HP Network Automation

HP Network Automation

Network topologies continue to become more complex as networks grow in size. Numerous networks are also now required to follow laws and security guidelines. As a result, there is a complicated infrastructure that must support many different technologies, vendors, and protocols.

For the effects of performance, from additional security vulnerabilities to a complete outage, which can all result in increased liability, lost revenues, and lost productivity, centrally managing the network infrastructure in a secure, automated, and centralized fashion becomes essential.

A business-class solution from the licensed HP Network Automation (NA) keeps track of and manages configuration and software updates on routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, and wireless access points. By giving an IT staff visibility into network changes, NA helps to reduce the risk of disaster recovery, compliance problems, and security risks while allowing them to spot and correct trends that could become problems. Additionally, NA fully records every device change’s audit trail.

The following can be determined by network engineers using the licensed HP Network Automation (HPNA):

• Reasons behind the modification.
• which device’s settings were modified.
• The person responsible for the modification.
• What specific configuration change was made.

By confirming that configurations adhere to pre-established standards, NA can also enforce security and regulatory policies at the network level. In the end, a network that complies with standards and regulations is resilient, maintainable, and compliant.

NA supports a wide range of products from top manufacturers, including HP, Cisco, Nortel, F5 Networks, and Extreme, to offer insights into your network change process. Utilizing the best devices from the best vendors and supporting all of your devices with a single tool is made possible by NA’s scalable architecture.

Key Features of using the newest versions of the licensed HP Network Automation

Provisioning for bare metal

Provides pre-built devices. You can run scripts against bare metal devices using a “bare metal” driver to add fully configured devices to your production network.

Templates for network devices

Without the need for a physical device, create a configuration template. Before adding a network device to production, you can use network device templates to perform compliance checks, create policy rules, view and compare configurations (even between templates and actual devices), set password rules, and more.

Partitions for security

Creates a collection of NA objects for each partition to define more precise permissions. NA objects can be devices, users, command scripts, device password rules, policies, software images, etc. A network diagram, group hierarchy, device distribution across NA Cores, and security partitions are all possible combinations.

Scripts for auto-correction

Defines variables in the script that point to information from regular expression pattern groups in a policy rule that has been broken.

The Data on the Policy Rule page is accessed by the Auto-remediation pop-up window in order to display variable mappings, generate sample code, and validate the script before it is saved. Auto-remediation scripts, in contrast to standard command scripts, iterate over matches using a new language syntax. In order to run on network devices, auto-remediation scripts are processed and transformed into command scripts.

SWIM (Software Image Management) is a Gateway server process

For remote devices, it displays SWIM-centered data. However, remote devices are those that can only be accessed via an NA gateway.

Integration with HP Operations Orchestration (OO)

It enables NA to work with a wide range of outside vendors.

Support for Solaris 64-bit

The 64-bit Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is used by NA during installation on a Solaris platform. As a result, NA can use more memory.

Better task planning

With the licensed HP Network Automation (HPNA) A task’s priority can now be set when it is being created or updated, ensuring that it receives more attention than other tasks. There are five levels of task priority, numbered from 1 to 5. The highest task priority level is 1, so. Priority tasks take precedence over lower priority tasks. The new Round-robin algorithm can also be used for group projects. The Round Robin algorithm eliminates the need to wait for the first task group to finish before starting the second group task, for instance, if you started a group task for 10,000 devices at 10am and then started a group task for 10 devices at 10:05am.

Device Group Explorer and an improved device selector

You can choose devices and device groups for a variety of applications by using the improved Device Selector and Device Group Explorer, which make it simple to navigate group trees.

Support for virtual devices and virtual contexts

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series switches and VMware’s Virtual Switch (vSwitch) technology, which are both accessible through ESX, are now supported by NA. These new virtual devices can manage with existing physical ones, offering centralized support. Device relationship improvements now provide management of non-IP address contexts as well as views of the underlying relationships between the actual hardware and virtual contexts. These improvements benefit virtual devices as well as devices that support virtual contexts, such as the Cisco Firewall Services Module (FWSM) and Cisco ACE Application Control Engine Module.

Connections between devices

Data for parent, peer, and child devices is maintained by device relationships. With the new Device Relationships API, device dependencies can be specified.

Assistance with link aggregation

NA can list all of the links (or connections) connected to a particular port on a device thanks to link aggregation support. These findings come from either new device context data or improved diagnostics. Link aggregation gives you the ability to control a device with virtual contexts that allow multiple connections to a physical port.

Improved Connection Path

Now, you have the option of enabling or disabling device access via primary IP addresses.

Improvements to the API for provisioning and scripting

The Device Relationships API now allows you to provision devices, list device templates, show device template configurations, and modify device template configurations.

The parsing of configuration files

There are now links above the configuration text that make it simple to navigate and quickly parse different parts of the configuration file. For instance, you can go straight to the Access List section of the configuration file by clicking the Access List link at the top of the file. You should be aware that section parsing is only supported at this time by the Cisco IOS generic driver.

Support for FTP servers

The licensed HP Network Automation (HPNA) now has an integrated FTP server and will typically access a device via the CLI to configure data transfer to and from the device.

Information about device uptime

Now, you can look up a device’s uptime and the last time the Detect Device Boot diagnostic was performed on it.

Create custom data fields using the CLI or API

Previously, using the “custom name” and “custom value” options on the command, several CLI commands could change a custom field. However, you could only work with one field at once. If you needed to change several fields, this was challenging. You can now specify multiple fields to modify at once thanks to the new “custom names” and “custom values” values.

An updated search and reporting architecture

The licensed HP Network Automation (HPNA) can display search results more quickly now that it has a new search and reporting architecture. New data type fields can also be added, deleted, or modified with ease.

Improvements in troubleshooting and logging

When reporting troubleshooting data, you can now include specific Server logs, Task logs, and Wrapper log information.

Device Groups for Viewing

A listing of devices can now be viewed from the viewpoint of any of the parent groups in its ancestry. This enables batch editing of devices from the viewpoint of the desired parent group. Additionally, the Device Groups page now has a tree presentation. The previous drill-down, multi-page navigation design has been replaced.

Notice via email

Now that HP Network Automation users are logged in, you can send and receive emails from them.

API for Policy Manager

The licensed HP Network Automation (HPNA) API is now capable of producing policies. The creation of policies, rules within policies, remediation scripts for the rules, modification of existing policies, and other operations are now all possible with CLI commands. For details, consult the Network Automation 9.10 API Reference Guide.

enhanced search results

When searching on text and/or LOB columns, such as configuration or diagnostic data, performance has improved. Now, a full text editor can be used to quickly search through device configurations.