I have been searching this subreddit the past days regarding experiences with SDWAN. Now there is a lot of threads about benefits of SDWAN and such, but I have some specific questions.
Let me give you a quick overview of what I want to achieve. Currently, we run a global network with about 100 sites. Mostly those sites are connecting via MPLS and DMVPN with all Cisco routers. Here are our biggest challenges as of right now:
- We can feel the “move to the cloud” which results in a requirement to break out the cloud traffic locally. Maintaining routing has been getting more and more challenging and eating up resources.
- With that managing QoS policies has been getting more and more challenging as well.
- Troubleshooting is difficult at times because we lack visibility of utilization and application usage.
- MPLS circuits are expensive (especially in Asia/ South America) and we generally have good experience with the reliability of broadband circuits.
- We have traffic that we would like to transport through cheaper circuits (namely backups).
Now, I understand SDWAN can help address some of those problems but so far I was not able to get some real life feedback. There is a lot of people that make hypothetical calculations and promises, but I really would like to hear what your guys' experience is. Were you able to reduce the number of MPLS circuits? Is the visibility of traffic patterns much better after deploying SDWAN? And most importantly: Do you feel like your network can adapt quicker to changed requirements (routing/bandwidth)?
How did the deployment change your day-to-day network engineer life? Whitepapers always paint this picture that you can handle traffic management super quick with a couple clicks. Is it really that way? Of course I would like to hear which solution you chose :-)
Looking forward to hearing some opinions!
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