The announcement includes Juniper Apstra Cloud Services, a new suite of cloud-based, AI-enabled applications for the data center, and the new 5.0 version of Juniper Apstra.
Juniper Networks continues to fill out its core AI AI-Native Networking Platform, this time with a focus on its Apstra data center software. New to the platform is Juniper Apstra Cloud Services, a suite of cloud-based, AI-enabled applications for the data center, released along with the new 5.0 version of the Apstra software.
At its core, the multi-vendor-capable Apstra software works by keeping a real-time repository of configuration, telemetry and validation information to ensure a data center network is doing what the organization wants it to do. Companies can use Apstra’s automation capabilities to deliver consistent network and security policies for workloads across physical and virtual infrastructures. In addition, Apstra performs regular network checks to safeguard configurations.
Earlier this year, Juniper added AI-based management technology to Apstra via its flagship natural-language Mist AI and Marvis virtual network assistant (VNA) technology. Juniper’s Mist AI engine analyzes data from myriad networked access points and devices so it can detect anomalies, offer actionable resolutions, and fix problems. Marvis can detect and describe countless network problems, including persistently failing wired or wireless clients, bad cables, access-point coverage holes, problematic WAN links, and insufficient radio-frequency capacity.
Marvis VNA for Data Center is a central dashboard for customers to see and manage campus, branch, and data center resources. Using Marvis’ natural language and integrated generative AI, the VNA looks at everything from cabling and configuration to monitoring network links and other operational issues.
The 5.0 version of Apstra adds what Juniper calls App/Service Awareness and Impact Analysis, which promise to use AI support and better telemetry to help customers further control data center applications and operations.
“App/Service Awareness helps data center network operators assure application performance and availability for end users and it gives operators an understanding of application and service-to-resource mapping; that is, which network physical and virtual resources (ports, links, virtual routing functions, etc.) support which application flows,” wrote Ben Baker, senior director, cloud and data center marketing and business analysis at Juniper, in blog post.
“App/Service Awareness lets customers see where their apps connect to the network and how they use network resources. It illuminates how network infrastructure supports specific application traffic. It’s like seeing which roads cars are taking to reach different neighborhoods,” Baker stated.
The Impact Analysis component utilizes details from App/Service Awareness to reduce the cognitive load on operators managing network anomalies, which is particularly valuable during high-stress events with many alerts and large impacts on applications. It turns big data into big knowledge, Baker stated.
“Impact Analysis solves the alert fatigue problem by pinpointing exactly which application is suffering from a particular network issue,” Baker wrote. It can tell the user which applications are affected by a specific anomaly in the fabric, for example, or it can identify which anomalies in the fabric are contributing to a particular application issue.
“If a port goes down, customers can now understand the blast radius of the event outage and know which services and apps might have problems,” Baker stated. “The result is resolving outages faster and developing more robust responses, or even preventing application outages from occurring in the first place.”
App/Service Awareness and Impact Analysis are just part of a menu of over 100 new features now available with Apstra 5.0. Some of the other core new features include enhanced Ethernet VPN-Virtual Extensible (EVPN) analytics to make complex EVPN operations easier, and other analytics services aimed at helping customers manage intent-based networks.
“Juniper Apstra 5.0 also expands telemetry collection in important ways that will enable future AIOps applications,” Baker wrote. “And broader coverage of metrics related to switch health, optics performance, power supplies, fans, and temperature provide a more comprehensive data baseline that can enable future AI-Native predictive and proactive maintenance, so operators can replace components before they fail and impact application availability.”
Read more about Juniper’s AI networking plans
Juniper advances AI networking software with congestion control, load balancing: Juniper extended its platform with a package dubbed Operations for AI (Ops4AI). The additions enable congestion control, load-balancing and management capabilities for systems controlled by the vendor’s core Junos and Juniper Apstra data center intent-based networking software.
Juniper expands AI management features for wired, wireless networks: Juniper is extending its Marvis Minis to the wired network domain and increasing its ability to identify and remediate collaboration app performance issues.
Juniper amps up AI networking plans: “Our 800GE platforms [are] designed to manage AI training workloads effectively,” said Julius Francis, senior director of product marketing and strategy for Juniper. “We are now expanding the capabilities of our 800GE platforms to cater to a wider range of WAN use cases while advancing scalable network capacity and density.”
HPE-Juniper’s AI story resonates, but customer concerns linger: The combined company will target Cisco with a focus on AI, but HPE must address concerns about product overlap, talent retention and channel partner conflicts.
Juniper offers AI pricing incentives, education programs: Juniper Networks is offering education programs and pricing incentives to accelerate enterprise adoption of AI-based technologies. The vendor rolled out its Blueprint for AI-Native Acceleration, which offers a variety of options that enterprise customers can use to streamline adoption, boost skills, and gain exposure to the potential commercial, technical and operational hurdles of AI.
Juniper targets data-center management with Apstra upgrade: Apstra 4.2.0 includes intent-based analytics probes for telemetry and network visibility as well as support for HashiCorp’s Terraform network provisioning tool.
