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Solution

Network infrastructure automation

Automate networking tasks across multiple devices and clouds

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Your challenge

The shift to dynamic infrastructure, driven by cloud adoption, has forced organizations to reconsider all aspects of their infrastructure, including the network. Traditional networking processes pose significant challenges because they don’t scale well to the cloud. Common issues include:

  • Manual ticketing systems delay networking changes and hinder release velocity.
  • Human-initiated misconfigurations increase risk of network outages and vulnerabilities.
  • Costly and time consuming audits are required to ensure compliance.

Network Infrastructure Automation (NIA) with HashiCorp Terraform and HashiCorp Consul allows organizations to automate key processes while ensuring they easily scale across cloud and on-premises environments.

Automate networking changes across your IT environment

Network Infrastructure Automation (NIA) allows enterprises to automate workflows and implement repeatable application deployment lifecycles. Consul-Terraform-Sync (CTS) leverages the power of Terraform’s provider ecosystem and Consul’s service networking capabilities to implement NIA. 61% of organizations have already or expect to gain the benefit of these integrations over the next 12 months.

HashiCorp Products used
  • Terraform
  • Consul

Outcomes

  • 1

    Scale to existing resources

    Eliminate dependency on manual ticketing systems while maintaining control. NIA handles common tasks such as firewall policy updates for applications, freeing networking teams to focus on higher-value work like system architecture improvements.
  • 2

    Automate at your pace

    Minimize the risk of human error and misconfigurations with flexible automation capabilities. Choose an incremental approach to allow for planned configuration reviews. Or embrace full end-to-end automation for superior outcomes at scale.
  • 3

    Auditing made easier

    Automatically catalog every change made to your environment. Provide a comprehensive forensic trail to keep compliance teams in the loop and analyze issues as they arise.

Instead of taking days to deploy new resources, now [with Consul-Terraform-Sync] we're talking about minutes and the average time [is] two or three minutes depending on the network load of the environments [with] no humans involved.

DANIELE VAZZOLA
INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEER AT WORKDAY

Automate infrastructure and networking end-to-end

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Set up, provision, and manage cloud infrastructure through infrastructure as code

HashiCorp Terraform provides infrastructure as code workflows for provisioning, compliance, and management across any public cloud, private datacenter, and third-party service.

  • Multi-cloud compliance and management to provision and manage infrastructure with one workflow.
  • Familiar, infrastructure as code approach to networking.
  • Supports a robust ecosystem.
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    Automate service networking across clouds

    HashiCorp Consul uses a shared registry to create a single source of truth and secures services across any runtime, platform, and cloud.

    • Network middleware automation with service discovery for dynamic reconfiguration throughout the services lifecycle.
    • Service registry and health monitoring to provide a real-time directory of all services including health status.
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      Drive network automation with infrastructure as code

      Consul-Terraform-Sync uses Consul’s service registry as the source of truth for all infrastructure updates and leverages Terraform as the underlying automation tool to drive changes in the network infrastructure via integrations with ecosystem providers.

      • Executes one or more automation tasks based on updates from the Consul service catalog.
      • Each task consists of a runbook automation written as a compatible Terraform module using resources and data sources for the underlying network infrastructure through ecosystem integrations.
      • The Terraform agent runs on the same node as a Consul agent for easier integration.

          Learn from your peers

          paloalto Networks
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          A10 Networks Logo
          AWS logo
          F5 Networks Logo
          Cisco Logo
          Cloud Software Group
          VMware Logo
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          Leverage a robust provider ecosystem and native partner integrations

          HashiCorp has partnered with many vendors to create native integrations between Consul and their solutions. Consul is simply deployed into the desired environment and configured to enable end-to-end automation of certain networking tasks for any of our ecosystem partners’ solutions.

          Network Infrastructure Automation

          Learn why it's crucial — in the cloud adoption era — to use infrastructure as code not only for automating and templatizing your system's required compute and database resources, but also its networking infrastructure, such as firewalls, load balancers, routers, etc.

          Armon Dadgar avatar

          Armon Dadgar

          Co-founder and CTO at HashiCorp

          Learn from your peers

          Learn how Terraform and Consul HashiCorp can help your organization automate infrastructure and networking end-to-end.

          Explore our resources