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New Features

Note: Juniper Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0 is an early adopter release. In case you encounter any issues, you can contact Juniper Networks Technical Assistance Center (JTAC).

This section describes the features available in Juniper Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0.

Device Life-Cycle Management

Device life-cycle management (LCM) encompasses the entire lifecycle of the device, from installing the device onsite, bringing the device under management, monitoring the device when it is in production, and finally decommissioning the device.

Juniper Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0 extends device life-cycle management to the following platform and provides the following additional features:

  • Support for EX Series Switches—In addition to routers, you can onboard Juniper Networks® EX4300 Series Switches to Paragon Automation.

    In this release of Paragon Automation, you can view the details of the supported EX Series Switches on the Inventory page (Inventory > Devices > Network Inventory) and manage them from the Troubleshoot Devices page (Observability > Health > Troubleshoot Devices).

    Among the EX4300 device models, only the EX4300-48MP model supports telemetry. For the complete list of devices supported in this release, see Supported Junos OS Releases, Devices, and Browsers.

  • Import brownfield devices to a network implementation plan—Paragon Automation enables you to import brownfield devices to a network implementation plan. Paragon Automation populates the device information in the plan. You can use advanced monitoring and configuration features of Paragon Automation such as automatic software upgrade to manage the brownfield devices.

    [See Add a Network Implementation Plan.]

  • Select IPv4 or IPv6 addresses for device onboarding— Paragon Automation provides the Select IP Version drop-down list (Inventory > Network Inventory > Add Devices) from which you can select the IP version (IPv4 or IPv6) to be used in the outbound SSH command generated for device onboarding.

    IPv4 is the default IP version that is used in the outbound SSH command.

    [See Add a Juniper Device.]

Observability

Paragon Automation enables you to view your entire network topology in real time, monitor network health, be notified of any anomalies in the network, and also get guidance on the remediation of these anomalies. With observability, Paragon Automation monitors and analyzes the network and its components by using key performance indicators (KPIs), device logs, and metrics, and notifies you about network issues through alerts and alarms. Additionally, Paragon Automation runs connectivity tests using synthetic traffic to identify connection issues between devices in your network. The timely detection of anomalies enables you to take prompt action and minimize the impact of any issues that occur.

Juniper Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0 provides the following additional observability features:

  • Provision a labeled -switched path (LSP)—Paragon Automation enables you to provision LSPs (tunnels) by using Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP).

    You can create a tunnel with provisioning type as PCEP on the Tunnels tab of the Topology (Observability > Topology) page. The Path Computation Element (PCE) creates and provisions a PCE-initiated tunnel.

    Note: The PCE-triggered secondary path is not supported for Cisco devices.

    You can create RSVP, SRV6, and segment-routed LSPs, and view the LSPs on the topology map.

    [See Add a Tunnel.]

  • View historical data for links and tunnels—Paragon Automation enables you to view historical data for links and tunnels. The historical data provides you valuable insights on past trends and patterns.

    On the Topology page (Observability > Topology), you can view historical data for:

    • Interface traffic for a link

    • Interface delay for a link

    • Tunnel traffic

    [See About the Link Tab and About the Tunnels Tab.]

  • Enhanced topology visualization—On the Topology page (Observability > Topology), you can customize the topology map to view real-time information about delays and bandwidth utilization for links or tunnels. Labels on the map indicate the delays and the bandwidth utilization data.

    In addition, you can click the legend on the bottom-right corner of the topology map to select the color to be displayed for a certain percentage of link utilization. Link utilization is the last measured interface traffic pushed between devices.

    [See View Network Topology Details.]

Trust and Compliance

Paragon Automation helps protect the network from threats and vulnerabilities by periodically checking whether a target's configuration, integrity, and performance comply with predefined security benchmarks. The term target refers to devices and device components. Paragon Automation distills the outcomes of these checks into a single trust score that you can use to determine how trustworthy a device is.

Juniper Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0 provides the following additional trust and compliance features:

  • Monitor network trust— The Trust tab on the Health Dashboard (Observability > Health > Health Dashboard > Trust) displays the overall trust score, device compliance, and vulnerabilities that affect targets in the network. You can use this information to perform corrective actions.

    The Trust tab consists of:

    • Trust pane—View the trust score of the targets, trust plan applied to the network, overall trust trend, and a graph of the average trust score for the past 30 days.

    • Vulnerabilities accordion—View the percentage of healthy devices and the total number of unhealthy devices based on device vulnerabilities, and a graph that displays the average health of all devices. You can also view KPIs such as proactive bug notifications (PBNs) and advisories that affect overall network health.

    • Compliance accordion—View the percentage of healthy devices and the total number of unhealthy devices based on compliance of devices. The compliance of devices is measured against the KPIs provided in the benchmark document. You can also view a graph that displays the average health of all devices.

    Click View Details on any accordion to view the related health pages where you can view the percentage of healthy devices and a list of KPIs. You can also view the total number of unhealthy devices that are grouped by OS version and device model.

    [See About the Trust Tab.]

Service Orchestration

Service orchestration is the process of designing, configuring, validating, deploying, and monitoring a network service. Paragon Automation automates the entire life cycle of a network service by providing workflows that execute the tasks to be completed to deliver a service. You can provision various network services by using predefined service designs written in YANG. The Service Catalog is an inventory of service designs, which are templates that provide guidelines and parameters for instantiating a service. A service instance defines the elements of a service. A service order includes the instruction to create, modify, or delete a service instance. After you initiate a service order and provision it, Paragon Automation activates the automated workflow to provision the service in the network. After provisioning, Paragon Automation monitors the service by automatically setting up Juniper® Paragon Insights and Juniper® Paragon Active Assurance instances to monitor network health and measure service quality.

