RtBrick Management Suite

Tools you will need for this job

RtBrick's software has been designed for out-of-the-box automation. All you will need to operate your network are a few simple tools:

•A web browser

•A standard DHCP server (For your zero-touch provisioning server)

•A management LAN

•RtBrick Management Suite - which is web-based software and is also available as open-source software

RtBrick's Martin Steger describes the elements required to manage a dis-aggregated network

First, create your network...

Step 1. Before you start

Create a PoD (Point of Distribution/Delivery) in your resource inventory. Assign each switch’s information including its role (e.g. leaf, spine, OLT), its HW platform and a unique id such as its serial number.

Configure a management Zero-Touch Provisioning server (one per PoD or one for many). Copy the software images and startup configurations from this ZTP server.

Order your bare metal switches and take delivery in warehouse.

Step 2. Physical installation

Install and cable your switches. Install the ZTP servers on your management LAN.

Step 3. Switch on power!

Step 4. All configuration happens automatically

The network operating system (RBFS) self-registers. All microservices self-start. All of your switches discover their physical interfaces and detect their neighbors.

Your network fabric is now ready for service provisioning

Then add users

Use open interfaces to your own service inventory. You can provision subscribers or connections via REST APIs.

Finally, in-life operations

Operating an RtBrick network brings many benefits from the world of the cloud-natives, who have learned how to operate at web-scale. Automated software version management reduces risk of human error, with software rolled-out automatically. RBMS maintains your own list of available s/w images, revisions and lifecycle state. Tools are available to simplify repair - for example you can ‘clone a switch’ for zero-touch replacement of broken hardware.

New micro-services can be updated and tested independently of other software.

And you get in-depth alarm and status management, with all metrics  exposed: fan speed, temperatures, data rates, counters… Any threshold and abnormality can be configured and automated.

And you get a rich set of open tools

You can access to a community of open Web 2.0 tools to add even more functionality, including:

•Grafana – a visualization tool

•Graylog – a log management system

•Prometheus – a monitoring tool

•SNMP and GNMi