Chapter 1: Cisco SONA and the Cisco Enterprise Architecture (Part02)

Review of Cisco SONA Infrastructure Services

Infrastructure services add intelligence to the network by supporting application awareness. Important applications such as IP telephony require support from network services that meet enterprisewide requirements. The network must provide a common set of capabilities to ensure functionality for the most persistent application requirements, such as the following:

• Security services: Increase the integrity of the network by protecting network resources and users from internal and external threats.

• Identity services: Map resources and policies to the user and device.

• Storage services: Provide distributed and virtual storage across the infrastructure.

• Compute services: Connect and virtualize compute resources based on the application.

• Mobility services: Allow users to access network resources regardless of their physical location. Wireless services support mobile clients and integrate with the wired network.

• Voice services: Deliver the foundation by which voice can be carried across the network, such as security and high availability.

An infrastructure service may use multiple network services. For example, if the enterprise plans to implement voice services, network needs features such as QoS and security.

Network services embedded in the infrastructure services include the following:

• Network management: Includes LAN management for advanced management of multilayer switches; routed WAN management for monitoring, traffic management, and access control to administer the routed infrastructure of multiservice networks; service management for managing and monitoring service level agreements (SLA); and VPN and security management for optimizing VPN performance and security administration.

• High availability: Ensures end-to-end availability for services, clients, and sessions. Implementation includes reliable, fault-tolerant network devices (to automatically identify and overcome failures) and resilient-network technologies.

• QoS: Manages the delay, delay variation (jitter), bandwidth availability, and packet-loss parameters on a network to meet the diverse needs of voice, video, and data applications. QoS features provide value-added functionality such as Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR) for classifying traffic by application type, a Cisco IOS IP Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for end-to-end QoS measurements, Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) signaling for admission control and reservation of resources, and a variety of configurable queue insertion and servicing disciplines.

• IP multicasting: Multicasting enables distribution of videoconferencing, corporate communications, distance learning, distribution of software, and other applications. Multicast packets are replicated only as necessary in the network by Cisco routers enabled with Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) and other supporting multicast protocols, resulting in the most efficient delivery of data to multiple receivers.

Review of the Cisco SONA Application Layer

This layer includes collaborative applications that support the enterprise. Cisco has solutions to support several applications:

• Unified messaging: Unified communications applications provide structure and intelligence that can help organizations integrate their communications with business processes. It also ensures that information reaches recipients quickly through the most appropriate medium.

• Cisco Unified Contact Center: The Cisco Unified Contact Center provides intelligent contact routing, call treatment, network-to-desktop computer telephony integration (CTI), and multichannel contact management over an IP infrastructure. This application enables organizations to smoothly integrate inbound and outbound voice applications with Internet applications such as real-time chat, web collaboration, and email.

• Cisco IP phone: IP telephony transmits voice communications over a network using open-standards-based IP. Cisco IP phone products are a key component of the Cisco Unified Communications system, which delivers the business benefits of a converged network to organizations of all sizes.

• Cisco Unified MeetingPlace: This multimedia conferencing solution fully integrates voice, video, and web conferencing capabilities to give remote meetings a natural and effective, face-to-face quality for medium-size to large organizations.

• Video delivery and conferencing: The Cisco Unified Communications infrastructure supports video delivery. Cisco Unified videoconferencing solutions provide a reliable, versatile, and easy-to-manage network infrastructure for videoconferencing.

Reviewing the Cisco PPDIOO Approach

To design a network that meets customer needs, the organizational goals, organizational constraints, technical goals, and technical constraints must be identified. Cisco has formalized the lifecycle of a network into six phases: prepare, plan, design, implement, operate, and optimize (PPDIOO).

The section begins with a review of PPDIOO, and then discusses the design methodology under PPDIOO.

