Aruba Central
Unified, AI-powered cloud networking for branch, campus, and remote networks

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Simplified Onboarding And Provisioning

Onboarding, configuring, and provisioning network devices is a key activity in any environment, but can be time-consuming and complex. Aruba Central accelerates this process with an easy setup wizard, flexible configuration options, and zero touch provisioning, further aided by an intuitive mobile installer app.

Guided Setup Wizard

The setup wizard automatically adds account subscriptions, synchronizes device inventory from orders, and assigns purchased licenses to devices.

This saves time, improves accuracy, and makes it easier to onboard devices into your environment.

Flexible Config Options

To simplify device configurations, Aruba Central uses templates and a UI option that features guided, step-by-step workflows. For devices with common configuration requirements, network admins can use groups to instantly apply or modify settings across large sets of devices.

Additional options are available for Aruba CX switches, including pre-built express configs that enable network-wide changes with only a few prompt-driven inputs. A multi-editor is also available for more advanced configurations. Both options offer built-in device validation, giving network admins the ability to rapidly stage, test, and roll-out changes while ensuring common criteria and existing policies are met.

Zero Touch Provisioning

Zero touch provisioning provides a simple, intuitive workflow for setting up APs, switches, and gateways - no onsite IT involvement required. Configuration parameters can be defined within Aruba Central based on network- or sitespecific requirements. To get started, simply plug in and power on a device. As the device boots up, it connects to Aruba Central and automatically receives its running configuration from the cloud.

Mobile Installer App

The mobile installer app allows you to delegate the installation and deployment of devices to trusted resources or third-party service providers. The app lets you define the access privileges of each IT resource and track the onboarding process as devices are scanned and added to the assigned network. The zero touch provisioning process is then used, and the status of each device is instantly updated in the Aruba Central installer dashboard.

Supported Network Devices

Aruba Central provides management for a wide range of Aruba wireless APs, switches, and gateways (formerly known as controllers). For wireless networks, Aruba Central supports deployments both with and without gateways.

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AI-Powered Monitoring And Troubleshooting

When a network- or business-impacting problem occurs, quick detection, root cause identification, and resolution are at the core of maintaining a stable environment. Aruba Central enables 24x7, intelligent monitoring of networks, applications, client devices, and end-user experience, all correlated into powerful visualizations and dashboards.

AIOps for Wireless, Wired, and WAN

Aruba Central includes a full-service AIOps solution that automates common troubleshooting activities, reducing IT support tickets and associated costs. Aruba's AIOps solution is based on machine learning models that are consistently trained with network performance data collected from tens of thousands of Aruba customers across every vertical, market segment, and network type.

Core components of the AIOps solution include:

• AI Insights: Automatically surface and diagnose an array of common network-impacting issues by using dynamic, per-site baselines that are continuously tuned as conditions change - no manual setup or adjustment of service level thresholds required. Built-in anomaly detection highlights the severity and impact of issues as they occur, helping IT pinpoint root cause and proper remediation steps with 95% accuracy.
• AI Search: A natural language processing (NLP) engine of the Aruba Central data lake that points to solution guides, troubleshooting tips, and more. Whether operators are looking for best practices on device configurations or need to isolate a problem impacting a specific user, AI Search provides fast, interactive responses that simplify Day 0 to Day 2 operations.
• AI Assist: Uses event-driven automation to collect diagnostics, post them to a shared location, and even notify Aruba TAC for proactive customer support.

Additional Monitoring Capabilities

Detailed health and analytics dashboards are also available to monitor:

• Network health: Gain broad visibility into network-wide performance, and drill-in to specific sites with summaries of device utilization, configuration compliance, and other statistics.
• Application visibility: Monitor application health across the network, ensuring critical services receive priority traffic while tracking and enforcing acceptable usage by site, device, or location.
• UCC analytics: A consolidated view of how VoIP applications are performing with mean opinion scores (MOS) and insights into potential RF performance and capacity issues.
• Client health: Delivers a multitude of details on devices connected to the network, including insights into client performance, connectivity status, physical location, and the data path.
• AI-based connectivity insights: Automatically identify potential Wi-Fi connectivity issues tied to DHCP, DNS, authentication failures, and more.

For wired networks, IT operators gain visibility into the health and utilization of both individual and stacked switches. This includes port status, PoE consumption, VLAN assignments, device and neighbor connections, power status, and more- with built-in alerts and events that accelerate wired network troubleshooting.

Built-in Troubleshooting Tools

Troubleshooting capabilities include live events, packet capture, logs, and rich command line tools. Diagnostic checks such as ping tests and traceroutes are also available, as are device-level performance tests for Aruba infrastructure.

