Enterprises have more options than ever before when it comes to designing and deploying IT infrastructure. Whether it’s traditional on-premises data centers, physical infrastructure residing in colocation facilities, public clouds, XaaS offerings, or virtual network services, the infrastructure options enterprises can choose from to meet their diverse business needs can be arranged into a practically endless number of different configurations.
While the benefits of hybrid infrastructure are undeniable, so too is the additional complexity that hybrid infrastructure helps create. All of the different elements named above need to be integrated into something that can function as a cohesive whole, and bringing those disparate parts together seamlessly isn’t always straightforward. Since all enterprises are different, and they’re all designing their digital infrastructure to meet different business priorities, there is no universal approach that can solve all integration challenges.
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Sign Up Now!Equinix Fabric™ is a software-defined interconnection solution designed in part to help address hybrid infrastructure complexity by making it quick and easy to set connections between different types of endpoints across distributed infrastructure and digital ecosystems. These endpoints could be located in private on-premises data centers, collocated in Equinix facilities, or deployed in public clouds. In addition, they can be interconnected at the Ethernet or IP level, and in a point-to-point or multipoint-to-multipoint fashion. Equinix Fabric essentially offers standardized building blocks that make it simple for enterprises to assemble the digital infrastructure that best meets their business needs, regardless of the endpoints or interconnection topologies needed to build that infrastructure.
Here at the product engineering team, we’re always looking for new ways Equinix Fabric can do even more to help address the challenges our customers are facing when it comes to managing complexity in their digital infrastructure. That’s why we’re particularly excited about some new features included in the latest release of Equinix Fabric, and we wanted to take the opportunity to share some of those features with you here. There are three main additions we’ll be looking at in this blog:
- Equinix Fabric v4 API.
- Equinix Fabric Connections Manager.
- Equinix Fabric Connections Inventory.
Equinix Fabric v4 API unlocks new customer capabilities
At Equinix, APIs are an important part of our strategy for enabling digital transformation and agile development for our customers. Far from being solely the domain of developers and other technical professionals, we believe APIs can now serve as the foundation for innovation and a key driver of business value.
With that in mind, we’re pleased to announce that the Equinix Fabric v4 API is now available in the Equinix API Catalog. The v4 API can be used to easily manage a number of different infrastructure components within Equinix Fabric, including connections, ports, service profiles, metros, statistics and pricing. One example of a capability found in the v4 API that will help users manage complexity and gain flexibility is support for partial resource updates. Developers can make changes to their Equinix Fabric environments—such as resizing bandwidth, migrating virtual connections, and approving or rejecting connections—without having to rebuild the entire resource. This will help them save time and react with agility whenever their business needs change.
While customers who are new to Equinix Fabric APIs can get the best experience using the v4 release from day one, the APIs are also built to be migration-friendly. This means that users currently on earlier versions of the Equinix Fabric API will be able to make a smooth transition to v4, and begin taking advantage of everything it has to offer quickly. The v4 API will include everything users are familiar with from the v3 API, along with many new features. Although Equinix will continue to provide long-term support for the v3 API, users should upgrade now to ensure they don’t miss out on new Equinix Fabric features going forward.
Enabling interconnection between any type of access point
With the new Equinix Fabric Connection Manager, powered by the v4 API, enterprise IT architects can go far beyond the simple point-to-point connections they may have relied on in the past. The Connection Manager is not a customer-facing application, and therefore doesn’t require a learning curve for Equinix Fabric users. Instead, it simply sits in the background and enables connectivity from any type of access point to any other type of access point. In short, it makes it quick and easy to set up the connections you need to meet your business priorities, and change those connections as your business priorities change.
This could include connections between ports, virtual devices, Equinix Fabric gateways, cloud service providers and more. Regardless of whether these connections are point to point, point to multipoint, or multipoint to multipoint, the new Connection Manager capability allows customers to set them up and manage them without being overwhelmed by complexity. Going forward, customers will use Connection Manager to manage connection requests from across the Equinix product stack: in addition to Equinix Fabric itself, this would include Equinix Metal™, Equinix Precision Time™, and Network Edge virtual network services.
Creating a unified experience for all Equinix Fabric connections
In addition to establishing all types of interconnections via the Connection Manager capability, the new Equinix Fabric Connections Inventory capability helps create a unified experience for finding and viewing those Equinix Fabric connections once they’ve been established. This is another key feature that helps enterprise IT architects avoid getting overwhelmed by the complexity of their own digital infrastructure. No matter how many different connections your advanced hybrid infrastructure requires, you’ll always be able to find and view the specific ones you need, right when you need them.
Powered by the Equinix Fabric v4 API, Connections Inventory provides new search features that make it fast and simple for enterprise IT architects to find the specific connections they’re looking for, including advanced filtering, sorting, pagination, connection actions, snapshots with .csv, customizable connection projections, and more.
Start putting the latest Equinix Fabric capabilities to work for you
To learn more about the cutting-edge Equinix Fabric capabilities that can help you deploy and manage the digital infrastructure your business needs without being overwhelmed by complexity, read the Equinix Fabric data sheet today.
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