SOLIDserver 8.4 DDI Solutions: Simplify Network Compliance

EfficientIP’s SOLIDserver™ 8.4 DDI Solutions simplify network compliance and management with new features like Cloud Observer plugin for Cisco Meraki and automated data reconciliation. These latest capabilities boost NSoT effectiveness and enable end-to-end ecosystem automation.

EfficientIP’s SOLIDserver™ DDI 8.4 helps simplify network compliance and management with new features, including the Cloud Observer plugin for Cisco Meraki and automated data reconciliation. These latest capabilities of our DDI Solutions will help organizations boost Network Source of Truth (NSoT) effectiveness, streamline compliance monitoring, and support end-to-end ecosystem automation. 

Simplify Network Compliance, Management, and Validation with DDI Solutions

Organizations today face increasing complexity in maintaining network compliance without compromising on integrity. This complexity is driven by the proliferation of hybrid and multicloud environments, the constant evolution of enterprise network technologies, the exponential deployment of IoT devices, and the increasing regulatory requirements that demand comprehensive compliance measures. There is a critical need for streamlined processes and accurate data to achieve effective network management in such a complex landscape.   

EfficientIP addresses this challenge with SOLIDserver™ DDI 8.4, a major update to our DDI management suite, packed with features designed to enhance network management and compliance. This release offers advanced tools to improve network data quality, ensuring an effective Network Source of Truth (NSoT). It also streamlines compliance monitoring by detecting inconsistencies and provides automated reconciliation to speed up network validation. 

SOLIDserver™ DDI 8.4 is designed to empower your network and security teams to automate processes and simplify network compliance. Below is a detailed overview of how it drives operational efficiency and security across your organization.

Enhanced Cisco Meraki Discovery to Boost Visibility and NSoT

Building on our award-winning DDI Solutions, EfficientIP’s latest release includes the Cloud Observer plugin for Cisco Meraki. This addition enhances network visibility and control by integrating Cisco Meraki’s cloud-based management solution with EfficientIP’s Cloud Observer. Cisco Meraki provides streamlined network management, security, and endpoint control through wireless access points, switches, security appliances, and mobile device management capabilities. The integration of Cloud Observer with Cisco Meraki allows organizations to further elevate their network visibility across hybrid multicloud environments. 

Visibility and Data Quality Challenges in Network Management

Many organizations struggle with fragmented data sources and lack unified visibility across their network environments. This fragmentation is often compounded by the use of diverse network technologies and the deployment of hybrid multicloud environments that include public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises infrastructure. Each of these environments generates and manages data differently, leading to silos of information that are not easily integrated. 

For instance, hybrid and multicloud environments involve multiple vendors and platforms, each with its own set of tools and data formats. This diversity makes it challenging to consolidate and harmonize data. Network administrators often rely on disparate systems to manage different parts of the network, leading to fragmented visibility and inconsistent data. This fragmentation makes it difficult to achieve a consolidated, centralized view of all network objects, leading to inefficiencies in network operations and resource usage, as well as increased security and compliance risks. 

EfficientIP’s Cloud Observer addresses these challenges by enabling IT teams to automatically discover, track, and consolidate cloud network objects into a unified view, and then keep the data accurate and up-to-date. The solution covers multiple cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Google GCP, includes VMware vCenter, and offers a customizable external plugin. Aggregating information from all cloud providers offers an efficient way to organize your data and have it available at your fingertips.

Expanding Cloud Observer Capabilities for improved Visibility, Compliance, and Automation

As part of SOLIDserver™ 8.4, Cloud Observer now also includes Cisco Meraki coverage, bridging the gaps between on-prem, wired/wireless, virtualized, container/edge, and cloud-based environments. With this expansion of Cloud Observer’s capabilities, users can now discover, track, filter, report, and manage information about network devices within Cisco Meraki environments, including wireless access points, switches, security appliances, and mobile devices. Associated benefits include: 

• Unified visibility of all Meraki objects with real-time harmonized insights for more comprehensive NSoT and audit purposes.
• Better resource management and cost control with unused or unknown resource detection.
• Improved risk management and compliance with consistency control, suspicious activity detection, and better corporate standards enforcement.
• Increased operational efficiency with boosted end-to-end network automation capabilities.

Example Use Cases of Cloud Observer for Meraki 

1. Get a unified and harmonized resource view: Manage network, wireless, client, and device properties across varied environments, including Cisco Meraki via a single interface. 
2. Enhance resource management: Optimize network asset utilization, detect unused or untagged assets, track changes, and improve capacity planning. 
3. Streamline compliance assurance: Continuously monitor Cisco Meraki environments for regulatory standards and internal policies compliance, detect inconsistent data for remediation, and provide audit trails, compliance reports, and proactive alerts. 

Automated Data Reconciliation to Simplify Network Compliance Management 

Network compliance is another critical component of an effective network automation strategy. Today, 97% of organizations are using or considering a tool to continuously assess adherence to configuration, design, and security standards. This tool needs to automatically discover, collect, and report on networking resources and changes across various environments.  

Understanding the difference between the network’s intended state (the planned configuration) and the current state (the actual configuration) is essential. However, given the pace of network changes, if data is not automatically populated and reconciled to keep it accurate, up-to-date, and unified, maintaining compliance and scaling network automation becomes nearly impossible.

SOLIDserver™ DDI 8.4 addresses these challenges with an advanced feature that automatically detects and lists data inconsistencies on IP or MAC address or Network route, comparing data between IPAM, Cloud Observer, and NetChange IPLocator. Continuously checking and reconciling Cloud Observer and NetChange IPLocator data with IPAM allows you to identify discrepancies between the actual and intended state of the network. This ensures that IPAM keeps the most up-to-date data and metadata, facilitating network validation before and after changes. Key benefits include: 

• Increased data quality with data reconciliation options that result in accurate, up-to-date data to build a reliable and effective NSoT using IPAM.
• Improved operational efficiency by effortlessly listing incorrect data and deployment errors, and proposing remediation actions.
• Strengthened security by discovering unknown IP address assets, maintaining up-to-date configuration and policies, and reducing security holes.
• Simplified network compliance by continuously monitoring and pinpointing inconsistencies with corporate and security standards and policies.

Example Use Cases of Data Reconciliation in IPAM

1. Quickly identify erroneous data, such as incorrect IP addresses, to ensure accurate network deployment, by setting alerts on inconsistencies between IPAM and Cloud Observer or IPLocator.
2. Detect unknown objects deployed on-premises or in cloud infrastructures, including Cisco Meraki, that are not present in IPAM, review remediation options, and reconcile in IPAM as needed by adding the IP address or Network, or editing the MAC address.
3. Monitor network compliance continuously, facilitating pre and post-change validations to maintain robust end-to-end automation and streamline deployments. 

By continuously discovering network objects, collecting, and reconciling their data, the overall data quality is improved, making IPAM more accurate and comprehensive and providing a solid foundation for feeding a NSoT. The result is simplified network validation and compliance, as well as effective end-to-end network automation via open APIs, further enhancing the value of our Network Automation Hub solution for addressing the network automation needs of network and security teams.

Conclusion 

SOLIDserver™ DDI 8.4 adds significant value to EfficientIP’s Network Automation Hub by expanding end-to-end ecosystem automation capabilities. With the new Cloud Observer plugin for Cisco Meraki and enhanced IPAM data reconciliation features, network teams can extend data discovery to Cisco Meraki environments, improve IPAM data quality through continuous reconciliation, and build an effective NSoT with IPAM which is essential for bolstering end-to-end network automation. All this helps ease network validation, simplify network compliance, and increase operational efficiency.