The Apstra software is installed as one or a set of virtual machines (VMs) to connect and manage devices via agents installed on or off the devices.

You can design your rack types and fabric network using Apstra templates. Details such as single/dual-homing of servers, collapsed/3-stage/5-stage style of fabric, Ethernet VPN (EVPN)/IP fabric, and IPV4/IPv6 underlay can be specified as part of the template type and options. Once the fabric template is completed, it can be instantiated into blueprints, each representing an actual physical network. The allocation of the managed devices and network resources (“build phase”) is done within the blueprints. As the blueprint is built, Apstra automatically produces the necessary configuration for devices, providing an abstraction layer across vendors. Apstra provides continuous validation against intent and policy assurance, and it identifies configuration drift in real time, confirming that security policies are enforced as intended. Once the user commits the changes, the incremental configuration is pushed to the Juniper, Cisco, Arista, or Dell-EMC devices.

• Intent-based automation and continuous Day 0 – Day 2+ validation
  
• Multivendor support
  
• Advanced telemetry, policy assurance, and a single source of truth
  
• Scalability
  
• Intent Time Voyager rollback
  

Juniper Apstra offers vendor-agnostic intent based networking solutions.With Apstra you can accelerate deployment while keeping consistency across your network. Apstra translates business intent and technical objectives to essential policy and device-specific configuration, and it continuously self-validates and resolves issues to assure compliance. You specify the “what” (network topology, VLANs, desired capacity, redundancy requirements, access rules, and more), and Apstra delivers the “how.”