Understanding Network Director and the Management Life-Cycle Modes
Junos Space Network Director can be used for campus network management. In the campus, Network Director automates routine management tasks such as network provisioning and troubleshooting, dramatically improving operational efficiency and reliability.
Campus networks have increased variability and unpredictability stemming from a wide range of user and IoT devices. Juniper’s portfolio of services, software and hardware products securely address end to end campus network solutions.
Junos Space Network Director enables unified management of EX Series Ethernet Switches, MX Series routers, QFX Series switches, Layer 3 fabrics, and Junos Fusion Enterprise in your network. It provides for full network life cycle management by simplifying the discovery, configuration, visualization, monitoring, and administration of large networks containing physical and virtual devices. You can quickly deploy a network by using it, configure it optimally to improve network uptime and maximize resources, and respond agilely to the needs of applications and users.
The Network Director user interface is based on the network management life-cycle. The interface provides five main working modes that are aligned to the network management life-cycle, and a sixth mode for working with Network Director itself. Each mode provides access to different tasks:
Build mode—Use Build mode to build your network in Network Director. You use Build mode to discover the devices in your network, to create and manage device configurations, and to manage devices. You can also organize your devices into hierarchical groupings based on logical relationships or by physical locations.
Deploy mode—Use Deploy mode to deploy and manage changes to devices. In Deploy mode, you deploy the configurations you built in Build mode, install new software images on your devices, and manage device configuration files.
Monitor mode—Use Monitor mode to gain visibility into your network performance and health. Monitor mode provides a host of information about your network such as the operational status of devices, traffic patterns and trends, client session statistics, port capacity, and interference patterns. You can also search for a user and view a history of the user sessions.
Fault mode—Use Fault mode to gain visibility into unexpected network events and to manage faults or notifications.
Report mode—Use Report mode to generate reports from the data that Network Director stores on network performance, status, and activity.
In addition to these modes, Network Director enables you to perform system-level tasks from the System button and the Preferences button. System-level tasks include viewing the Network Director user and system audit trail, managing jobs, and gathering logs for troubleshooting.
Benefits of Network Director
Enables management of campus architecture.
Improves operational efficiency by automating routine management tasks such as device and port provisioning.
Supports flexible, large-scale deployment of devices. For example, Build mode enables you to apply configurations across multiple devices grouped by logical relationships, physical locations, or type.