Explore the essential management considerations for building and operating multi-tenant AI data center networks. Attendees will learn why abstraction is critical to achieving the scale, speed, and consistency required for AI infrastructure. The presentation will demonstrate how event-driven automation (EDA) simplifies the design, deployment, and operation of backend AI networks, enabling secure and efficient multi-tenancy at scale. Zeno Dhaene, Product Manager for Nokia's Event-Driven Automation (EDA), emphasizes that while AI data centers may appear uniform, they are uniquely defined by specific physical locations and business needs, such as GPU-as-a-service or shared internal infrastructure. To manage this complexity, EDA utilizes declarative intent and multiple layers of abstraction, allowing operators to treat an entire data center, comprising hundreds of thousands of configuration lines, as a single, manageable resource.

During the demonstration, Dhaene builds a functional AI backend featuring two stripes and a spine connector, capable of hosting approximately 2,000 GPUs, using only high-level labels rather than manual interface assignments. By tagging nodes and interfaces with metadata like "role," "tenant," and "data center," EDA automatically orchestrates the underlying technical requirements, including BGP peering, IP address pooling, and the creation of isolated virtual routers for different tenants. This process is validated through a dry run feature that checks generated configurations against switch YANG models, ensuring accuracy before deployment. The platform's ability to emit over 2,000 output resources from a single input resource illustrates the efficiency of moving away from traditional, manual configuration methods toward highly automated, intent-based systems.

The presentation also highlights EDA's flexibility and integration capabilities, noting that the platform can serve as a standalone orchestrator or a gateway that pulls data from external sources of truth like Netbox or Nautobot. This allows for zero-touch automation where internal business tools can trigger network changes, such as provisioning GPUs for a customer, without direct operator intervention. Dhaene concludes by showcasing EDA's real-time telemetry streaming and its digital twin capabilities, which allow engineers to simulate and test entire data center fabrics on a laptop. By providing a scalable framework for both cookie-cutter and highly customized environments, Nokia's EDA addresses the critical need for speed and reliability in the rapidly evolving AI infrastructure market.

Presented by Zeno Dhaene, Product Line Manager. Recorded live at Networking Field Day 40 in San Jose on April 8, 2026. Watch the entire presentation at https://techfieldday.com/appearance/nokia-presents-at-networking-field-day-40/ or visit https://TechFieldDay.com/event/nfd40 or https://Nokia.com/ for more information.