Juniper Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0 provides the following additional service orchestration feature:

  • Automatically list interfaces placement options for an L2 circuit service instance—Use the Update Placements button (on the Orchestration > Instances > Add/Modify E-Line L2Circuit NSM > VPN Nodes page) to automatically list all tagged and untagged interfaces placement options available for a customer to provision a Layer 2 (L2) circuit service. Select and allocate the provider edge (PE) device interfaces from the listed options on the Configure Network Access page (Orchestration > Instances > Modify/Add E-Line L2Circuit NSM > VPN Nodes > VPN Node > Network Accesses > Configure Network Access) when you create or modify a service instance.

    [See Add L2 Circuit VPN Nodes.]

Active Assurance

Active Assurance is a programmable test and monitoring solution, which generates synthetic traffic in the underlay network to gain continuous insights on network quality, availability, and performance. Active Assurance uses Test Agents, which are measurement points in your network. Test Agents generate and receive synthetic traffic, and enable you to continuously monitor and validate the infrastructure. You can deploy the Test Agents at strategic locations in your network and install them on routers running Junos OS Evolved, x86 hardware, or on virtual machines (VMs). Paragon Automation uses RPM to collect metric data for Juniper Networks® MX Series Universal Routers and Juniper Networks® PTX Series Routers.

Juniper Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0 provides the following additional Active Assurance features:

  • Support for additional native plug-ins—Paragon Automation enables you to evaluate the QoS in your network using the following plug-ins:

    • Y.1731 Delay Measurement (DM)—Measures network performance on the parameter of latency during a transmission. Y.1731 DM is important for services that need low latency (such as video conferencing or VoIP).
    • Y.1731 Synthetic Loss Measurement (SLM)—Measures network performance on the parameter of loss of frames during a transmission. This parameter is important for maintaining QoS and SLA guarantees.

    [See Tests and Monitors Overview.]

  • Monitor the health of various measurements—The Active Assurance tab on the Health Dashboard page (Observability > Health > Health Dashboard > Active Assurance) enables you to monitor the health of various measurements by using the following accordions:

    • Applications—View the overall health of measurements related to HTTP, DNS, and RPM HTTP plug-ins in your network.
    • L3 Network—View the overall health of measurements related to TCP, UDP, TWAMP, TWAMP reflector, ping, RPM UDP, RPM TCP, and RPM TWAMP plug-ins in your network.
    • L2 Network—View the overall health of measurements related to Y.1731 SLM and Y.1731 DM plug-ins in your network.
    • TV & Multicast—View the overall health of measurements related to IPTV, OTT, and Netflix speedtest plug-ins in your network.

    [See About the Active Assurance Tab.]

Administration

Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0 provides the following administration features to manage users, sites, and organizations:

  • Bulk upgrade device images—You can now upgrade the image installed on multiple devices of a particular model at the same time.

    [See Upgrade Images on Devices.]

  • Tag key naming updates—You can start the name of a tag key by using an uppercase or lowercase letter. Earlier, you could start the name of a tag key by using only a lowercase letter. The tag key can have periods (.) and hyphens (-) in addition to letters, underscores (_), and numbers. The maximum number of characters allowed is increased to 200.

    [See Manage Tags.]

Juniper Paragon Automation Installation

Juniper Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0 provides the following installation-related features:

  • Gracefully shut down or reboot a node or cluster—Paragon Shell enables you to gracefully shut down a node virtual machine (VM) or the whole Paragon Automation cluster using the request paragon shutdown type (node | cluster) command. You can also reboot a node VM or the whole cluster using the request paragon reboot type (node | cluster) command.

    [See Shut Down and Reboot Nodes.]

Beta Features

Juniper Paragon Automation Release 2.3.0 provides Beta support for the following features:

  • Manage allocation of network resources for service provisioning—Placement is the process of allocating network resources for provisioning services. Use the Update Placements button to automatically assign all the placement options available for a customer to provision L3VPN and EVPN services. After placement options are assigned, you can select and allocate network resources such as provider edge (PE) devices and interfaces, VLANs, and so on from the available options to provision services for the customer.

    Use the Reset Placements button on the Summary page of the service creation wizard to delete all allocated placement options for all sites in a service instance. Use the Reset Placements button on the Edit Connection page to delete all allocated placement options for an individual site.

    [See Manage Placement Configurations for Service Instances.]

  • Configure IPv6 IP connection and access diversity parameters—You can configure IPv6 addresses, in addition to IPv4 addresses, when you configure IP connection parameters and static route, OSPF, and BGP routing protocols under Layer 3 VPN (L3VPN) Site Network Access.

    [See Add L3VPN Service Site Details.]

  • Paragon Automation Chatbot—Paragon Automation provides the LLM Connector tool to facilitate the use of natural language to query network status and obtain troubleshooting information, without the need for CLI commands.

    LLM Connector can help you:

    • Retrieve device information.

    • Execute Junos OS operational commands.

    • Save data (configuration and logs) to a file.

    • Retrieve a list of all VPNs in your network and their details, metrics, and health information.

    • Fetch information about customers and service instances associated with customers.

    • Get insights based on the telemetry collected from the device.

    To use LLM Connector, you must set up a large language model (LLM). The recommended LLM model for Ask Paragon is GPT-4 and GPT-4o.

    [See LLM Connector Overview.]