SDN VendorscapeJanuary 2015, CSG

SDN vendors

There is a lot of activity in this space with many choices. Most vendors claim their hardware/software can be introduced

gradually into the network without disruption. Most products or services are designed for data center

optimizations – with attention just now shifting to the WAN. ISPs are embracing network virtualization, optimization and

automation features so vendors are delivering products and services that will do this.

If you go to SNxCentral, you’ll see a large list of SDN vendors. This presentation is focused on those that provide SDN switches,

and is by no means a complete list or discussion of the “Vendorscape”.

Quick comparisonsONF ODL OF ver. Open

APIs40G 100G Hybrid

ModeController

Alcatel Yes No 1.0, 1.3 Yes No?

Arista Yes Yes 1.0 Yes Yes Yes? No?

Brocade Yes Yes* 1.0, 1.3 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Cisco Yes Yes* 1.0 NR Yes Yes Yes Yes

Dell Yes Yes* 1.0, 1.3~ Yes Yes No No

Extreme Yes Yes 1.0, 1.3 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

HP Yes Yes* 1.0, 1.3 Yes Yes Yes Yes No?

Juniper Yes Yes* 1.0 ? Yes Yes Yes Yes

NEC Yes Yes 1.0, 1.3 ? Yes No? Yes? Yes

Noviflow Yes No 1.3 Yes No ? No

Corsa Yes No 1.3 Yes ? Yes

Alcatel-Lucent Has what they call a “coordinated virtual infrastructure. Virtualizes routers for NFV. Opened 3 Bell Labs focused on Cloud and SDN Partners with Nuage Networks Working on SDN for optical devices as well as typical

switches and routers. Clearpass policy manager does access management. Agnostic on controllers One use case cited is to be able to prioritize capacity to

reduce/remove jitter and latency for elephant flows.

Arista

Arista’s EOS supports OpenFlow 1.0. Focus on software-driven cloud networking. VXLAN Multi-vendor SDN for Network Virutalization Open APIs

Brocade

The Vyatta Controller, the first commercial Controller built directly from OpenDaylight code unveiled in 2014, allows users to freely optimize their network infrastructure to address the needs of their specific workloads. Also Vyatta router (software) based on Linux/Redhat model.

Vyatta router is built in software. OpenFlow in hybrid port mode (as opposed to just hybrid

mode). Brocade-Cienna joint solution for “elastic cloud bursting”. Says there were over 3,000 stories last year of SDN use

cases with their switches. Brocade-Aruba partnership for wireless implementation. Bandwidth metering available in OpenFlow 1.3.

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) capable of managing

the entire data center with a desire to work with numerous partners in their “open ecosystem”.

OpFlex submitted as IETF draft. Goldman Sachs report says Cisco’s ACI provides a 3x better

total cost of ownership than Vmware NSX Partners: Embrane (Elastic Services Manager) Buyouts: Tail-f (cloud orchestration); Metacloud (OpenStack

cloud provider) Joins Open Compute Project Controller based on OpenDaylight.

Dell

Fabric switch and controller designed to scale and automate OpenStack clouds,

Believes that adding third-party networking software on its switch hardware increases the value of its products.

OpenFlow 1.3 (partial), is willing to activate various features of 1.3 if there is interest.

Real Use Case: Data Center Bridging (DCB) capable switch with multi-hop DCB and a lossless environment.

Founding members of ONOS, upgraded membership in OpenDaylight, involved in standards creation.

Partners with Cumulus and with SwitchLight (Big Switch), relationship with Redhat and OpenStack

OpenGENI racks.

Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks’ SDN platform is based on a hardened OpenDaylight (ODL) controller that includes network management, network access control, application analytics and wireless controller technology.

Approach preserves the integrity of the open API provided by ODL while extending data center orchestration, automation and provisioning to the entire network under “a single pane of glass.”

Sees software replacing hardware and appliances giving way to software APIs.

HP Built upon its core strategy which is based on open

standards, HP provides open standards underlay and overlay technologies such as OpenFlow and Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN).

OpenFlow-enabled switches (17 model families) Last year raised investment in OpenDaylight and open

source SDNs. Controller compliant with OpenFlow 1.0 and 1.3, open APIs. Creates industry’s first SDN app store.

Hyperglance, Bluecat DNS Director, Load Balancer, Network Optimizer, Network Protector

Juniper

Expanded carrier SDN portfolio, controller, management products

Accepts OpenDaylight and develops plugin to link its OpenContrail SDN controller to the open source code.

Virtualizes routers for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

Unveils Junos for Open Compute Platform leading to disaggregation strategy to appeal to white box customers.

Flexible deployment options allow implementation to be started anywhere in the network with the ability to grow and evolve over time.

OpenContrail vs. OpenDaylight?

Plexxi Designed for the data center space, they claim to have

provided the first SDN-based Ethernet switch. They also have a controller,

An SDN startup, it weds its controller and the photonic switching environment to build an optical topology that fits the network requirements.

SolidFire

New vendors to consider Both from Canada, two vendors have fully implemented

OpenFlow 1.3 on their products and both belong to the Open Networking Foundation

Corsa – working with Energy Sciences Network, their data plane product can support millions of flows and multiple flow tables. Tagline “SDN Done Right”. Can do 100Gig.

Noviflow – application aware switching fabric, up to 200 Gbps of OpenFlow throughput, supporting 1 million flow entries, OpenFlow 1.3 complete spec implemented. 100Gig not available yet.

Big Switch Networks OpenFlow-capable network apps – Big Tap Monitoring, Big

Cloud Fabric Cloud Fabric controller Exchanged Vmware/Nicira strategy for Cisco ACI Tagline – “Bare Metal SDN” Partners: Dell Other alliances: A10, Acton, Blue Coat, F5, Blue Data,

Broadcom, Canonical, Checkpoint, Citrix, Edgecore, Fireeye, Fortinent, Garland, Hillstone, Hortonworks, Infoblox, IW Networks, Microsoft, Mirantis, Nexenta, Quanta, Redhat, Riverbed, Telechemy

Pluribus Networks Pluribus Networks unique converged architecture fuses

compute, storage, switching, and network virtualization. Network Hypervisor product Partners with: Fortinet, Supermicro, TIBCO, SanDisk, Intel,

Redhat, Coraid, Oracle

VMWare Software Defined Data Center Partners: Palo Alto Networks (firewalls) Several products capable of SDN, vSphere, VCloud Suite,

VCloud Air, etc. VMWare NSX is their network virtualization platform for their

software defined data center.

SurveyWould it be useful to send out a survey to a variety of vendors?

View https://jfe.qualtrics.com/preview/SV_bm6MloRmIeA6Zcp

Or ask me for a PDF version of the draft survey.

Would the CSG want to include just switch vendors or should other vendors such as cloud and data center vendors be included as well?

Further info ECAR published a paper, “The Promise and Reality of SDN”,

in December that has useful links and information.

See http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/promise-and-reality-sdn

Or drop me an email: celestea@usc.edu

Thanks!