“The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has been pushing hard to automate its data center operations to free up staff to work on more difficult challenges,“ according to Jack Wilmer, infrastructure development executive at DISA. Speaking at the MeriTalk’s DataCenter Brainstorm this March, Wilmer mentioned that the agency is leaning on newer technologies such as network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) that allow automation of a number of tasks now performed manually.
Pentagon officials have been looking for an all-encompassing view of the Defense Department Information Networks (DoDIN) and clearly, this, automation is indicative of DISA’s overall strategy for optimizing its data center operations.
DISA seeks to automate the provisioning of services to eliminate redundant and unnecessary human to machine interfaces for tasks that are capable of effective implementation through SDN automation. The WebNMS Symphony Orchestration Platform communicates to the devices through multiple protocols (such as SNMP, CLI etc.) and automatically provisions the VPLS services across the multi-vendor infrastructure.
Architectural summary of the WebNMS Symphony Orchestration Platform used by DISA
DISA improves the Direct Order Entry (DDOE) by providing a request management capability that facilitates faster fulfillment and automated provisioning through the WebNMS Customer Portal, integrated with the DISA Storefront to create a one-stop shop for all DISA Services. The new ordering process is more intuitive and provides near real-time service availability while dramatically reduces manual effort by the network operators.
Use Case Two in the video below demonstrates how DISA achieves this flexible and dynamic SDN infrastructure with the WebNMS Symphony Orchestration Platform.
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