DataMiner Infrastructure Discovery and Provisioning is an out-of-the-box application to manage network inventory in a highly automated yet secure manner. Today’s infrastructure deployments are highly dynamic. This is the result of many continuous evolutions.

For example, there is a continuous need to add capacity to networks at the optimal cost point. In some cases, additional compute, storage or networking capacity is deployed at the edges of the network, even at the end-customer site – think of B2B terminals (IP routers, VSAT terminals, etc.), edge computing in the network such as 5G, HFC DOCSIS remote DAA Digital Nodes, etc. In other cases, additional capacity is deployed in a few geographically spread data centers. Scale and elasticity may lead to public cloud deployment of functions as well. Most often, networks grow and adapt in all dimensions: on-premises edges, on-premises centralized, and public cloud.

Far-reaching automation

More than ever before, there is a need to keep track of the network implementation and network change management processes and activities. There is a real need for a single source of truth when it comes to inventory. All too often, people have to conclude that their offline inventory database does not match with their actual network. DataMiner Infrastructure Discovery and Provisioning ensures that the inventory database does reflect reality, and it can even do much more than that. In an automated manner, it does all the things a good operations team should constantly take care of, but often doesn’t get the time to do consistently and securely:

• Discover new network inventory at user-defined time intervals, and compare this with the already managed network elements and network functions. DataMiner scans any API, and therefore discovers hardware inventory (PNI), virtualized inventory (VNI) and cloud functions from any manufacturer. In addition, DataMiner IDP Discovery also extracts connectivity from the network whenever this can be done remotely (e.g. by reading LLDP info).
• Together with the DataMiner Inventory and Asset Manager module (IAM), DataMiner IDP can push discovered inventory into a connected third-party inventory database or CMDB, or vice versa, import information from the third-party inventory system and compare or align with the actual inventory.
• Once the inventory is discovered or imported, DataMiner provisions the elements on the platform so that the inventory can instantly be managed. The DataMiner zero-touch provisioning intelligence will automatically select the driver matching the detected API from the data source. Without a single click, operators can monitor the newly added inventory, receive alarms, and control and trend metrics and counters.
• SecOps is top of mind for CSO and operations teams. Therefore, DataMiner IDP Configuration Manager can automatically verify whether a particular configuration is allowed in the network. If needed, DataMiner IDP can even upload a golden configuration to the newly discovered inventory, a configuration that is safe in terms of user access policies, IP flow policies (ACL), etc.
• Similarly, DataMiner will detect any non-approved software images in the network and provide alarm notifications. And similar to DataMiner IDP Configuration Manager, the DataMiner IDP Software Update Manager can upload validated builds on the network elements or image repositories.
• Last but not least, even if every network function has become software today, there is still a lot of legacy on-premises hardware mounted in racks. And every virtualized or containerized cluster eventually runs on nodes mounted in racks as well. As such, DataMiner IDP Rack Manager automatically creates highly graphical views of all your facilities, buildings, floor plans, aisles and racks. The required information to create the visuals can easily be imported from any API, database or file.

In this video, we will show you all that DataMiner IDP can do for a company’s inventory, from discovery, provisioning, configuration management, software management to facility management. We will end with a view on the new integration with Process Automation.

Zero-touch infrastructure deployment