With the recent release of Itential 23.2, we introduced Compliance Plans, which are dynamic reports based on aggregating compliance audits from multiple Golden Configuration templates. They enable teams to generate reporting across both CLI devices and API-driven platforms and services, a must in today’s hybrid infrastructure environments. The importance of network configuration compliance cannot be overstated, and because network infrastructure is getting more complex all the time, we’re committed to constantly improving our capabilities for config management and compliance reporting.
Compliance Plans change the game for configuration compliance by streamlining the way the network team delivers key compliance insights to applications and application teams. Modern applications operate across diverse, distributed network and IT infrastructure. This infrastructure can dynamically change, which is why regular, comprehensive compliance reports are critical.
For network engineers at most organizations, delivering compliance reporting across multi-domain, multi-cloud, multi-vendor infrastructure requires the use of multiple tools and a significant time investment. This doesn’t scale to the speed that modern applications need. The underlying infrastructure for an application might be compliant today, but after changes are made that week, it might be out of compliance again even though the application still works. That’s where dynamic, rapid, consistent reporting is key.
Compliance Plans allow network teams and application teams to efficiently deliver compliance reporting across all CLI and API network infrastructure using one platform that has visibility into everything.
How Compliance Plans Work
Compliance Plans are essentially a dynamic way to aggregate multiple Golden Configuration templates to query the configuration of devices and services of different type, vendor, and network domain all in the same Compliance Plan to generate a single report. These templates in a plan map to the infrastructure resources that an application is using. These reports can be delivered to application teams on a schedule in an automated fashion.
Golden Configuration templates in Itential are configuration management assets that users can build to assign configuration policies to different categories of devices, based on Itential’s ability to federate network inventory across every type, vendor, and domain. They’re powerful tools because of their flexibility, allowing network teams to automatically make compliance checks, leverage the templates in remediation workflows to automate remediation, and now, leverage them with Compliance Plans to build comprehensive compliance reports effortlessly.
Compliance Plans can be generated on demand in response to a request, turning a process that historically involved swivel chairing between platforms and multiple teams collaborating into just a few clicks in Itential. They can also be automated and scheduled to be delivered to application teams on a regular cadence. Compliance Plans streamline the way network teams can deliver compliance insights to key stakeholders, ensuring security assurance across a complex, multi-domain network landscape.
To see Compliance Plans in action, watch this to demo that walks through Golden Configuration templates, building a Compliance Plan, and running it to view the generated reports.
Why It’s Critical to Centralize CLI & API Configuration Management
Network teams need tools that provide a more comprehensive view of the different network resources across multiple domains that enable modern applications and services. Most tools in use today offer limited visibility, either restricted to a single domain, a single vendor, or a single device type. Ultimately, the application owners and/or customers for network services are the ones who report network problems they encounter, and because the underlying IT infrastructure resources are delivered as a unified ‘whole’ to them, teams need reporting that reflects these services.
Compliance Plans are a tool that network engineers can use to ensure the configuration of distributed network resources is standardized and in compliance for a given application or service. Because different applications and services have their own unique requirements, the ability to automatically generate reports with a single platform can be incredibly transformative, enabling network teams to scale their capabilities to meet the needs of modern business. With a combination of CLI-driven network devices and API-enabled cloud services and IT systems, bringing compliance reporting into one central platform helps organizations accelerate without increasing risk.
Watch this demo to see how Compliance Plans work, or check out our full range of configuration management features that enable teams to scale up their capabilities to maintain compliance across complex network and IT infrastructure.
Tags: CLI Configuration Management Golden Configuration Itential Automation Platform Network Management
Rich Martin
Director of Technical Marketing ‐ Itential
Rich Martin is the Director of Technical Marketing at Itential. Previously, Rich has worked at several networking vendors as a both a Pre-Sales Systems Engineer and Systems Engineering Manager but started his career with a background in software development and Linux. He has a passion for automation in the networking domain, and at Itential he helps networking teams to get started quickly and move forward successfully on their network automation journey.
