In this blog post
The Network CoE was established to focus on Network solution design, Network design, Advanced Network troubleshooting, Network consulting, Network automation, and competency development in Next Generation Network technologies. It is also involved in conducting Network and Network security assessments in the customer’s IT infrastructure environments focused on optimization and transformation.
Network and Network Security Certification drive
As part of Network CoE, we focus on upgrading the skill sets of L1, L2, L3 Network engineers so that their competency levels are high. This is achieved by Network certification drives organized by Network COE. There are many certification drives focusing on Routing, Switching, Network security, Data Center Technologies, and Network automation driven by Network CoE like CCNA, CCNP, PCNSE, CCNA Data Center and Cisco Certified DevNet Associate. There is an active participation in these certification drives, and many GAVS engineers got themselves certified.
Standard Best Practices and Standard Operating Procedures
In Network CoE, the focus is on industry best practices. Standard Operating Practices are created for various technologies within Networking and Network security and used for Network operations. We have Standard Operating Practices for Monitoring, NOC, switching, routing, WIFI, load balancers and Network security.
Next generation Network Transformation
The Network and Network Security Industry is undergoing key changes in terms of next generation technologies,Next Generation Firewall, Software defined Networks, WIFI 6 standard. There is an added impetus to Network automation, Intent based Networking. We enable Network transformation by enabling these technologies in customer environments.
Network Automation
We are focusing on Network automation of Standard Operating practices pertaining to Network and Network Security technologies. Instead of usual script-based automation, we focus on automation through Network Programmability via standard API interfaces. This gives much finer control and increased functionality in automation.
Network Assessments and Recommendations
We undertake Network Assessments which focuses on Networking and Network security infrastructure including devices and monitoring tools. We focus on various device types like routers, switches, firewall, WIFI controllers, WIFI access points, load balancers, Layer-3 switches, collaboration devices, SD-WAN devices, MPLS devices, VPN devices, IPS devices, etc. We also focus on Network monitoring tools. We have a GAVS tool called GAVS topology mapper which can be used to discover network topology and its serves as one of the inputs during Network assessment. We apply standard best practices and come out with findings and recommendations. The recommendations will be directed towards Network optimization and/or Network transformation.
Solutions for Pain Points
We identify customer paint points in Networking and Network security areas and address it with comprehensive solutions. A case in point is where we designed a disaster recovery solution for an enterprise network, where the main site and DR site had different subnet schemes and for the Disaster recovery solution to work the VMs in main site and DR site need to have the same IP address.
Network Maturity Model
In GAVS, we have a Network Maturity Model. We have various levels with the Model. We use the Network Maturity Model to rate Network and Network Security setup.
| Network Maturity Levels | |
| Score | Level |
| 5 | Optimised |
| 4 | Managed |
| 3 | Defined |
| 2 | Repeatable |
| 1 | Ad hoc |
Network Design
We undertake Network design of Green Field projects (New Network) or Network re-design of Brownfield projects (Existing Network). A case in point is where we re-designed an existing data center for better resiliency.
Data Center Design
We have designed Data Centers with N+1 Redundancy based on Cisco Nexus 9K and ACI as part of Data Center move and consolidation. We used spine and leaf architecture for high availability. We have migrated Catalyst 6000 based data center to a Data Center with Nexus 9K.
Advanced Network and Network Security Services
We undertake several Advanced Network and Network security services. We have done large scale Cisco Identity Service Engine (ISE) Hardening and upgrade. We also migrated to DMVPN for several hundreds of sites.
Advanced Network and Network SecurityTroubleshooting
There are situations when a problem will involve two or more towers, e.g., Networking, server applications etc., we get involved and crack these kinds of problems.
For example, a problem which involved DHCP Network service running in a server. The DHCP network service became slow. We systematically analysed and found out that the actual problem is the server slowness and not the DHCP Network service. In another situation, we found out that DMZ firewall was having 90% CPU utilization which led to connection drops of Applications and we fixed it by upgrading the firewall devices.
Conclusion
We continue to partner with GAVS Customer success managers to provide unique experience to customers in the Networking area.
If you have any questions about the CoE, you may reach out to them at COE_NETWORK@gavstech.com
CoE Team Members
- Ambika Tripathi
- Andrew Ellis
- AvineshYokanathan
- Deepak Narayanaswamy
- Durai Murugan Prakash
- Faheem koyatty
- Ganesh Kumar J
- Gayathri R
- Ibrahim Silver Nooruddin
- JettiTarakesh
- Justin Robinson
- Krishnakumar R
- Nabiulla A
- Nandhini Prabhu
- Navaneetha Krishnan
- Palanisamy Sakthivel
- Prasad R
- Rajeshkanna S
- Ravichandran V
- Shafi H
- Shamini P
- Shanmukha Ganesh
- Sridhar
- Srijith
- Suresh Chander
- Venkata Manikrishna Soma
- Vishal Manuhar
