Extreme Networks Extreme XOS, Auto Configuration Overview

Extreme Networks Feature Brief

Challenges leading to limited resources and growing
demands among IT organizations:

• New businesses are created to address continually
changing consumer trends and business-to-business
requirements. There is the expectation that both
service providers and the businesses involved should
be able to quickly create and deploy networks.

• Organizations are expanding in terms of both
personnel and geography, giving rise to the need
for new network segments to be up and running
with short lead times.

• Business continuity requirements mandate that
network administrators be prepared for situations
where faulty switches and routers occur in the
network and provision and replace them as quickly
as possible.

• Shrinking IT budgets mean that CIOs and network
administrators have to cut both capital and opera­tional expenditures. Time and costs involved in
staging, deployment, and configuration of network
equipment are often seen as overhead costs.

The Solution

Extreme Networks® addresses these challenges by
providing a very flexible and simple switch provisioning
solution, which allows organizations to quickly build
networks or replace faulty switches for business
continuity. Extreme Networks Auto Configuration
feature minimizes manual configuration of switches and
enables security and compliance, as well as “green”
power savings. Extreme Networks Auto Configuration is
focused on achieving plug-and-play deployment and is
supported on all ExtremeXOS

®

- based hardware

platforms (version 12.5 minimum).

The Situation

As new businesses expand and organizations continue to evolve,
there is an imminent need to provide network connectivity to the
most basic and critical business applications within short lead times.
Network administrators are challenged by business goals to provide
connectivity to enterprise applications (or services) like email,
collaboration tools, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer
Relationship Management (CRM), sales applications and more, to
users and groups (remote or local) as quickly as possible.

The Challenges

Enterprise organizations require real-time results when it comes
to building their networks. Business doesn’t stop because the IT
department is waiting for the network to be ready. Organizations
today demand seamless and secure business continuity. As
businesses evolve, so must the network. Budget plays an issue
too, as IT managers operate on continually dwindling resources
and increasingly demanding expectations.

Extreme Networks Auto Configuration

Extreme Networks Feature Brief

© 2010 Extreme Networks, Inc. All rights reser ved. Extreme Networks, the Extreme Networks Logo and ExtremeXOS are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Extreme Networks, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Specifications are subject to change without notice.

1727_02 12/10

www.extremenetworks.com

Corporate
and North America

Extreme Networks, Inc.
3585 Monroe Street
Santa Clara, CA 95051 USA
Phone [phone]

Europe, Middle East, Africa
and South America

Phone [phone]

Asia Pacific

Phone [phone]

Japan

Phone [phone]

The Benefits

The ability to drop-ship ExtremeXOS-based switches
into customer premises

Helps eliminate operating expenditures (OPEX) and costs involved in staging and any initial
commissioning or provisioning.

Customers can choose to enable auto-provisioning
in central equipment handling locations before
switches are shipped to the appropriate branches
for deployment

Allows for minimal or no IT/network personnel in branch locations to deploy the switches.

Standards-based classification using Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol (DHCP) helps administrators
craft flexible and easy-to-manage configurations

Reduces costs incurred for customization of configuration, with the ability to classify switches
according to function, hardware type, or location.

The Technology

Regardless of the procurement and deployment procedure
adopted by customers, Extreme Networks Auto Configuration
may help customers reduce, and in many cases, eliminate both
direct and indirect costs which are normally incurred during
the initial staging and commissioning process.

Extreme Networks Auto Configuration feature provides a
simple method to enable or disable the automatic configuration
of ExtremeXOS-based switches, as well as the ability to
drop-ship Extreme Networks switches into customer premises
with the feature enabled in advance either by channel partners,
System Integrators (SIs), or Value-Added Resellers (VARs).
Standards-based solutions make the most effective use of
protocols such as DHCP, and Trivial File Transfer Protocol
(TFTP). DHCP is used for dynamic configuration of network
parameters, and TFTP is used for the configuration download.

The Extreme Networks Auto Configuration feature also enables
configuration file downloads in the standard ExtremeXOS
configuration format (.cfg), as well as script files (.xsf).
Extreme Networks Auto Configuration works with existing
DHCP and TFTP infrastructure in the network, with minimal
customization, and has the ability to create the classification of
switches based on hardware/platform type. This classification is
done outside of the ExtremeXOS realm, giving customers
greater deployment flexibility.

5503-01

DHCP DISCOVER

[Options 1, 3, 43, 60]

DHCP OFFER

DHCP REQUEST

[Options 1, 3, 43, 60]

TFTP GET

[Download configuration file via TFTP]

END OF TFTP TRANSACTION

• Store configuration file or configuration script

• Configure ExtremeXOS to use downloaded config file, OR
execute configuration script and save

DHCP ACK

[TFTP Server IP Address,

Configuration Filename, SNMP

Trap Receiver IP Address]

Branch Office

REBOOT

ExtremeXOS® Switch

TFTP ServerDHCP Server

CONSOLECONSOLE

MGMT =MGMT =

FAN =FAN =

PSU-I =PSU-I =

PSU-E =PSU-E =

STACK NO

Stack
Ports

Stack
Ports
St-1St-1

St-2St-2

11

223344

55

66

778899

1010

1111

1212

1313

1414

1515

1616

1717

1818

1919

2020

2121

2222

2323

2424

Headquarters

Figure 1: Example of Deployment Automation Using DHCP