Apstra Data Center Director

Apstra Data Center Director is data center fabric management and automation software.

Data Center Director offers several benefits for data center network management and automation:

• Reliable data center operations and automation through intent-based networking (IBN)
• A single point of management for Day 0 through Day 2 operations
• Multivendor support that’s unique in the industry, including compatibility with data center equipment and software from Juniper, Cisco, Arista, and SONiC^®
• Minimal learning curve, thanks to an intuitive and point-and-click interface
• Ability to validate data center design, deployment, and operations regardless of the vendor, protocol, and topology, from core to edge
• Accelerated operations and MTTR, enabled by a single source of truth, powerful analytics, and root-cause identification

Apstra Data Center Director 6.0 focuses on new AI data center architectures, including training and inference. AI data centers present new challenges for data center operators and Data Center Director helps design, deploy, and operate these data centers in much the same way as traditional data centers.  

Data Center Director runs on data center equipment from Juniper, Cisco, and Arista, and devices running the SONiC open-source networking operating system. See the full list of supported environments here.

With Freeform Reference Designs, Data Center Director empowers organizations to customize, automate, and manage their networks across virtually any topology, from core to edge.

Data Center Director provides 3-/5-stage, spine-leaf, collapsed fabric, and Freeform reference designs. These reference designs address the challenge of creating a coherent data center network that’s more than the sum of its functioning components. Data Center Director reference designs define how the business intent of the user is mapped to enforcement mechanisms and what expectations must be satisfied for the intent to be deemed fulfilled.

Some typical use cases and functions of Data Center Director include the following:

• Lifecycle management, including unified management across data centers from a single centralized tool
• Network operational visualization with no-code Graph Explorer, integrated flow data, and monitoring with intent-based analytics
• Network operating system upgrade management
• Protection from configuration and change management errors with configuration rollback tools
• Outage root-cause analysis for accelerated MTTR
• Integrated data center interconnect (DCI) lifecycle management with seamless VXLAN stitching
• Security policy evaluation and assurance
• Configuration and event correlation between VMware environments and data center networks
• Capacity planning and utilization monitoring

Juniper offers a three-tiered licensing subscription model, enabling you to choose the one that unlocks the greatest value for your investment.

• Tier 1: Standard, which includes basic configurations and operation and Marvis AI Assistant for Data Center
• Tier 2: Advanced, which includes all the features in Standard and supports full operation, assurance, and advanced intent-based analytics (IBA)
• Tier 3: Premium, which supports large-scale multivendor environments and policy control, and includes all the features in Advanced as well as Juniper Data Center Assurance

Contact your Juniper sales representative to discuss the appropriate license tier for your data center.

The Premium license tier includes support for both Juniper and non-Juniper devices. The Standard and Advanced tiers provide support for managing Juniper devices only.

Customers have a choice of a hardware or virtual platform. View Data Center Director supported hypervisors, versions, and recommended VM resources here.

Juniper has a full slate of training and professional services available to meet your needs. Contact your Juniper Sales Representative for more information.

Yes, and Juniper and partners can provide professional services to assist you. 

Refer to the Data Center Director user guide for upgrade procedures. Note that since Data Center Director is a management tool and does not operate in the network data plane, upgrades will not impact network traffic.

Data Center Director integrates with VMware NSX-T and VMware vCenter to provide visibility and configuration validation to both network and VMware operators. This integration speeds up the resolution of any mismatches among port groups, fabric VLANs, and Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) configurations. It also accelerates the troubleshooting of any virtual networking and VM traffic issues.

Installation, user, and developer guides; implementation best practices; and additional support resources can be found here.