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Aruba OS8 lands, with APIs so non-NetAdmins can do NetAdmin jobs

This software-defined networking stuff is getting just a bit scary ... and scary good!

First they came for the DBAs. Then they came for the storage admins. Now the software-defined networking (SDN) shock troops are coming for network administrators.

Aruba's leading this charge with its new OS8, which is being billed as a “Mobile First Platform” that lets anyone capable of writing to an API wrestle a campus WLAN to do things like spin up networks for conferences, sensors or other special and/or temporary purposes. The HPE unit's idea is that network admins shouldn't be called upon to do this sort of thing if it can be avoided, but should be happy to oversee a library of API-addressing recipes cooked up by developers.

The thrust of the argument is that as we all get cloudier, and start to connect Things to the internet, the old ways of asking network administrators to pore over routing tables before waiting for a change window just isn't going to work.

OS8 is therefore a virtual machine so you get all the fun of upgrading networks without having to update individual appliances. Or if you're a reseller, you can run up OS 8 and use it to do network design and management as-a-service.

It's all being sold as-a-service, too, if you want it that way. And because cloud has made us all interested in this mode of kit consumption.

Cloudy apps have also been accommodated by Tweaks to Aruba's ClearPass that lets third parties set network access policies from cloud-native apps and promulgate them back down to earthly networks.

Aruba told The Register its reckons it's in with a show because most SDN has hitherto targeted the data centre, leaving campus networks looking a bit fusty. ®

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