From the beginning, we have designed our platform with complete integration in mind, to avoid information silos and to secure a consolidated flow of information across all systems. In this blog, we will list the integration options available.
North and Southbound
Northbound, the NetYCE platform has both a REST and XML-based interface so that it can be integrated with a customer portal and/or third-party B/OSS and wider service order management and provisioning processes. This allows closed-loop integrations with any OSS-, BSS-, NMS-, testing and ticketing systems.
Southbound, the platform communicates with network equipment via CLI, vendor API, NETCONF, and Ansible and Python plugins. This allows the platform to send, receive and modify information from any of these southbound systems.
NetYCE supports all major network vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, HPE, Avaya, Ciena, Huawei, Checkpoint, Fortinet, Palo Alto, Aruba and more, with each vendor module supporting all devices within that OS 'family'. The vendor modules allow for SSH/Telnet/Netconf/API connectivity in a standardized and fully automated way. NetYCE takes care of committing changes, deals with error handling, backup and restore functionality etc.
In addition, NetYCE supports any vendor, API or cloud module developed by the Ansible Open Source community using the NetYCE Ansible plugin and by using any Python code with the NetYCE script_exec plugin. Above that, NetYCE has many other plugins, like JSON. This allows for unlimited automation capabilities within a robust and secure enterprise platform.
The power of these North and Southbound API’s is that it’s really easy to integrate with Network management vendors to streamline and automate NMS processes. This means full flexibility to integrate with fault-, event- and security management applications.
East West
For East-West communication, the NetYCE platform is able to integrate with typical network support systems like DNS, DHCP, and IP Management including a fully automated Infoblox broker. This keeps your full inventory of IP addresses, DHCP, and IP addresses automatically in sync.
On the east, you can think of any database applications, CMDB systems, by means of dedicated custom tables within the NetYCE database or ODBC connectivity to keep multiple database tables in sync between different applications.
Combining the different integrations will allow for some surprising work-flow simplifications. If, for example, the NetYCE intent-based capabilities were used to create a new access device with a single click, the integrations could ensure that the new hostname is pushed to the DNS, its automatically retrieved dynamic ip-ranges configured on the DHCP server, the allocated ip-address blocks configured in the IPAM system, the monitoring system is seeded, and the CMDB is updated. And, should a zero-touch rollout be required, the full configuration can automatically be generated and installed in response to its initial advertisement.
Source of Truth
The more advanced you’re getting with network automation, the more important it becomes to keep your logical inventory in a Source of Truth. As part of the intent-based solution within the NetYCE platform, we offer a full source of truth database that can be used in multiple ways:
- We act as the Source of Truth
- We act as a database to store information from an external source
- A combination of the above
With all network information explicitly available in the NetYCE database, integration and synchronization can easily be realized with external systems.
How about Network Monitoring?
You probably already have network monitoring tools running and a reporting mechanism that helps you get insight into your data. Instead of adding another reporting tool or dashboard to the mix, NetYCE can be very easily integrated with your existing reporting tools.
You can read more about this in our recent blog: How network compliance adds value to network monitoring
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