By Michael Haugh, VP of Product Marketing, Gluware
The new Gluware® Intelligent Network Automation 4.0 release delivers significant new features that are in demand by today’s Global 2000 enterprises. The new release introduces Gluware Pro, a tiered SaaS offering, which includes a free tier for network inventory and also expands scale and flexibility of the Gluware Enterprise offering. Gluware 4.0 adds new features including interactive dashboards, config search, ad-hoc query, syslog integration, EVPN-VXLAN, and more. Gluware 4.0 expands vendor support with Aruba and Juniper and introduces Terraform integration for multi-cloud IaaS automation.
Gluware 4.0 New and Enhanced Offerings
Gluware Pro SaaS Offering with Free Network Inventory
For networks up to 2000 devices, getting started with Gluware is easier than ever now with the new Gluware Pro SaaS-delivered on AWS. Gluware Pro is offered in three different tiers including Audit, Automation, and Advanced Automation to support networks up to 2000 devices. A Free offer is also available in Pro, available for qualified users, enabling Device Manager to perform network discovery and inventory for up to 100 devices. The Free tier also includes a 45-day free trial of the Config Drift and Audit app so organizations can quickly use Gluware network automation to identify network issues at no cost. The Pro Audit tier includes Device Manager and the Config Drift and Audit app. The Automation tier incrementally adds OS Manager to automate OS upgrades. The Advanced Automation tier incrementally adds the power of Gluware Config Modeling for full intelligent configuration management, critically important for advanced network management.
For Gluware Pro, complete a simple request form which will be followed by email instructions on how to install the new Gluware Secure Gateway (GSG) virtual appliance on the network. The GSG provides a secure SSH connection to the AWS-hosted Gluware instance. The GSG is part of the Multi-Engine Architecture leveraging an integrated Gluware Engine Server component to execute the provisioning jobs (inventory, drift, audit, config management) via SSH to the network devices keeping all the device connectivity on the enterprise network. A single GSG offers dual provisioning engines and Gluware Pro supports the deployment of two GSGs on each customer network for redundancy. Gluware’s multi-tenant deployment in AWS provides a reliable, scalable and secure platform to deliver the network automation SaaS. Gluware takes care of all the platform administration enabling the users to get right to the automation. Learn more
Gluware Enterprise Offering
The flagship Gluware offering, Gluware Enterprise, delivers a high degree of flexibility and scalability to address the needs of larger enterprises or those who require special sizing. Gluware Enterprise is available on-premises, deployment in any customer cloud (including customer AWS instances or MS Azure), or it can be hosted by Gluware as a single-tenant in AWS. Gluware Enterprise has been enhanced in 4.0 with the addition of the Gluware Zone Engine Servers, a component of the Multi-Engine Architecture, which enables the ability to distribute the provisioning power of Gluware to geographical regions or any area with a cluster of network devices, like a campus or a data center. Gluware Enterprise can scale to any size network and customers can select which components of the Gluware Application Suite they want to deploy.
Learn more
Gluware 4.0 New Vendor and Multi-Cloud Support
New Vendor Support
Gluware has significantly enhanced support for Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, expanding on support for ArubaOS (Wireless) and adding:
- ArubaOS-CX
- ArubaOS-Switch
- ProCurve (ProVision)
Gluware has also upgraded its support for Juniper Networks’ Junos OS for the EX, MX, QFX, and SRX platforms. Gluware has shared recent customer success stories automating Juniper Networks at Acuity Insurance and First Bank.
New Multi-Cloud Support
Gluware is excited to announce integration with Terraform to extend network automation to the domains of multiple public cloud providers, starting with AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Leveraging Terraform as a vendor adapter, Gluware adds the ability to automate cloud endpoints and automate all the capabilities enabled by the native Terraform Providers.
Gluware has integrated Terraform File (TF) creation and management through the Config Modeling application. Using Config Modeling, users can create and manage the TF files for the initial creation and day two changes of the various resources (VPCs, internet gateways, subnets, security groups…etc.) Config Modeling supports static text, variables, and abstracting with form fill data – same as traditional CLI users are already familiar with. Gluware also maintains the TF state file to support the native declarative provisioning. Use Gluware to preview, provision and even un-provision your multi-cloud resources. Users will appreciate the centralized control Gluware brings along with the transparency and detail of all the logs provided when leveraging the underlying Terraform engine to see exactly what happened.
