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Rolling Out SD-WAN at REI

This is post 6 of 14 in the series “FutureWAN 18 Tech Talks”

  1. SD-WAN as a Service: Meeting Businesses at the Business Level
  2. As SD-WAN Enters Mainstream, Security Features Transform the WAN
  3. SD-WAN: When the Solution Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts
  4. Moving To The Cloud – Network Nightmare or Dream?
  5. SD-WAN: Steering Apps In The Right Direction
  6. Rolling Out SD-WAN at REI
  7. Taking SD-WAN Even Wider at Acadia
  8. Treating Your Cloud Like an SD-WAN Branch
  9. Succeeding With SaaS and Viptela Cloud On-Ramp
  10. The Complex Simplicity of SD-WAN
  11. SD-WAN Changes the Internet Security Model
  12. Approaches to SD-WAN Managed Services
  13. SD-WAN Fabrics Aren’t Interoperable. Should Organizations Care?
  14. The Current State of SD-WAN in Service Provider Networks

A tech talk series from the FutureWAN18 SD-WAN Virtual Summit.

SD-WAN as a Service: Meeting Businesses at the Business Level
Do enterprise organizations care what they’re plugging into so long as they get secure, reliable, fast, and cheap public WAN ...
Read More
As SD-WAN Enters Mainstream, Security Features Transform the WAN
SD-WAN has been a hot topic in the enterprise WAN for several years. But even with all the hype, SD-WAN ...
Read More
SD-WAN: When the Solution Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts
Sometimes the combination of single parts create together something that is greater and enables us to reach a breaking point ...
Read More
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REI is a very well-known company in the outdoor gear space. They have 153 stores all over the world and are a respected leader in retail. They’re also a trailblazer in adoption of SD-WAN, as their recent plan to roll out Viptela SD-WAN appliances to their stores demonstrated. In a presentation for FutureWAN 18, Adam Burton, Rich Russell, and Mayra Guia detailed their reasons for moving to SD-WAN to increase stability and ease of use, standardize on protocols, and gain visibility and reporting into their wide network of retail stores.

Planning For Implementation

One of the biggest takeaways from the REI SD-WAN story is their planning process. Throughout the presentation, Adam, Rich, and Mayra talked about the importance of having a solid plan to deal with the cutover process. The process that REI came up with was very simple. They would cut over no more than 1-2 sites per timezone a night. That gave them the time they needed to resolve issues with the sites before they were scheduled to come back online. They also planned 1.5-2 hours per site, yet also understood that more time would be needed as issues arose.

The night of the cutover, the plan was clear. After the store’s systems were closed out for the day the onsite technician would unbox the new Viptela SD-WAN appliance and verify everything was there for the installation. Once everything was verified, the technician connected an LTE modem for backup connectivity before cutting the main systems over. Once everything was in place with the LTE backup, the old router was powered down and the new Viptela appliance was installed. The cabling diagram was followed and the new router came online. Connectivity was verified through the LTE modem and the new site was connected once the routing processes converged. After installation, the existing WAN optimization device was also removed, leaving the Viptela device to connect the store back to the rest of the REI network.

Once the cutover was accomplished, the on-site technician ran some post-installation tests to ensure that the cutover worked properly. Once the tests were completed, the old equipment was boxed up and readied to ship back to the main office. Then the site was ready to bring online permanently and the cutover was completed. This process was tested with local stores around the main headquarters first before being rolled out to remote stores. The team maintained a conference bridge during the cutover process to talk the on-site technical contacts through any issues that might crop up during installation.

Exceptions To The Rule

The plan, even when executed correctly, was never a perfect representation of all of the issues that might be encountered. During the presentation, the REI team recounted some of their common issues and gave some recommendations to help alleviate them both for future deployments as well as for anyone looking to use the REI plan as a prototype for their own deployment.

The biggest issue faced by the team was the sprawl that came from using a large number of Viptela templates to deploy the systems. Even though they were only using two different types of hardware, the amount of templates kept growing as each site came online because the primary template was exported to a new file and applied to the site each time. Adam said that he wished they had determined a naming convention for the templates earlier to help reduce the amount of confusion during the early deployments.

Another issue that was encountered was something simple with far-reaching ramifications: cabling diagrams. The REI team created detailed cabling diagrams for each installation to help the on-site installers connect the correct cables to the right ports on the Viptela appliances. The were in full color and easy to follow. During the first few remote installations, the on-site techs were getting confused looking at the diagrams. It quickly surfaced that they were printing them in black and white instead of color. Whether this was habit or due to a lack of a color printer in the office is unknown, but it caused some issues. The REI team fixed this problem by printing a full-color diagram and adding it to the box before shipping. That way they knew there was at least one proper diagram.

The remaining issues came from the installation teams. Using local installation help allowed the REI team to drive the installation from a central location and saved time and money because there was no need to go to the store location. However, there were some issues that came up. Cutting over stores in different timezones caused confusion on the phone bridge dedicated to supporting the technicians. A store that was a hour or two further into the cutover would bring up issues not being seen by the store that was behind. The REI team realized that it was sometimes easier to have the store further ahead drop off the bridge and call them directly to figure out the issues.

Also, some of the technical help was ready to leave at the drop of a hat, whether it be from technical trouble or not running the post-install tests. The REI team referred to this as the “Cinderella Problem”. A good recommendation is to make sure your local install teams know what is expected of them before the project kicks off.

Bringing It All Together

The REI experience with installing Viptela’s SD-WAN solution was eye opening. They had a solid plan and used it to the fullest to make everything go as smoothly as possible. Issues did occur but the team was able to sort them out quickly and get the stores online with the new equipment in time to open the next day to continue operations. This represents the flexibility that SD-WAN offers to easily replace the existing equipment easily and get back online with a minimum of effort. It would be interesting to see how the final deployment goes and how easily REI can bring new store online with their SD-WAN configuration going forward.

  • About the Author
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About Tom Hollingsworth

Tom Hollingsworth is a networking professional, blogger, and speaker on advanced technology topics. He is also an organizer for networking and wireless for Tech Field Day.  His blog can be found at https://networkingnerd.net/
  • Making Encryption Easy with StrongSalt’s New API - December 12, 2019
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  • Intro to NetworkMiner - December 6, 2019
  • On The Hunt with Confluera - December 4, 2019
  • How Difficult Is SD-WAN? - December 4, 2019
  • Letting Go of the Digital Hoard - December 2, 2019
  • Tackling Troublesome IoT with Fortinet - November 26, 2019
  • Technology and Policymakers - November 26, 2019
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Tech Talks

Tech Talks are sponsored conversations between industry leading analysts and influential companies. These posts explore the pressing issues in IT, examine fascinating use cases, and facilitate larger conversations. These posts are written by our network of independent IT influencers according to topics selected by the sponsoring companies. Gestalt IT and these writers are paid by the company indicated in the header and sidebar. To start a Tech Talk series of your own, contact us.

Viptela

This post is part of a Viptela Tech Talk series. For more information on this topic, please see the rest of the series here. To learn more about Viptela, please visit Viptela.com
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This SD-WAN Feature May Well Save Your Job
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