User Experience Insight Integration

Aruba User Experience Insight (UXI) completes IT's understanding of application and network health by measuring it from the perspective of end users. UXI sensors deliver continuous monitoring and testing of wireless, wired, and WAN performance, reporting any anomalies directly to the Aruba Central network health dashboard. When a problem is detected, IT can quickly identify systemic or intermittent issues in any location, then access the full UXI dashboard for advanced troubleshooting.

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AI-Powered Optimization

Cloud, IoT, and newer applications such as 8K video streaming and AR/VR are flooding Wi-Fi networks. Combined with poor building conditions that can interfere with client connectivity, these bandwidth-intensive applications can have a crippling effect on network performance and enduser experience.

Aruba Central orchestrates a number of unique AI-powered capabilities that keep Wi-Fi networks performing at peak levels.

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Deliver SLA-Grade Application QoS

Guarantee performance and optimize user experience with Air Slice. By dynamically allocating radio resources such as time, frequency, and spatial streams, Air Slice helps guarantee performance for latency-sensitive, high-bandwidth applications such as AR/VR, Zoom, and Slack as well as IoT devices.

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Automate RF Management

Improve wireless capacity and coverage controls with AirMatch. By utilizing AI and machine learning, AirMatch analyzes periodic RF data across the network to derive configuration changes for every deployed Aruba AP, which receive dynamic updates based on changing environmental conditions.

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Edge-To-Cloud Security

Hybrid workplace initiatives, IoT, and edge computing are dissolving the traditional IT perimeter. Meanwhile, new security exploits continue to crop up every day. To help tighten networks amidst this increasingly diverse threat landscape, Aruba Central provides a number of advanced security capabilities.

Role-based Policies

Replace manual configuration of static VLANs and ACLs with role-based policies that define proper access privileges for employees, guests, contractors, and other user groups. Aruba Central provides a single location to configure these policies, which are automatically enforced across the network - no matter where users connect, nor whether they're wired in or using Wi-Fi on the LAN, or have moved to another location on the WAN.

Cloud Authentication and Policy

A capability known as Cloud Authentication and Policy further simplifies how IT controls network access while providing a frictionless experience for end users who need connectivity. IT admins can upload allowed client MAC addresses to Central or authenticate users via integrations with common cloud identity stores such as Google Workspace or Azure Active Directory to automatically assign the right level of network access. Client devices can also be onboarded seamlessly using an application that supports macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android operating systems.

Cloud Authentication and Policy also provides additional insights into network behavior and usage. Within the associated monitoring dashboard in Central, administrators have visibility into traffic patterns, access requests, connected sessions, and more, helping IT continuously refine and strengthen security postures.

Secure Wireless Segmentation

For venues such as malls or airports that require multitenancy operations, MultiZone enables secure SSID separation without needing to deploy additional access points. A key use case of MultiZone is keeping IoT devices - which aren't very secure - separate from other enterprise traffic without incurring the expense or complexity of deploying and managing another wireless network.

Intrusion Detection

Aruba Central utilizes Aruba's Rogue AP Intrusion Detection Service (RAPIDS) to identify and resolve issues caused by rogue APs and clients. Wired and wireless data is automatically correlated to identify potential threats, strengthening network security and improving incident response processes by reducing false positives.

Web Content Filtering

Web Content Classification (WebCC) classifies websites by content category and rates them by reputation and risk score, enabling IT to block malicious sites to help prevent phishing, DDoS, botnets, and other common attacks.

Integrated Policy Enforcement Firewall

Built-in deep packet inspection sees and classifies thousands of applications for granular, per-app traffic enforcement, allowing IT to block, prioritize, and rate-limit bandwidth for an individual or groups of apps.

AI-based Client Profiling

To close visibility gaps often associated with mobile and IoT devices, Aruba Central offers ML-based classification of all clients. ML algorithms use dynamic comparisons against known clients and MAC range classification in the likely event that unknown devices are connected to your network.

Through this service, Aruba Central automatically categorizes all devices running on any wired or wireless network, using deep packet inspection to provide additional context and behavioral information that help ensure devices are receiving proper policy enforcement.

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SD-Branch Orchestration

Connecting branches and other remote locations using legacy WAN solutions is costly and complex. Aruba SD‑Branch can help simplify WAN management while enhancing user experiences. As the cloud-based management console for Aruba SD-Branch, Aruba Central empowers IT to centrally manage virtual, headend, and branch gateways and route traffic over MPLS, broadband, and cellular links.

