In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, manual approaches to networking and security cannot keep up. Even organizations that have implemented some level of automation, such as scripting, often face backlogs in network and security teams. The need for an accurate, real-time source of data to trigger and drive network automation workflows is more pressing than ever.
Enter the PacketFabric Cloud Router module for Network Infrastructure Automation (NIA), a tool designed to streamline and automate your network connectivity tasks.
Created for Consul Terraform Sync (CTS), this innovative module enables application teams to easily create, update, and delete PacketFabric Cloud Routers based on application deployment needs leveraging Consul’s service catalog. From there, customers can build and manage connections between AWS, Google, and Azure Cloud networks, while eliminating the need for time-consuming manual IT or networking tickets.
A New Era of Multi-Cloud Connectivity
The PacketFabric Cloud Router CTS module allows application teams to swiftly establish multi-cloud connectivity to connect disparately deployed microservices, simplifying the previously challenging terrain of networking tasks.
With this module, customers can conveniently add or remove connections between AWS and Google Cloud through PacketFabric’s Network-as-a-Service platform. This process streamlines the creation of Cloud Routers and the integration of essential components for both AWS and Google Cloud, making your multi-cloud networking more efficient.
How It Works
The PacketFabric Cloud Router CTS module enables customers to create a PacketFabric Cloud Router based on changes in Consul’s service catalog, along with either standalone or redundant connections to AWS and Google Cloud. This automation process includes the creation of an AWS Direct Connect with a Private Virtual Interface (VIF), as well as a Google VLAN Attachment and a Google Cloud Router.
To kick-start your journey with the module, you only need to provide a minimum set of information, such as the PacketFabric Point-of-Presence, cloud provider regions, credentials, and VPC information.
Consul: A Catalyst for Network Infrastructure Automation
The rapid evolution of cloud technology, coupled with the increasing complexity of network infrastructure, requires a solution that can swiftly adapt.
This is where Consul comes in, with CTS running in near real-time to keep up with the rapid rate of change. CTS employs Consul’s service catalog as a data source, containing networking information about services and continuously monitoring those services. Terraform acts as the underlying automation tool, utilizing the Terraform provider ecosystem to drive relevant changes to the network infrastructure.
With NIA, dynamic updates to network infrastructure devices can be triggered by service changes. Each task in CTS consists of a runbook automation written as a CTS-compatible Terraform module, using resources and data sources for the underlying network infrastructure. The consul-terraform-sync daemon runs on the same node as a Consul agent.
CTS is available both as an open source and enterprise distribution. To get started with CTS OSS, follow the Network Infrastructure Automation introduction tutorial (link below) or read more about CTS Enterprise.
New to PacketFabric’s Terraform and Consul?
Here are a few resource links to help you get started:
- Cloud Router Documentation
- PacketFabric Terraform Registry (and documentation)
- Terraform CTS Module for PacketFabric Cloud Router
- Network Infrastructure Automation Introduction tutorial
- CTS Enterprise
- Common use cases for Consul
Learn More
Already familiar with Terraform and want to see how you can add network infrastructure to the mix? Check out our services, request a demo, or register an account to get started today.