Three Benefits to Managed SD-WAN with MyAryaka Portal

IT Infrastructure and Operations leaders responsible for Network and Application performance need deeper and complete visibility in real-time to ensure that both are performing at optimal levels. Enterprise network architectures today are complex with globally distributed branch offices that connect to multiple data centers, public clouds and a broad range of cloud/SaaS applications. Add to this set-up remote and mobile users (employees, customers and partners) that need reliable and fast access to these business-critical applications, it is clear that in such a hybrid network environment, monitoring and managing applications can get very complicated without proper tools at hand.

SD-WAN solutions can help overcome traditional WAN approaches limitations by offering reliable connectivity, fast application performance, and best-in-class security, without adding network complexity and extra costs. As per Gartner, a leading technology analyst firm, the SD-WAN market is growing from $1.9 billion in 2017 to over $18.4 billion in 2020, indicating the market is about to go through an accelerated phase of growth.

The benefits of an SD-WAN approach are substantial compared to traditional WAN approaches, but unfortunately many SD-WAN approaches add another layer of virtual functionality that needs to be monitored separately. Enterprises have an average of 11 visibility tools to monitor their extended WAN infrastructure, and SD-WAN often adds another one into the mix.

Unlike many other SD-WAN solutions, Aryaka offers a global, fully managed SD-WAN delivered as-a Service. There is no need for separate visibility into an SD-WAN overlay and a physical underlay. MyAryaka^TM, which is a cloud-based Central Visibility and Orchestration Management portal, provides visibility into the entire enterprise WAN solution. Enterprises can significantly improve the time it takes them to provision network changes at branches due to MyAryaka’s simplified operation, orchestration and zero touch configuration. Trouble-shooting is straightforward with complete end-to-end visibility into the entire Enterprise WAN, with consolidated views into application performance down to virtual tunnels as well as individual physical link performance.

Below are key three benefits MyAryaka provides to enterprise customers.

1) Single Pane of Glass:

Being able to use one single pane of glass to monitor network and applications is a boon for any Network Operations Manager. Users can troubleshoot effectively and quickly identify the root cause of the issue at hand. Having access to statistics in one visibility portal visualizing application, optimization, QoS to network and link statistics such as utilization, latency, packet loss, connection times, TCP statistics helps connect the dots and speeds up time to resolution.

The figure below shows different kinds of applications at a branch location. Applications and their behavior are central to any enterprise and hence real-time visibility into applications performance is key.

Users can deep dive into a specific application to get more details such as optimization, performance and traffic statistics pertaining to the application.

Network elements that directly affect application performance are packet loss, latency and jitter. Here is a good article from SDX Central on Packet loss, Latency and Jitter and application performance for additional background on this topic.

Real-time applications like voice and video in particular get adversely impacted by high packet loss. To mitigate any packet loss, Aryaka combines its private Layer 2 Core Network, which provides zero jitter and minimal packet loss, with Aryaka’s SmartLINK feature on the last mile to ensure a consistent and reliable application performance anywhere and on any device.

The two figures below are snapshots of consistent latency and zero packet loss between Shanghai in China and San Jose in USA over a one-year period!

Consistent Latency

Zero Packet Loss

2) Central Orchestrator:

Managing business policy from a central orchestrator as opposed to managing each site is a boon for any Network and Operations Manager. Central orchestration and zero touch configuration reduces operational expenditure for personnel to provision and manage their WAN equipment. Enterprises can also use a template approach to replicate similar features for a group or all the sites, that can significantly simplify the tasks at hand.

Below is a figure of how Orchestrator can be used as a central configuration and provisioning tool to manage configuration.

3) Reporting/Dashboarding:

Reporting and dashboarding is important for enterprises as it gives a high level and quick snapshot of important insights such as network and application utilization and health status. MyAryaka portal gives all customers access to an enterprise overview dashboard that they can use as a starting point before digging into deeper details.

MyAryaka is built on Next Gen Application Architecture

All these benefits are not possible without a robust and scalable architecture of the visibility portal itself. Next gen technology ensures high performance and low page load time of the portal itself.

With this in mind we redesigned MyAryaka and built it on open-source and scalable next gen technologies such as Flux and Vuex which is also used for example by Facebook for developing client-side web applications. In addition, MyAryaka also exposes APIs that provide programmatic access to service functionality and data that can be used to integrate into an enterprise’s existing applications. The redesigned portal also now supports:

• An intuitive user interface (UI) that makes the user experience more intuitive and comes with greater performance.
• An easy-to-use Help function to provide faster help on topics users need for a better experience.
• A responsive design that automatically adjusts for phone, tablet and computer screen sizes so users get the best viewing experience on any device.
• All leading web browers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and Opera.

Download the MyAryaka Solution Brief for additional information or, if you are already one of our more than 800 customers, log in to the redesigned MyAryaka today.

About the author

Sindhuja Kolluru

Sindhu is a Product Manager at Aryaka, and is passionate about advancing technology to deliver customer solutions. She holds a MBA from University of Texas and a technical degree from Indian Institute of technology.