HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor

Orchestrate and automate network and security services—from the cloud, at scale—to streamline operations and enhance protection.

Is network complexity putting the brakes on your digital acceleration?

Hybrid work, new customer and user experiences, and the need for improved IT efficiencies make it critical for the network to provide the flexibility and security needed to keep up with constantly changing business requirements. Yet advancing key business initiatives while managing a growing volume of network sites and topologies can quickly become overwhelming.

Manual approaches don’t scale

Using spreadsheets and CLI for network configuration and management becomes impractical as the network expands and diversifies.

Lock-in makes change disruptive

New protocols and topologies like VXLAN and cloud can provide benefits, but proprietary implementations can limit adoption, forcing rip and replace and vendor lock-in.

Zero Trust and SASE require built-in security

Manually applying and enforcing network access control (NAC) policies across a distributed, global network is labor-intensive and can leave security gaps.

HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor: End-to-end, cloud-native network automation and orchestration 

Automatically configure LAN, WLAN, and WAN infrastructure across campus and data center to deliver optimal network performance while defining and enforcing granular security policies that are the foundation of Zero Trust and SASE architectures. With HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor, you can automate enterprise network deployment, ongoing network configuration, and security operations from the cloud.

Comprehensive security and network automation

With HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor, client traffic routing and security policies are decoupled from the underlying physical network, eliminating the need for VLAN and routing table spreadsheets, or manual configuration of ACLs. Wizards-based UI-driven workflows automate network design and policy creation and push device configuration to switches and gateways.

Distributed dynamic segmentation

HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor network security tools provide both network and security teams with options for cloud-native and on-premises network access control to ensure optimal connectivity and Zero Trust Security.

First, AI-powered user and device discovery means that all users and devices on the network are continuously seen and profiled. Then, authenticated users and devices are assigned a role that contains both connectivity requirements and access policies. HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor policy manager translates assigned roles into routing and access policies, which are then interpreted by HPE Aruba Networking gateways and CX switches.

Simplified and efficient operations 

With HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor, organizations can eliminate the need for labor intensive management and operation of individual network devices and save time and money. HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor network wizard offers an intuitive GUI for effortless deployment of networks across campus and data-center environments by automatically identifying network topology. HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor underlay and overlay creation wizards extend unified policy from campus to data center, thereby enabling propagation of roles across the entire network. 

Interoperability based on widely adopted protocols

Benefit from the network configuration, automation, and security tools delivered by HPE Aruba Networking Central and HPE Aruba Networking infrastructure without a rip-and-replace of current network infrastructure. HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor uses widely adopted protocols, such as EVPN/VXLAN, to produce an intelligent network overlay suitable for rapid enterprise network deployment and massive scalability. 

HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor cloud-native components

Policy manager

Defines user and device groups and creates the associated traffic routing and access enforcement rules for the physical network.

Group policy identifier (GPID)

Carries configuration and client policy information in traffic for in-line policy enforcement, which reduces configuration and security overhead and increases mobility and scalability.

Network and fabric wizard

Simplifies the creation of underlay and overlay network using an intuitive GUI, helping IT teams achieve significant time savings and eliminate manual errors by automatically identifying and enforcing configuration and network topology. 

Network Insights

Utilizes artificial intelligence to automatically detect network performance and reliability issues while identifying opportunities for optimization built on local and peer-based best practices.

Client Insights

Uses machine learning to eliminate network blind spots from rogue IoT deployments by finding, fingerprinting, and automatically assigning devices the appropriate access role using AI-based behavioral analytics.

Flexible network access control

Ensure entities are properly identified and assigned a role that defines their access privileges using Cloud Auth cloud-native NAC, ClearPass, or third-party solutions.

HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor in action

Greater efficiency

Universities are the ultimate service providers, connecting different departments, buildings, and users—all with different needs. HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor provides a unified framework for network management and security across diverse networks, delivering automation, security, and agility as their customers’ needs change.

Hybrid work

A large healthcare network’s geographically dispersed staff must access cloud and IoT-sourced patient data. With HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor, IT knows what users and devices are on the network and can quickly assign and continuously update policies for both—so an infusion pump in a patient’s hospital room can be securely accessed from across the country but protected from potentially malicious traffic.

New business models

A manufacturing plant has hundreds of IoT devices, vendors, and contractors on the network to manage. Using manual, inflexible traffic segmentation schemes meant network changes took days to complete. With HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor, onboarding new users and devices takes just minutes, significantly enhancing agility and unlocking new opportunities.

HPE Aruba Networking Central NetConductor infrastructure components

HPE Aruba Networking CX switches

Fabric-capable HPE Aruba Networking switches and gateways support configuration and enforcement based on the routing instructions and access privileges defined in the group policy identifiers.

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