi-site network modernisation project.
Gareth Evans, Anana infrastructure manager, says the company needed to be able to see traffic flows from across the entire network in order to be faster in identifying and responding to troubleshooting issues. On top of this, Anana required deep network slicing across the control, management and data planes to segment application and customer traffic.
"With Pluribus' controllerless SDN and Adaptive Cloud Fabric, we can dynamically move virtual machines, applications and workloads between data centers, and do maintenance without impacting customers," Evans explains.
"We can update policy across the entire network with a single command. We're improving our service levels and customer satisfaction at the same time. Our network is highly automated, enabling us to better serve our business, and our business to better serve our customers," he says.
Adaptive Cloud Fabric for Multi-Site Data Centers
Evans says Anana selected the Pluribus Linux-based Netvisor ONE network operating system, featuring the Adaptive Cloud Fabric running on Dell EMC Open Networking Switches, for its ability to create an SDN-controlled network fabric that federates together a large number of geographically distributed switches to appear as one logical switch, radically simplifying network operations.
"Pluribus' controllerless architecture leverages the processing power inside the switches that are already deployed, distributing intelligence to every switch in the network. This distributed approach to automation lowers costs by eliminating the expense of multiple controllers while improving performance. Now, from any switch, the team can see the entire fabric, troubleshoot the entire fabric or update policy across the fabric. This new level of automation allows Anana to better serve customers while making their own operations even more efficient and cost-effective," he says.
According to Evans, Anana also benefits from Pluribus Insight Analytics, which leverages embedded Netvisor monitoring telemetry and packet flow data sources to enable pervasive visibility across the network, eliminating the need for expensive probes or complex monitoring overlay networks.
"With end-to-end visibility into all connections that traverse the entire data center fabric, Anana can analyse and compare actual versus desired performance and implement corrective actions, such as changes to policy or rerouting traffic to implement on-demand changes to the infrastructure," says Evans.
"It's a brilliant starting point for an investigation," he adds. "We can isolate issues and resolve them much more quickly now, which really helps us keep our internal users and our customers happy."
