Kinross gains reliable connectivity to keep global offices and remote mining sites operating 24/7/365 with Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN

随着全球采矿业务运行24/7/365，Kinross必须确保可靠地访问公司多伦多数据中心中关键业务应用程序和数据。但是，某些站点是如此遥远，以至于卫星是连接的唯一方法。

Kinross的高级网络工程师Amir Rahimi致力于保持公司的所有位置连接和运行而不会受到干扰。“在EdgeConnect之前，我们必须链接许多不同的技术并与世界各地的多家供应商打交道。我们的WAN变得非常复杂，管理和解决问题非常耗时。”

Gaining Control Over Network Complexity

When Rahimi stepped into his current role at Kinross, the company’s WAN had become a mix of different tunnel protocols across MPLS, VPLS, VPN and satellite technologies, with manually configured redundancy and a variety of QoS policies. “Network complexity became difficult to manage,” Rahimi says. “We needed a simpler network solution that we could operate more efficiently.”

Rahimi summarizes the top challenges as 1) operational difficulties in troubleshooting, failover, optimization and prioritization; 2) integration of multiple vendors and underlay technologies; and 3) higher operating expenses due to excessive engineering time spent tracing and resolving connectivity issues.

“We recognized SD-WAN as a way to make managing and optimizing our network much easier,” Rahimi notes. After evaluating several vendor solutions, the Kinross engineering team ultimately selected theAruba EdgeConnectSD-WANedge platform with optionalAruba BoostWAN优化。

流线连接用于全球采矿网站

Today, EdgeConnect is deployed in dual redundant configurations for high availability at all 23-plus Kinross locations across the Americas, West Africa and Russia. As a result, the company has been able to retire legacy routers and decommission MPLS and VPLS circuits in favor of dual redundant broadband or dedicated internet access (DIA), reducing costs substantially.

现在,利用路由th统一e EdgeConnect platform, along with business intent overlays to prioritize application traffic based on business need, most locations seamlessly break out locally to the internet or connect back to the Kinross data centers in Toronto to access applications. The Russia sites link back to a regional office via satellite and connect to the SD-WAN from there.

Kinross Gold Corporation全球IT基础架构经理Alex Kulinchenko表示：“通过使用Boost采用EdgeConnect，我们能够极大地简化我们的边缘连接，用单个设备替换了多个技术，该设备可以统一路由和优化。即使在俄罗斯偏远地区的矿场上，卫星链接是唯一的交流形式，阿鲁巴也为我们提供了成功的解决方案。”

WAN acceleration optimizes applications

使用Aruba Orchestrator集中管理控制台Rahimi创造了几个业务意图叠加。例如，“实时”叠加层包括VoIP和Microsoft团队等应用程序。“云”覆盖层包含了本地应用程序，例如公司的ERP系统以及Microsoft Office 365等SaaS应用程序。

Rahimi also created a “critical” overlay for Citrix traffic used at all Kinross global locations as well as specialized applications used for file transfer. Boost WAN optimization is applied to all applications in the critical overlay, which Rahimi says accelerates application performance dramatically. “Boost is like a magic pill.”

拉希米（Rahimi）解释说，工作人员最常见的投诉是文件上传缓慢。在某些情况下，非常大的文件花了几天的时间上传。“一旦我们将应用程序转移到获得Boost优势的关键覆盖层中，所有投诉就会停止。一切都开始顺利进行，我们的内部客户很高兴。”

支持24/7/365业务，近100％正常运行时间

Network reliability and uptime have also improved for Kinross, thanks to sub-millisecond failover between underlay circuits enabled by EdgeConnect. This greatly improves resiliency—if one connection goes down, application traffic continues to flow uninterrupted on another available circuit.

“We now have been able to dramatically reduce downtime due to WAN-related issues,” Rahimi reports. “The ability to failover from one circuit to another on the fly is fantastic. It helps us support the 24/7/365 needs of our business.”

Makes Network Engineering Life Much Easier

A major win for Rahimi and his team is simplifying network management with greater visibility and control through the Aruba Orchestrator centralized management console.

Kulinchenko notes, “We have only one person, Amir, who manages our entire global network. This is possible because we have such confidence in the reliability of our Aruba SD-WAN combined with the ease of administration through the centralized Orchestrator management console.”

Improved network visibility worldwide

拉希米尤其赞赏如何协调器dashboard provides both a high-level view of application traffic and the ability to drill down into the details of individual application flows.

“The first time I viewed flows I loved it,” Rahimi says. “Here was this beautiful GUI showing me where traffic is coming from, what route map is applied, the QoS policy, and where it’s going. This is a great help for troubleshooting application issues. It’s easy to filter traffic and pinpoint the source of issues. Instead of taking days or weeks as in the past, it’s just a couple of seconds through Orchestrator.”

Kinross also provides remote mining sites with “view-only” access to the Orchestrator console affording them extra visibility into how traffic is flowing without requiring additional reporting from Rahimi.

Simplified day-to-day WAN operations

日常管理和更新也很容易。过去，工程团队必须将政策推向各个设备。拉希米说：“这并不总是可靠的。现在，有了编排者，我可以创建一项政策，并将其发送给全球54个EdgeConnect设备，五分钟后，一旦一切同步，我都知道它正在起作用。”

拉希米（Rahimi）总结说：“我对阿鲁巴SD-Wan解决方案有任何负面影响。这是非常经过深思熟虑的，只是工作。这不仅是一个很好的解决方案，还得到了一个支持团队的支持，该团队了解我们的挑战并帮助我们实现我们的目标。”