ActivePort’s Orchestration sparks up the grid with national Utility
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.
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- Scoping: 10 days
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- Development: 120 days
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- 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:
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- Base configuration
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- AAA, SNMP, services, hardening,
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- Routing: Spanning tree, OTV, LISP and Fabric Path
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- 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:
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- Create and Delete SSID’s
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- Create and Delete users
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- View Reports on standard WLAN performance and security metrics
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- 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:
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- Create, Modify, and Delete Interfaces, Zones and Vlans
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- Create, Modify, and Delete Policy Objects
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- Create, Modify, and Delete Policy Rules
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- View Reports on standard security metrics
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- 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.
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- Elastic Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) integration detects and responds to threats at cloud speed and scale
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- 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.
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For more information on this case study or our SDN solutions, contact the Activeport team today.
ActivePort SD-WAN rolls out the red carpet for Retail Chain
In collaboration with an ActivePort MSP Partner, learn about a recent SD-WAN customer success story for a leading Australian carpet retail chain with 29 stores around Australia.
Key Retail Customer Objectives:
- Centralise and simplify IT operations across 29 stores
- Gain more control and visibility across the network
- Reduce downtime and network outages
- Improve customer service and retention
Retail Network Challenges
A large retail group was experiencing a high volume of network outages at their head office and retail stores. These outages affected the ability to view stock levels and process orders, resulting in lost sales. Head office IT had no visibility of the network and were unaware when stores were having issues.
ActivePort SD-WAN Solution
ActivePort designed an SD-WAN solution with live failover to 4G, including ActivePortal reporting and event notifications. The ActivePort SD-WAN solution allows stores to continue trading while faults are fixed in the background. Completed configuration and implementation in three weeks.
Retail Group Outcome & Success
- Centralised Management.
IT Team centrally manage the entire network from the ActivePortal platform. Greater visibility and control. - No more outages.
No more downtime across the network. Applications don’t see any failover. The same IP address is used for all circuits in a virtual tunnel. Event notifications advise of any lost connectivity.
- Improved Customer Service.
Better customer experience, faster order processing and service, and less frustration at the check-out. Improved stock control.