Extreme Networks has added network fabric capabilities to its flagship SD-WAN platform to enable customers to more securely link and manage distributed resources.
Other enhancements to the ExtremeCloud SD-WAN platform include improved automated workflows and direct connections to cloud systems such as Microsoft Azure and AWS.
“The overall idea is to help customers connect distributed sites, especially smaller branch offices, more efficiently without adding optical or management overhead,” said Rob Hull, director of product marketing at Extreme. “Especially for smaller sites that may have little or no IT staff, it gives them the service quality feel of a large site and the ability to centrally manage a large site.”
Extreme Cloud SD-WAN is based on technology the vendor acquired from Ipanema in 2022. The SD-WAN platform is designed to securely deliver workloads and applications across traditional WANs and multi-cloud service providers. Extreme says it can automatically adjust application traffic based on real-time network conditions, thereby increasing performance and improving quality of service for end users. The package is centrally managed by the vendor’s cloud-based ExtremeCloud IQ system.
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New to the ExtremeCloud SD-WAN package is support for the vendor’s Fabric Connect technology, which enables customers to automatically discover and configure fabric-enabled switches and access points. With this integration, customers can more easily extend connectivity to new sites while keeping costs low and improving security, visibility and application performance, Hull said.
“To achieve this kind of connectivity today, customers typically use some kind of metro fiber solution that they have little control over. But it’s usually point-to-point, very cumbersome and quite expensive,” Hull said. “With our fabric support, the software will discover switches and access points and automatically configure them.
Hull said customers also have the option of using low-cost Internet access circuits for WAN traffic, and the software uses IPsec over the Internet to handle fabric traffic and security.
In addition, customers can define application prioritization and application quality of service, and the SD-WAN software manipulates traffic to ensure those policies are enforced, Hull said. Customers can also segment traffic and sites for increased security.
With this release, Extreme streamlines planning and deployment workflows, enabling IT teams to perform management activities in minutes instead of hours, Hull said. These workflows include automated SaaS application discovery, initial site configuration, and application performance information. With more intuitive workflows, IT teams can more easily determine the root cause of issues and reduce the mean time to fix issues affecting users, Hull said.
The software now also supports the ability to specifically direct traffic to the Microsoft Azure and AWS clouds. Customers can set up “soft IPsec tunnels,” or soft ingresses, to these cloud services so traffic can flow directly from the remote site without having to traverse the WAN back to the data center, improving performance, Hull said.
“We basically let customers set up policy-based, secure on-premises breakout to the cloud because in today’s environment, more traffic is going to the cloud than to the data center,” Hull said.
In addition to software, Extreme has expanded its data center access line with 10G Ethernet equipment. The three-port IPE2200 device is designed for campus environments with large traffic requirements.
ExtremeCloud SD-WAN subscriptions with fabric support are expected to be available in March. IPE<> is expected to be released in <> month.