Itential Automation Platform Overview
The Itential Automation Platform is a comprehensive, scalable, and feature-rich network automation solution designed to manage and orchestrate complex, multi-domain networks. This platform is tailored to support the evolving needs of modern network environments, including cloud, SD-WAN, data centers, wireless networks, and various network applications.
Key Functionality
- Network Automation Across Domains: Itential automates network changes and operations across physical, virtual, and cloud networks, regardless of the network vendor. This includes routine tasks such as software upgrades, device configuration management, and compliance to service and policy management.
- Unified Automation Ecosystem: The platform simplifies network automation by providing a single, aggregated network API, integrating disparate systems like IT Service Management, inventory, analytics, and orchestration tools for end-to-end and closed-loop network automation capabilities.
- Low-Code Environment: Itential offers a low-code environment that enables users to easily design, build, and run flexible workflows, facilitating rapid network automation deployments. This reimagined workflow building experience includes a modernized workflow canvas and enhanced workflow builder capabilities.
Core Components and Features
- Orchestration Engine: This engine executes changes, additions, migrations, automation scenarios, monitoring, and compliance management. It supports stateful orchestration, tracking infrastructure services at scale with customized resource models and automated workflow actions.
- Integration Capabilities: The platform integrates with various IT systems and network technologies through Itential Adapters, CI/CD pipelines, and the Itential Automation Gateway. It supports API integration with REST, SOAP, and gRPC, as well as script integration with technologies like Ansible, Netmiko, and Terraform.
- Data Federation and Broker Layer: Itential ensures consistency in data models between different adapters, creating a unified federated view of resources and data. This is achieved through patented data modeling and translation, converting data into a common JSON format.
- Workflow Engine: The workflow engine consumes aggregated data from existing tools and applies business logic for network automation. Workflows can be published as microservices available through an open API, enabling network-specific actions to be triggered and managed via the Itential Platform.
- Event Triggers and Closed-Loop Capabilities: The platform supports event-driven orchestration, triggering workflow tasks based on notifications from incident resolution, inventory monitoring, and service management tools. This ensures continuous and automated management of network services.
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Single Sign On (SSO): Itential provides robust security features, including RBAC for granular control over permissions and SSO through OpenIDConnect or SAML-based services, ensuring stringent security requirements are met.
- Configuration Manager: This application manages comprehensive device configuration and compliance, including function deployment, configuration management, version management, upgrades, and decommissioning. It dynamically discovers and analyzes devices, providing a consolidated view of all network devices.
- Self-Service Capabilities: The platform empowers IT and application development teams with secure, self-service access to workflows, allowing them to execute tasks independently and efficiently. This includes delivering a network API to these teams for streamlined operations.
Architecture and Deployment
- Cloud-Native Architecture: The Itential SaaS platform is designed to support networks of any size, type, and complexity, ensuring scalability and flexibility. It does not create copies of data, relying on systems of record as the source of truth to mitigate data quality issues.
- Container Support: The platform supports containerization through OCI-compliant images, manageable by Docker, Kubernetes, and other container management systems, enhancing deployment flexibility.
In summary, the Itential Automation Platform is a powerful tool for managing and automating complex network environments. It offers a unified approach to network automation, robust integration capabilities, a low-code development environment, and strong security and compliance features, making it an essential solution for modern network management.