Gluware 4.0 New Product Features
Gluware Dashboard Framework
Gluware 4.0 introduces the new, highly intuitive, and interactive Dashboards, representing a significant advancement in the Gluware look, feel, and application functionality. To enhance usability and the administration of Gluware, several example dashboards are seeded in the product and users are able to create their own using an initial set of widgets. Dashboards provide extended insights and summaries of network devices, user activity on the system, and all discovery, automation, and orchestration activities being run. Users will enjoy customizing their dashboards for private or public (shared) use and Gluware will be providing a growing library of widgets and other tools. Watch the demo video
EVPN-VXLAN
EVPN-VXLAN is beginning to be widely adopted by large enterprises to modernize campus and data center networks. Gluware’s Intelligent Network Automation platform benefits enterprises at any stage in the network automation journey. From initial deployment to automating specific processes on top of existing deployments, Gluware can automate any deployment model. With support for standard-based leaf-level routing implementations from Arista, Cisco, and Juniper Networks including Juniper specific Centrally-Routed Bridging (CRB) or spine-level routing, Gluware supports the needs of the IT team. Gluware provides a reference design feature package in Config Modeling and is highly customizable for any deployment model.
Watch the Customer Use-Case presented at ONUG Fall 2020
Watch the EVPN-VXLAN POC
Watch the EVPN-VXLAN Webinar
Download the Joint Solution Brief with Juniper
Config Search
With this new feature added to the Gluware device explorer grid available in several apps, network engineering can now conduct critical network device searches across all (or a subset) of device configurations before building required audits and automating network features. This lets them identify patterns and return the list of devices, enter a freeform text string or regular expression and a set of predefined options to generate a list of device/snapshots that match the search criteria. This feature is also highly useful for network operations when troubleshooting or when they identify a misconfigured device and need to see if any others have the same issues. Watch the demo video
Ad-Hoc Query
This new feature offers the user greater query control as they select the devices (or use a filter) to run the query on the device configuration or define one or more ‘show’ commands to collect specific data. The user also defines a regex based post-processing on the data retrieved from the show commands. Queries can be saved and reused and are highly useful for NetOps troubleshooting scenarios. Watch the demo video
Config Drift and Audit Adds Config Audit Operators
Config Audit adds several options to expand and simplify the audit policies including:
Evaluate results independently – this option enables the audit to check the required or forbidden statement on each item – like an interface or protocol parameter. This is used when the audit rule applies to multiple logical constructs within a configuration
All – is a new option to tell the audit engine that all the statements are required as one block vs treating them as independent lines and counting each one individually
Ordered – this new option is added when the order of multiple configuration statement matters. Learn more
Syslog Integration
Gluware 4.0 integrates a syslog server, when enabled, to capture and correlate change notification information with a device managed by Gluware. When enabled in a Gluware Organization, a containerized syslog-ng server is enabled and listens for syslog messages (currently filtering for syslog-5 which are generated when a user goes into config mode on a device). This enables visibility in the Gluware system when a user is making a manual change. With that information, users can execute a config drift, config audit, or re-provision the device in Config Modeling to be sure it is in policy. Watch the demo video
Cisco License Inventory
Users of Cisco networking devices often have to understand what licenses are enabled on their various devices which affects their annual support maintenance costs. Gluware has extended the capabilities of Device Manager and the device detect capabilities to automate the capture of each device license, status and EULA for IOS, IOS XE and NXOS. Gluware provides an exportable comprehensive report using the Data Export application. Tremendous time savings are realized avoiding manual effort to perform inventory along with the ability to reconcile with what has been purchased can save organizations significant costs. Watch the demo video
Additional Features
Other features included with the Gluware 4.0 release include:
Unified and Enhanced Device Logging – Creates a unified look and behavior for all device interactions with color-coded logs for simplified understanding with search.
Banner Acknowledgement – Supports user define Gluware login banner and acknowledgment
Open Domain LDAP & RADIUS – Optionally removes domain name requirement for authentication
FileServer Proxy Support – Ability for the Master FileSever and its remotes to be behind a single proxy
OS Manager Anonymous FTP Support – Support for FTP mode
Enhanced Global Settings – New and updated settings, including SMTP, are available in the updated System Settings
Watch the Gluware Webinar on the 4.0 release, live on 12/15 — available on-demand after that.