Aruba Central also provides:

• Integrated topology views for graphical representation of gateways and details per site.
• Monitoring of WAN circuit health, bandwidth availability, and tunnel status for each site.
• Quality of experience (QoE) scores for SaaS apps with drill-downs for root cause analysis.
• WAN orchestration for managing routing preferences across branches and data centers.
• Virtual gateway management to directly extend policies to gateways hosted in public clouds.
• Streamlined management of integrations with AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager and Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN.
• An advanced security dashboard with IDS/IPS, threat intelligence data, and correlation with incident management capabilities.

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Extend Operations To IoT

Aruba Central simplifies IoT operations with an integrate dashboard and app store. The dashboard extends network monitoring and insights to BLE and Zigbee devices connected to Aruba access points running AOS 10, helping converge IT and IoT onto the same network.

The integrated app store reduces the complexity of deploying new IoT services, which often require specialized components and skills. With Aruba Central, customers can seamlessly download and deploy best-of-breed apps from leading IoT partners in a couple of clicks.

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Reporting And Maintenance

Robust Reporting

Aruba Central provides premium-grade reporting features that are included as part of the base license subscriptions. Reports cover device connectivity, network health, capacity planning, and the ability to baseline and compare user experience across various sites in the network. A reporting wizard is also provided to generate scheduled and ondemand reports that highlight network and application health, throughput and usage data, device and client inventory, activity auditing, and much more.

Live Upgrades

Upgrading firmware on network devices often results in downtime or loss of service. In such cases, IT organizations often rely on time-consuming, CLI-based processes, or must place calls to customer support to help initiate upgrades. Aruba Central offers a radically simplistic approach with a GUI-based workflow to upgrade firmware on deployed network devices. This includes the ability to complete live upgrades to reduce maintenance windows and ensure continuous operations. Upgrades can be completed at the site level, and can also be scheduled during non-peak hours of operation. Lastly, rules governing firmware compliance can also be managed within the Aruba Central UI for all managed devices.

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Remote Work

Aruba Central enables IT to easily scale, monitor, and secure the network infrastructure required to support thousands of remote users who need access to corporate applications and services - no taxing, manual setup required. Options include deploying Aruba's microbranch solution with desktop access points to provide an in-office experience, or using plug-andplay Virtual Intranet Access (VIA) VPN clients that connect to Aruba Gateways deployed in data centers or public cloud infrastructure to support employees on the go..

Once employees are connected, IT can centrally monitor and troubleshoot user-impacting problems, including employees who are connected to the VPN. Insights include the client data path, bandwidth consumption, and VPN tunnel health.

Proactive notifications of issues helps IT debug issues faster by pinpointing the exact cause of bottlenecks, thereby reducing help desk calls and minimizing user interruptions.

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Extensibility Through APIS And Webhooks

For customers developing network automation frameworks, Aruba Central offers extensibility with other leading IT platforms and solutions through APIs and webhooks. By automatically pulling data from Aruba Central into these third-party solutions, network operators can programmatically trigger actions based on certain events or conditions. Common workflows that extend across multiple systems can be further automated, such as creating IT tickets in ServiceNow, or orchestrating configuration changes across hundreds of network devices using Ansible.

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Enterprise-Grade Reliability

Designed from the ground up, Aruba Central ensures the highest possible availability through:

• A web-scale database design for responsive performance, even with large data sets.
• Service redundancy, hosted from data centers worldwide in multiple locations.
• Secure HTTPS connectivity, with certificate-based authentication for the highest level of protection.

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Deploy And Manage Your Way

Aruba Central is available via software-as-a-service (SaaS), on-premises, and managed service models, giving customers the choice and flexibility required to suit a diverse set of technical, staffing, and financial requirements.

On-premises Deployments

Aruba Central On-Premises is ideal for customers who want the agility and efficiency of the cloud, but need to adhere to stringent regulatory or compliance requirements. Customers with legacy network designs that may temporarily inhibit cloud adoption are also potential candidates for this option.

Aruba Central On-Premises is powered by purpose-built server appliances, available in either 3-, 5-, or 7-node clusters for enterprise-class scale and resiliency. A 1-node option is also available to support smaller deployments.

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Simple, Flexible Consumption

Software license suites enable various management features within Aruba Central, and are purchased on a per-device basis. Licenses are available in 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, and 10-year increments, making it easy for customers to align requirements for AIOps, security, and other desired management features with both current and future budgets.

Foundation Licenses

Foundation licenses enable all primary enterprise features for campus, branch, remote, and data center networks, and provide access to monitoring, reporting and troubleshooting, onboarding, provisioning, orchestration, AI and analytics, content filtering, guest access, UXI integration, and 24x7 TAC (including software support for all hardware).

Advanced Licenses

Advanced licenses include all Foundation features and add enhanced AIOps, security, and other premium features, such as end-to-end segmentation, expanded AI Insights, UCC visibility and reporting, and more.