Costs of Orchestration

[deanwebb]

Orchestration is that buzzword that means getting different software packages to talk to each other, like using IPS to send a syslog to Splunk, which then dispatches a request to NAC to block an endpoint and another request to the firewall to block traffic inbound to that endpoint.

Sounds really neat, and it is. But, when the network guys are happy to orchestrate away and get all kinds of info into their products to make the best possible decisions, they get a tap on the shoulder from an admin of a product they started to orchestrate with. That other admin says,

"You're exceeding your quota of API calls per day."

What face do you make when you realize that not only is your feature broken, but that there's no easy way to fix it? You make this one:



If the vendor provided an integration module that is very chatty, IE it will make an API call for each piece of information it needs, individually, then you are having this problem. The resolution is to get the vendor to find a way to make a bulk request whenever possible. The solution is NOT to support inefficient programming logic by upping the number of API calls per day. For a large firm, that can mean several million dollars per year spent on additional API calls per day.

If a vendor can't give you a ballpark on calls per day that his product will consume from an orchestration module, have them go back and do their homework so you have that information and can properly size not only for CPU, RAM, and network, but also API calls/day.