Upon completing this section, you will be able to discuss PPDIOO and its design methodology. This ability includes being able to meet these objectives:

• Describe the benefits of using the PPDIOO network lifecycle approach

• Describe the three basic steps of the design methodology under PPDIOO

PPDIOO Network Lifecycle Approach

This section reviews the PPDIOO approach for the network lifecycle (see Figure 1-5).

Figure 1-5: PPDIOO Network Lifecycle Approach

The PPDIOO network lifecycle approach reflects the lifecycle phases of a standard network. The PPDIOO phases are as follows:

• Prepare: The preparation phase involves establishing the organizational requirements, developing a network strategy, proposing a high-level conceptual architecture, and identifying technologies that can best support the architecture. The preparation phase can establish financial justification for network strategy by assessing the business case for the proposed architecture.

• Plan: The planning phase involves identifying initial network requirements based on goals, facilities, user needs, and so on. The planning phase involves characterizing sites, assessing any existing networks, and performing a gap analysis to determine whether the existing system infrastructure, sites, and operational environment can support the proposed system. A project plan facilitates management of the tasks, responsibilities, critical milestones, and resources required to implement changes to the network. The project plan should align with the scope, cost, and resource parameters established in the original business requirements.

• Design: The initial requirements that were derived in the planning phase drive the activities of the network design specialists. The network design specification is a comprehensive detailed design that meets current business and technical requirements and incorporates specifications to support availability, reliability, security, scalability, and performance. The design specification is the basis for the implementation activities.

• Implement: After the design has been approved, implementation (and verification) begins. The network or additional components are built according to the design specifications, with the goal of integrating devices without disrupting the existing network or creating points of vulnerability.

• Operate: Operation is the final test of the appropriateness of the design. The operate phase involves maintaining network health through day-to-day operations, including maintaining high availability and reducing expenses. The fault detection, correction, and performance monitoring that occur in daily operations provide initial data for the optimize phase.

• Optimize: The optimize phase involves proactive management of the network. The goal of proactive management is to identify and resolve issues before they affect the organization. Reactive fault detection and correction (troubleshooting) is needed when proactive management cannot predict and mitigate failures. In the PPDIOO process, the optimize phase may prompt a network redesign if too many network problems and errors arise, if performance does not meet expectations, or if new applications are identified to support organizational and technical requirements.

Note

Although design is listed as one of the six PPDIOO phases, some design elements may be present in all the other phases.

Benefits of the Lifecycle Approach

This section summarizes the benefits of the network lifecycle approach.

The network lifecycle approach provides four main benefits:

• Lowers the total cost of network ownership

• Increases network availability

• Improves business agility

• Speeds access to applications and services

The total cost of network ownership is lowered via these strategies:

• Identifying and validating technology requirements

• Planning for infrastructure changes and resource requirements

• Developing a sound network design aligned with technical requirements and business goals

• Accelerating successful implementation

• Improving the efficiency of your network and of the staff supporting it

• Reducing operating expenses by improving the efficiency of operation processes and tools

Network availability is increased via these strategies:

• Assessing the network’s security state and its capability to support the proposed design

• Specifying the correct set of hardware and software releases and keeping them operational and current

• Producing a sound operations design and validating network operation

• Staging and testing the proposed system before deployment

• Improving staff skills

• Proactively monitoring the system and assessing availability trends and alerts

• Proactively identifying security breaches and defining remediation plans

Business agility is improved via these strategies:

• Establishing business requirements and technology strategies

• Readying sites to support the system you want to implement

• Integrating technical requirements and business goals into a detailed design and demonstrating that the network is functioning as specified

• Expertly installing, configuring, and integrating system components

• Continually enhancing performance

Access to applications and services is accelerated through these strategies:

• Assessing and improving operational preparedness to support current and planned network technologies and services

• Improving service-delivery efficiency and effectiveness by increasing availability, resource capacity, and performance

• Improving the availability, reliability, and stability of the network and the applications running on it

• Managing and resolving problems affecting your system and keeping software applications current

Note

The remainder of this book focuses on the prepare, plan, and design phases of PPDIOO.