(Jan 2023) In collaboration with an ActivePort MSP Partner, hear about a recent Orchestration and SD-WAN customer success story for a leading national utility. Read below or download PDF

A national power company looking to improve connectivity and visibility across their WAN. They have 350 sites and a large field force. The IT Team needed to manage 1,200 devices from multiple vendors.

SDN Solution

ActivePort successfully integrated eight vendors into a single pane. This enabled workflow automation and increased visibility across their multi-vendor network footprint.

    • Scoping: 10 days

    • Development: 120 days

    • Implementation: 20 days

SD-WAN

Dell uCPE – VEP4600, VEP1425. The VEP4600 uses the latest Intel Xeon D-2100 x86-based processor. To improve connectivity & uptime for their remote offices the local country carrier is decommissioning copper links and replacing with fiber. Dell will be used as the uCPE to deploy an SD-WAN that is orchestrated in the ActivePortal single pane.

Switch Orchestration

Juniper EX2300, Cisco Catalyst and Nexus switch Orchestration. ActivePort automated the configuration, routing and frequently used commands, bringing them into the single pane to be used by the NOC/SOC.
Use cases:

    • Base configuration

    • AAA, SNMP, services, hardening,

    • Routing: Spanning tree, OTV, LISP and Fabric Path

    • Ports/interfaces • VLANS & vPC

Wireless Orchestration

Cisco 5520 Wireless LAN Controller Orchestration.

To reduce the large quantity of support tickets created from issues with wireless connectivity, ActivePort automated end-to-end management for common use cases.
Use cases:

    • Create and Delete SSID’s

    • Create and Delete users

    • View Reports on standard WLAN performance and security metrics

    • View Radio performance characteristics

Firewall NFV

Palo Alto Firewall 5020 & 460 VNF, Cisco Firepower 4112 and Cisco 4600 FMC.

Customer transitioned from Cisco to Palo Alto firewalls. Both vendors operated in parallel during a multi-year migration & refresh. ActivePort orchestrated the most common feature sets of Palo Alto, rolling out to all new and existing sites. The Cisco UI was exposed in ActivePortal as these devices are already in place.
Use cases:

    • Create, Modify, and Delete Interfaces, Zones and Vlans

    • Create, Modify, and Delete Policy Objects

    • Create, Modify, and Delete Policy Rules

    • View Reports on standard security metrics

    • View Logs

SASE & ITOA

The customer required SIEM, SOAR & application performance monitoring (APM) for 200 servers to make IT operations more effective & efficient.

MixMode was used for network traffic analysis & Application Performance Management (APM). ActivePort exposed the MixMode UI into the ActivePortal single pane.

Elastic Search is integrated into ActivePortal & Elastic agent & fleet collects, analyses, and protects data from several sources.

    • Elastic Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) integration detects and responds to threats at cloud speed and scale

    • Elastic Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) streamlines SOC workflows with orchestration and automation.

SIP NFV

Ribbon SIP SBC VNF. Due to the carrier’s copper decommissioning, the customers voice network was migrated to SIP. All legacy PABX’s were replaced with Ribbon SIP, deployed as a VNF deployed on Dell CPEs. This meant less devices requiring support and reduced this national provider’s environmental impact.

*All logos and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.

For more information on this case study or our SDN solutions, contact the ActivePort team today.