5 Infrastructure Management Tips and How Cisco Certification Helps Develop Stronger Networks

A lot of money goes into managing IT infrastructure and network. Changing requirements, new and improved technologies, and ongoing upgrade and maintenance of equipment results keeps your IT team busy and results in a lot of money out the window. But there are ways in which you can develop an IT infrastructure to manage your costs and streamline your IT network to ensure maximum productivity throughout your organization. Following are 5 tips for managing and streamlining your network:

Create an Intelligent Network With SD-WAN

Adopt Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) in your network system as it can boost your network's scalability, security, and performance. They are different from traditional WANs and can easily accommodate different methods of data transport and offer foolproof protection in case a single link goes down or becomes congested. SD-WAN allows you to bind all the connections in one logical network which has the ability to prioritize important and mission-critical apps. Similarly, it also eliminates the need to continuously increase bandwidth to address dependability issues which is an inefficient and costly method.

Create A Network Infrastructure Diagram

Diagram maintenance and development is an old method used to streamline network management in data centers. There are two types of network diagrams, physical and logical. A physical diagram is a depiction of equipment caballing, physical placement of distribution switches, and an elaborate plan of hardware connectivity. A logical diagram should comprise an outline of how the data flows throughout the network and should provide more comprehensive information in comparison to the physical network diagram. To efficiently streamline your network, you should decide which diagram, or combination of both works best for your IT network. After deciding on the type of diagram, you should determine the best possible method of updating these diagrams regularly, if and when you make any changes to them. There are tools that you can use to make this process easier which will help you in minimizing the time your IT team spent on upgrading these diagrams.

Consider Adopting Leaf-Spine Architecture for Flow of Data

If you have a hyper-converged infrastructure in place which causes data to move east-to-west as compared to north-to-south, then there is a chance that you might experience more data bottlenecks and downtime. Leaf-spine is a method of network transportation that uses a multi-direction approach and will help your network deal with bottlenecks. Leaf switches enable consolidation of data traffic before it passes through the spine which is the main storage server and system. This network architecture method also flattens the network from three to two-tier, which helps you in reducing the number of cable runs and switches. This system also helps with the logical networking diagram as data is shared more efficiently and directly.

Adopt Software-Defined Technology to Increase Efficiency

Resilience, efficiency, and flexibility are the end results for network administrators that adopt SDN (Software Defined Applications) in their data center management. Software-defined applications utilize automation software and infrastructure management to define and manage different aspects of a network. Applications can shrink or grow over time to meet your network's demands and can adopt horizontal scaling in comparison to vertical scaling to better delegate workload based on demand and resources. SDN architecture uses two types of APIs, outer ones that focus on remote operations of the system and inner ones that organize and drive the internal network systems. These two systems prevent any changes from occurring on the end user level and also protect data centers from any impact.

Take Help from Management Service Providers

Managing an entire network on your own is not an easy task and also takes a lot of money and time. A great way to minimize the pressure on the in-house team is to partner with a service provider who can manage your IT infrastructure so that your IT team can focus on other tasks and projects. To stay up-to-date with the latest technologies, make sure that you look into Cisco training and certification courses so that you can understand the demands of running a smooth IT network. With modernization in IT infrastructure, the organization now face a variety of obstacles including poor integration system, legacy infrastructure, and an IT team that is not qualified to meet the demands of today's technological advancement. Whether it is about developing new applications or creating a more efficient and intelligent IT network, outdated IT can create hurdles. In comparison, an up-to-date infrastructure can adapt and will facilitate IT team to keep up with the changing business needs.

Cisco Training           

The most important aspect of maintaining and managing an efficient IT infrastructure is to have a team of qualified individuals who can work with modern hardware and technology. Cisco training and certification such as CCNA and CCNP; can help your employees stay up-to-date with modern day network expectations and trends. Cisco certification ensures that your employees are qualified to keep up with the modern network demands and to create and manage an efficient infrastructure. How your employees choose and utilize the tools to design your IT infrastructure to be more scalable, secure, programmable, automated, or virtualized will play a key role in the success or failure of your business. Cisco certification will enable your employees to use your organization's resources to their maximum capacity for best possible results. Whether you hire a team that is already Cisco qualified or you invest in their training, either way, it is going to be beneficial for your business in the long run.

Cisco offers a wide variety of network tools and solutions that you can use in your organization to help with IT and data center management. Therefore, it will be even more beneficial if your staff is Cisco trained because then they will be better able to utilize Cisco tools.

Get in touch with one of our Cisco experts today to learn more about our training modules and programs.