Kosm Network Emulation Platform
What is Kosm?
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Kosm is a Network Emulation Platform for virtual, containerized routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, traffic generators and applications.
- Built on Kubernetes - no VM scaling limitations
- Simple modeling, deployment, and management via UI and API
- Substantial network lab cost savings compared to physical labs
- Layer 1 management and orchestration can be extended to physical hardware
Route/Switch Operating Systems
Multiple versions of each OS and new images are added and maintained weekly
- Cisco IOS, XR, NXOS
- JunOS, Arista EOS, Cumulus
- Open Source FRR
Software Defined Platforms
Software defined platform virtual networking sandbox
- SDWAN - Viptela, Riverbed
- SD Security - Firepower, Palo Alto
- Load Balancers - F5
Network Services and Applications
Network testing and management tools
- Traffic generation applications
- Automation platforms
- Network monitoring tools
- Telemetry collectors
Virtual Sandbox
- On demand access to platforms
- Training environments
- Config verification and troubleshooting
- New product introductions and proof of concepts
Testing Environment
Pretesting network changes
Route and traffic verification
Negative, failure and disaster recovery testing
Application integration and dependency testing
CICD Pipeline
- Production scale network replication
- Automation development environments
- Integration with git, Ansible, Jenkins, Chef, etc
- Fully automate and validate your network management workflow
Kosm Case Study 1: Enterprise SDWAN Migration
Problem Statement
An enterprise customer chose Cicso’s Viptela SDWAN solution to help leverage more DIA (Direct Internet Access) for their branch and data center locations. Due to their unfamiliarity with the product and the complexity of the migration, there were major concerns around downtime for extended change windows as well as the ramifications of migrating existing circuits into a more dynamic routing environment.
Approach
Leveraging Kosm’s native automated discovery tool we were able to quickly model the existing routing paths and then fully replicate the environment down to the specifics of the routing protocols and critical traffic patterns. In an iterative process we then began introducing the new WAN devices and uncovered several potential design issues in the virtual environment.
Results
Successful deployment and migration! The exact configuration and time of application were worked out and fully validated in advance on the Kosm virtual testbed. The migration was smoothly executed and the network operations team was off and running as they already had hands-on experience with management of the new Viptela environment.