Define a network controller:
A network controller is a highly scalable server role that provides two APIs, the first interface allowing communication between the network and the controller, and the second interface allowing communication between the controller and users.
It can be said that the control unit is completely API-based. It uses the Southbound API to communicate with network devices, services, and components, discover network device and service configurations, and collect network information requested by users. The Southbound interface provides a path for information to be sent to the network infrastructure, such as information about configuration changes that have been made. However, using the Northbound API Web controller provides users with the ability to collect to configure, monitor, discover and deploy new devices on the network using network information from the Web controller, use it to monitor and configure the network, allows them Windows PowerShell, and achieve network management in collaboration with the GUI.
Features of using the network controller:
- as we mentioned before; The Network Controller is highly scalable and Microsoft has made available the upgraded Network Controller for Windows Server 2016 that provides a centralized, programmable point of automation for managing, configuring, monitoring and diagnosing network infrastructure issues. Virtual and physical data center.
- When using the Web Console, you can configure the network infrastructure automatically instead of manually configuring network devices and services.
- The network console provides a variety of functions to configure and manage virtual and physical network devices and services, such as firewall management, by defining firewall rules for incoming and outgoing traffic from virtual machine workloads, each firewall rule can also be individually configured to log traffic rules allow or not allow; In addition to managing the firewall, the controller manages the virtual network and manages the RAS gateway by publishing, configuring, and managing virtual machines that are members of the RAS gateway, providing gateway services to tenants.
- Network controllers allow different connections to be made to tenants on separate gateways. Therefore, you can use a single public IP address for all connections, or use several different public IP addresses for each subset of connections. The network controller records all changes made in the gateway configuration and state. Which can be used for auditing and troubleshooting purposes.