Modeling All Your Infrastructure, Not Just Network Devices

Infrastructure automation is only as effective as the data it’s built on. To achieve truly scalable, reliable, and testable automation, you need a robust data model of your deployed infrastructure. Infrahub is transforming infrastructure management by enabling you to model everything in your environment—not just network devices, but any technology you rely on, from on-prem to cloud and everything in between.

The Importance of Accurate Data Modeling

A solid data model is the foundation of any automation system. It ensures that automation systems understand the relationships between different components, their constraints, and how they interact. This involves:

• Type checking: Ensuring that inputs conform to expected formats.
• Range checking: Verifying that values fall within acceptable boundaries.
• Relationship modeling: Capturing the dependencies and interactions between resources to represent the system accurately.

Without the foundation of a complete data model, teams are forced to rely on fragile workarounds, such as cramming JSON payloads into custom fields. These hacks might work in the short term but lead to long-term problems, including:

• Limited ability to validate data.
• Poor visibility into system-wide configurations and dependencies.
• Increased risks of undocumented tradeoffs and a lack of proper test coverage.

Infrahub avoids these pitfalls by letting you model your infrastructure with schemas that are purpose-built for your needs, including all the device types for your environment, as well as the data attributes needed to sustain long-term automation viability..

Modeling Beyond Ethernet Networking: The Case of InfiniBand

Take InfiniBand, for example—a technology critical to NVIDIA GPU datacenters for backend networking. While most automation platforms focus solely on Ethernet networking, InfiniBand is often left out of the equation. Yet it’s just as essential for modern, high-performance computing environments.

Infrahub fills this gap. Our schema library, available on GitHub, includes examples for technologies like InfiniBand alongside traditional Ethernet networking devices. For teams managing hybrid networking environments, this means a single solution for modeling, validating, and automating all their networking devices.

Bridging the Gap Between Cloud and On-Prem

Cloud automation has historically outpaced automation for on-premises infrastructure. However, these domains aren’t independent—an office network still needs to connect employees to cloud apps, and both domains require consistent configuration and management.

Infrahub enables your teams to manage these domains together by:

• Providing a common set of data models that integrate seamlessly with proprietary network management platforms, as well as tools like Terraform and Pulumi.
• Supporting both cloud-provider-neutral models and provider-specific constructs, so you can work with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud on your terms.

For instance, Infrahub’s Azure schema captures the unique features of Azure, while still fitting into a broader, unified model. This flexibility means you can standardize your workflows while addressing the specific quirks of each provider.

One Data Model to Rule Them All

With Infrahub, you don’t have to choose between flexibility and standardization. Its schema-driven approach lets you:

• Model all your infrastructure—network devices, cloud services, and custom hardware.
• Capture relationships and constraints in your data for accurate automation.
• Build unified workflows that bridge on-prem and cloud environments.

The result? Automation that’s not only more powerful but also easier to test, scale, and maintain.