Converting physical firewalls to virtual ones is a challenge. The steps required to achieve on-premise network firewall virtualization are multiple and complex, including: purchase of technology, software configuration, integration of vendor licensing, configuration and policy settings, orchestration and monitoring, and testing and maintenance. Automation is key to smoothing the way, but DevOps and DevSecOps still demand a high level of expertise and investment. What really makes the difference is intelligent orchestration, which leverages automation to bring speed and scale. Imagine what virtual firewall management could look like if you had the benefit of Intelligent Orchestration. Let’s find out.
DevOps and DevSecOps still demand a high level of expertise and investment. What really makes the difference is intelligent orchestration, which leverages automation to bring speed and scale.
The Difference between Automation and Intelligent Orchestration
Before we look at the key elements of intelligent orchestration, let’s make sure we are all on the same page and understand what automation and orchestration offer, the benefits and how they differ.
Automation
Automation generally refers to automating a single task. Security and development teams in all industries have recognised that incorporating automation is essential. They are looking to automation to reduce operational complexity and improve efficiency, at scale.
Orchestration
Orchestration is about automating a process or workflow that involves many steps across multiple disparate systems. Once you have automation in your processes, your next step is to orchestrate them to run without manual intervention by initiating the right workflows, with the right parameters, at the right time, and highlighting the relevant information on which to take action.
When it comes to on-premise virtual firewalls, this orchestration capability transforms the management of your entire environment.
Three Key Elements of Intelligent Orchestration for On-Premise Virtual Firewalls
Intelligent orchestration is a powerful tool which allows you to visualize and control your virtual network firewalls across all on-premise environments, and there are three key characteristics which make all the difference.
Intelligent orchestration is a powerful tool which allows you to visualize and control your virtual network firewalls across all on-premise environments…
Simplifies complex operations
A platform built on intelligent orchestration automates the full lifecycle of on‑premise virtual firewalls from deploy to scale to optimize, including licensing, zero-touch deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and machine intelligence. Since it takes care of the full lifecycle, it’s very simple to add new virtual firewalls, adjust existing ones, re-allocate server or firewall resources, and adjust CPU or memory resources without the need for any DevOps work. It’s a highly flexible approach which means security changes can be implemented in minutes instead of days.
Optimizes resource allocation
Intelligent orchestration provides a constantly updated snapshot of resource utilization. It uses this data to make recommendations on best allocation in the context of your entire deployment of virtual firewalls. Its goal is to optimize performance for throughput and security. It optimizes the resource allocation of servers and tunes firewall sizing based on network use. So, the “intelligent” in intelligent orchestration refers to automation of scaling. It doesn’t just show you what you need to do, it does what you need it to do, based on your environments’ needs. This brings predictability to managing the virtual infrastructure in your network.
Aggregates the views of all the systems
Finally, the availability of all resources is viewed as a whole, so you can see your available virtual firewall capacity in a single UI and then intelligent orchestration can automatically meet the needs of the different environments in the network. This is dynamic control that only an intelligent orchestrator can achieve. It serves up a consolidated view of all the compute servers and virtual machines and their state, for example: the overall health of the system, server resource allocation, VMs and network utilization. No more patchwork of tools, but instead a single pane of glass with a simple interface, giving end-to-end visibility and control from one console. This enables IT teams to automate tasks across multiple platforms, making your team more nimble when responding to change.
Intelligent Orchestration Delivers Business Agility
While the conversion of physical firewalls to virtual ones is a challenge, there is help in the form of automation and intelligent orchestration. Tightly integrating virtualization with intelligent orchestration and automation gives you speed, simplicity and savings when it comes to your network firewalls. This frees network security staff up to focus on strategic issues without sacrificing security performance and reliability. You will benefit from business agility and you’ll be in a position to run your businesses smarter and more efficiently.
Discover how the Corsa Security Orchestrator provides intelligent orchestration to on-premise virtual network firewalls.