Most networking guys know that when they create WANs, they rely on actual physical routers to connect their remote or branch-office users to applications which are hosted at corporate data-centers.
You already know that each router has a data plane which holds the information, and a control plane which tells the data where to go.
Where this DATA will flow, it is typically determined by a network admin/engineer...They will write some certain RULES and POLICIES for each router on the network. Since this process of defining rules and policies is performed 'manually' most of the time, it is time-consuming and error-prone.
Your WANs depends on MPLS, wireless, broadband, VPN, LTE, VPNs and Internet to get connectivity to corporate applications, services and other resources.
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What is a SD-WAN?
A software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) is a virtualized service that connects and extends enterprise networks over large geographical distances. SD-WAN does not need to engage with physical routers directly. SD-WANs create an overlay of software platform to do all tasks concerning the configurations and management of these routers which are deployed all across the enterprise.
SD-WAN separates the control and management processes from the underlying networking hardware, making them available as software that can be easily configured and deployed by you from a 'Centralized console.' A centralized control pane means you as network administrator can write new rules and policies, and then configure and deploy them across an entire network at once.
Like traditional WANs, SD-WANs are capable of managing all types of connections, e.g., MPLS, broadband, LTE and others, they are also able to support most applications hosted in your data-centers, public and private clouds, and SaaS services.
SD-WAN can intelligent choose the BEST PATH in real time to securely route application traffic across the WAN. In the case of cloud, SD-WAN can forward internet- and cloud-bound traffic directly out to the branch without backhauling it to/from your corporate datacenter.
Modern SD-WANs are perfectly capable of handling the high volumes of WAN traffic that result from your software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications such as Salesforce.com, Workday, Office 365 and Dropbox, etc and your cloud adoption.
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How Does A SD-WAN Work?
SD-WAN is nowhere near to the old conventional router-centric model, that used to distribute the control function across all devices in your network and that simply routed traffic based on TCP/IP addresses and ACLs. As a result, the traditional WAN was no longer suitable mainly because backhauling all traffic – including that destined to the cloud – from branch offices to the headquarters, would always introduce latency and impairs performance of your applications. This model was quite a bit rigid, inefficient and not cloud-friendly.
SD-WAN basically allows your enterprise to deliver a vastly superior application 'QoEX (Quality of Experience) to your users. Modern SD-WAN solutions are capable of using intelligence, ML, and they can identify applications automatically. As a result of their capability of being 'Application-Aware' they can deliver the appropriate ROUTING to the data/traffic generated by those applications, across the WAN.
Each class of your applications would receive the appropriate QoS and security policy enforcement, according to your business needs.
SD-WANs actually break-out your local internet traffic securely which is heading from the branch to IaaS and SaaS applications, and directly forward this traffic to cloud services, as I said, without backhauling it to your corporate datacenter. Thus it delivers you the highest levels of cloud performance while protecting your enterprise from threats.
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The Advent Of Next-Gen SD-WAN?
Since the automation is future...some high-end SD-WAN has brought some advanced feature sets:
SD-WAN solutions with integrated 'Artificial Intelligence for IT operations (AIOps)' have emerged as the key to automating manual tasks. AIOps can help your IT teams with anomaly detection, event correlation and root cause analysis, allowing administrators to easily pinpoint issues and speed up response times for problem remediation. SD-WAN solutions with integrated AIOps capabilities will help your organization to continuously scale and simplify operations.
A next-generation SD-WAN solution enables all branch services, including networking, security and voice services, to be delivered from the cloud. A secure SD-WAN connection gives your organization peace of mind that its branch locations are protected from threats, provides optimal performance for end users too.
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This Article Was Written & published by Meena R, Senior Manager - IT, at Luminis Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd, India.
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