Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 07 | Page 70

CASE STUDY
Router and MX960 3D Universal Edge Router . The MX480 and MX960 platforms are SDN-ready routers that deliver high performance , reliability and scalability for service provider and cloud applications . The MX480 offers 5.76 Tbps of system capacity and the MX960 routers are designed to deliver over 10 Tbps of system capacity . They both support a wide range of Layer 2 ( L2 ) and Layer 3 ( L3 ) VPN services ; fully-integrated routing , switching and security services ; and investment protecting scale and density to accommodate future growth .
The network is orchestrated by Junos Space Connectivity Services Director , which enables Interxion to quickly and reliably design ,
provision and deliver new services across its network . Connectivity Services Director also performs automated service discovery , resource management , service design , error-free provisioning , troubleshooting and monitoring . It runs on the Juniper Networks Junos Space Management Platform and uses all of the features and functions that are available through Junos Space , including schema-based configuration management , clustering and geo-redundancy .
“ Junos Space Connectivity Services Director is part of our cloud orchestration platform ,” added Chauhan . “ We use its APIs to communicate directly with the Juniper systems , giving us an abstraction layer between our customer-facing systems and the network hardware . This gives us the flexibility to make changes to either system independently .”
The first phase of the deployment offers L2 connectivity and a second phase is now being rolled out , offering full L3 connectivity . Interxion used Xantaro , Juniper ’ s Elite partner , to project manage the rollout and install the network . The Juniper Networks Professional Services team helped with the design and re-engineering of Interxion ’ s business processes .
Xantaro ’ s professional services team worked closely with Juniper and Interxion to ensure that the complete solution met the requirements for both service design and automation goals . Xantaro also made sure that the transition to operation and ongoing support was efficient by completing an extensive knowledge transfer process at

WE RECOGNISED THAT NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE IN THE CLOUD , THERE HAS TO BE A RELIABLE AND SECURE PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE TO UNDERPIN CLOUD SERVICES AND THAT ’ S WHAT INTERXION PROVIDES .

Xantaro ’ s Technical Assistance Centre ( XTAC ) for the end-to-end solution .
“ All the individuals we worked with were really credible and really knew their subject ,” said Chauhan . “ They were each expert in their area , whether that was the hardware , the operating system , or the orchestration platform . They allowed us to fully-leverage the platform we ’ d bought , plugging any holes in our own knowledge .”
Result
RESULT
Interxion successfully deployed its new network platform , migrating its existing customers across multiple data centres and providing access to AWS , Microsoft Azure and other major cloud service providers . The entire project only took three months to prepare and three months to execute , including bringing the new regions online and adding more reporting capabilities . This included the time taken for Interxion to educate its teams on the new networking hardware and software and to re-code its own software stack in order to integrate the Juniper system .
Advanced features on the MX Series routers have simplified operations and accelerated service turn-up . Interxion can now segregate customer data using L2 VPNs instead of the basic VLANs its legacy switches supported . This allows it to segment its clients ’ data into more granular VPNs that can be automatically created across its network , regardless of the number of hops , rather than manually provisioning segmentation on each hop and having to manually provision and map VLANs from one hop to the next . Now it only takes Interxion a few minutes to provision a new service .
In addition to automation , the introduction of Junos Space Connectivity Services Director has also increased service uptime and reduced risk .
“ Our new network means that we can bring on more and more cloud service providers , enriching our platform and increasing value to our customers ,” said Chauhan . “ And the added capacity means we have plenty of room for growth . Now we can scale up as well as scale out , so we can add capacity ondemand , wherever we need it .”
Next steps
NEXT STEPS
Next , Interxion plans to introduce L3 connectivity services for their customers , which wasn ’ t possible on its previous switched network infrastructure .
“ This will be another massive benefit of the new network ,” concluded Chauhan . “ Without it , we ’ d have been limited to cloud service providers who only operate at L2 , but now we can serve customers looking for L3 services as well , such as SaaS providers . The industry has focused a lot on the software and the cloud , but it all needs robust connectivity . We ’ ve built a service to address that , a fully-automated service in the marketplace .” •
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