Network configuration management can be a daunting task for IT organizations. They often struggle to impose effective processes. Unfortunately, the automation capabilities of existing tools for IT leaders and network engineers are limited, forcing engineers to make manual remediation changes via command line interface (CLI). This backlog of manual processes can lead to errors and complicate what is already a complex and time-consuming undertaking.
A recent report shows that only 34% of network management professionals are completely satisfied with the tools and processes they use for network configuration management — a tumultuous set up for the year ahead. Another three out of four IT organizations are at least somewhat concerned that their configuration management process could cause errors that lead to security issues or performance problems. These errors can strike any organization, even those with a world-class reputation for network operations. In October 2021, Facebook suffered a global outage of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp that lasted more than seven hours. Facebook publicly attributed the outage to a bad network configuration change. In fact, EMA research found that 25.6% of all network service outages and degradations were caused by manual configuration errors.
To ensure network changes are made correctly, organizations must look to overcome obstacles around modernization of IT/engineering departments, configuration compliance and network complexity.
Understand the needs of network employees and IT leadership
Members of traditional infrastructure teams, such as network architecture, network engineering and information security, are more likely to be satisfied with the tools and processes they use for network configuration management processes. With that said, members of application development, cloud architecture and data center operations teams are less satisfied. This contrast suggests that the traditional network engineers are comfortable with their existing processes. However, DevOps and cloud professionals want network configuration management to be faster, more agile and more predictable.
This isn’t surprising. Over the past few years c-suite executives and high level directors have struggled to tie their business goals to investments in internal infrastructure management — and as a result have stunted the modernization of their IT/engineering departments. With network engineers still operating under the same mindset as when they first entered the industry, they’ve continued to value their contributions based on individual commands (serving as modern day heroes by resolving IT issues on a case-by-case basis) versus utilizing evolving new strategies. Network engineers must be encouraged to embrace innovative cloud programs/technologies as part of their “value-driving” contributions, which will grow closer in line with overall business success.
Embrace configuration compliance
Most IT organizations know their network configuration management processes need improvement. They know they are at risk of fatal errors. The question is, how can this be fixed? Configuration compliance is an essential starting point. Network engineers and architects generally know the intent of their network. They know how they want the network to behave and what network and security policies they want to impose—but they aren’t confident that all of the infrastructure is configured to reflect this intent.
Overall, a lack of confidence from the data center to the cloud and down to the access layer, is alarming. A compliance failure in any domain can impact the performance and security of other domains. In response, network managers need to impose end-to-end configuration compliance controls in order to avoid any significant errors. Determining if the network is in compliance requires a series of configuration checks at regular intervals for every device in the network, and the result of those checks must be reported to the team so issues can be remediated. Without automation, this is a real challenge for an enterprise because of the large number of devices they manage and how often these checks need to run.
Evaluating the sources of network complexity
Network complexity impacts the effectiveness of network configuration management. With more devices under management, changes can take longer and become more prone to error. EMA found that 31% of IT organizations consider a shortage of skilled network personnel a major challenge to network operations, making it the number-two challenge to overall NetOps success. That same research found the number-five and number-six challenges to NetOps success were a lack of defined process (22%) and the lack of change management controls (21%).
The onset of the pandemic accelerated the inevitable move towards digital transformation, pushing organizations further along this journey in a shorter amount of time than anticipated. Unfortunately, this means that networks are not being managed as they should be. Taking action now to implement proper configuration management changes will help to mitigate misconfigurations due to network complexity and properly prepare organizations for the future as they adjust to the increasingly connected world.
Network configuration management will be an ongoing source of anxiety and confusion if issues with infrastructure, configuration compliance and network complexity are not addressed. Only with the right tools and strategies can the exploded network be managed properly to further support organizational growth.
