Arista Warrior, 2nd Edition

Chapter 15. CloudVision

CloudVision is the name for a group of software products that allow control and management of Arista devices. Though designed to manage Arista devices, there’s no reason that it couldn’t support other vendors’ devices through the application of a common interface such as OpenConfig, but for this chapter I’m going to include only Arista devices because it’s a book about Arista, after all.

One of the reasons this book was delayed was because I struggled with CloudVision. When it first came out, I was not a fan, and with CloudVision being a big deal for Arista, I wanted to write about it in a positive light, but I just didn’t believe in the product. That has changed in a big way, and the fact that it has is kind of a big deal to me. Allow me a brief digression as to why.

I was hired by Arista because of my ability to write about the company and its products (remember, I wrote the first edition when I was not an employee) and because I was clearly a fan. Arista’s President and CEO Jayshree Ullal actually considered not hiring me directly because my independent views actually had a fair bit of impact in the market and she didn’t want to lose that. I made a deal with the executives who hired me: the minute I stop believing, I’m gone. Additionally, I said that I would tell only what I felt to be the truth. If you’ve seen me speak, you know that I can be quite passionate about the topic at hand, but that passion evaporates if I have to tell marketing stories that ...