CloudVision: The First Decade

As I think about the evolution of the CloudVision^Ⓡ platform over the last 10 years, and our latest announcement today, I’m reminded of three principles that have guided us along our journey: full network data without compromise, platform over point product, and a modern operating model. While the product and our plans have evolved over the years, each of these principles feels incredibly relevant to the problems facing enterprises today.

It All Starts With the Data

The fundamental challenge in operating a network at scale is getting access to the full state of the network, both in real-time and historically. The classic approach of SNMP polling does not provide the granularity or real-time access that operators need for making informed networking decisions in large modern enterprise networks, let alone in the cloud.

Arista set out to build a foundational system that could stream the full state of the network in real-time and store it historically forever. We knew that getting this complete access would be the hard part - we would figure out what interesting applications to build on top of it later. The inherent automation and state-streaming capabilities from our flagship EOS^Ⓡ, often built in partnership with our largest cloud customers, was critical to building a management platform for broader enterprise companies.

Today this platform, Arista’s NetDL™ (Network Data Lake), has grown to encompass not just network state but also the relevant application and user data needed to translate that low-level network state (the MACs, IPs, counters and flows) to the users, VMs, and applications they are associated with. This unparalleled visibility from our state-streaming architecture still gets the biggest reaction from our customers today.

What I wouldn’t have predicted when we started is how invaluable the NetDL architecture would be to AI for Networking - the historical data available in NetDL and CloudVision as-a-Service are the foundational requirements for AI modeling across the broad set of enterprise use cases Arista supports. I expect this will remain a core differentiator for us in this space for quite some time.

A Platform for Network-as-a-Service

Even though Arista was largely a data center networking company at the time, we didn’t set out to build CloudVision as a data center network management product. We focused instead on building the right platform and architecture, taking to heart the lessons from EOS.

While we only formally launched our cloud service offering more recently, we strongly believed from the beginning that this is where our customers would want to go, and so we built NetDL, from day one, as a true multi-tenant, scale-out architecture. This is what enables us to offer Network-as-a-Service today without having had to build a new separate product.

As we expanded our offerings from data center to campus to branch to WAN, CloudVision naturally followed suit to bring streaming telemetry and a common operating model across all these use cases. While each of these new deployment types brought with it unique workflow requirements, the consistent investment in the platform delivers a holistic solution for the entire enterprise network, and not silos that then need to be stitched together. See graphic below.

A Modern Operating Model

The first step in moving to a modern operating model is going from manual configuration at the CLI to an automated process for pushing configuration across the network. It’s also often the hardest change for a networking organization to undertake.

We wanted to avoid the traditional wizard model, where you could only build a limited set of network designs - this wasn’t going to work for our customer base. Instead we started with a simple configlet model that allowed for full network automation, using a syntax familiar to all network operators, and reducing duplication and human error in operations.

Our network automation capabilities have expanded over the years from configlet-based network automation to full CI Pipelines with pre and post deployment checks and hitless code upgrades. We support the full range of network operators, from the field operations team with day-2 workflows to the network architects with Arista Validated Designs. CloudVision’s modern operating model enables customers to manage their networks with the agility and confidence needed to support their business.

We are incredibly grateful to our customers who have partnered with us over the past decade to make CloudVision the platform for enterprise networking it is today - we couldn’t have done it without you. And I couldn’t be more excited for the decade ahead!

References:

CloudVision Release

CloudVision Solutions Page