Logicalis enhances APDL's Network with Cisco ACI

Maritime

Global, Sep 21, 2023

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APDL logo

The client

The Port Authority of Douro, Leixões and Viana do Castelo (APDL) in Portugal, is a public company whose purpose is to administer the ports in the same geographical area, carrying out their economic exploitation, conservation and development, including the powers attributed to the port authority.

With 5 km of quays, 55 ha of embankments and 120 ha of wetlands, the Port of Leixões is equipped with the most advanced management and safety systems for port traffic. The services provided cover all aspects of shipping and operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The adoption of emerging technologies has become one of the critical factors for the success and development of port businesses, according to APDL's management.

The Challenge

APDL was looking for a data centre switching solution (with redundancy, robustness, security and a web interface) that would allow the data centre to be extended and micro-segmented, facilitating agile application management, high performance and automation.

The solution

Given APDL's needs, Logicalis implemented the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) solution because, in addition to being the industry's leading SDN (Software Defined Networking), it automates the network and security in a web interface for workloads on physical servers, virtual machines, containers or the public cloud, providing:

  • Automation of the interconnection of multiple on-prem and cloud data centres;
  • Universal policy that facilitates a consistent security posture and enables business continuity, speeding up any disaster recoveries;
  • Centralised management: a single panel for management, visibility, monitoring and troubleshooting in multi-cloud environments;
  • Expansion of Lan and Wan networks through the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) in order to unify network management and automation across the data centre and corporate network.

The Results

The ACI solution helped APDL optimise the management of its work and resolve any network problems more efficiently.

The organisation itself has changed its mindset when it comes to configuration, moving away from protocols towards a new paradigm.

It also allowed them to start thinking about functionalities and to combine a range of technologies.

It also provided the ability to see the entire network as a single entity, and to systematise the way APDL configures applications (reducing configuration time and complexity and speeding up their implementation in the wired and wireless network infrastructure).

With the implementation of Cisco's ACI solution, not only did we prepare our data centre for the future and for the hybrid cloud model, we also streamlined our processes by having visibility over the various systems and networks; and in this way we are able to be faster in response to market needs.

Hugo Bastos
Director of Information Systems (APDL)

 

 

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