WH IT E PAP E R

Redefining Networking with

Network Virtualization

Why Networking Is Ripe for a Change

W H I T E P A P E R / 2

Table of Contents

Overcoming the Obstacle Blocking the Benefits of a Hybrid Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

What Is Network Virtualization? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

The Four Cs of Legacy Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1. Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2. Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3. Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

4. Cyber Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Three Trends Reshaping the Networking Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1. Redirecting Intelligence from Hardware to Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2. The Rise of the Software-Defined Data Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3. The Rapid Adoption of Network Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

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Overcoming the Obstacle Blocking the Benefits of a Hybrid Cloud

Patience may well be a virtue, but for enterprises eager to get applications in

the hands of end users, there is no virtue in standing by while IT administrators

manually provision, change, and manage their legacy network infrastructure.

Business decision makers are increasingly pushing their IT organizations to deliver

applications and services with speed and agility—the type of on-demand provisioning

made possible by hybrid cloud architectures. In fact, 82 percent of enterprises have mapped

out a hybrid cloud strategy to try and satisfy their appetite for urgency and flexibility.1

With hybrid clouds, the enterprise can utilize both private and public clouds to scale up and

down quickly as needed for storage, availability, regulatory compliance, DevOps, and more.

But in many data centers, there is an obstacle to implementing a hybrid cloud: a legacy,

hardware-centric network architecture.

Why the hold-up? With hardware-centric networking, there is no automatic linkage to

compute or storage virtualization. As a result, there is no way to automatically provision

and make ongoing changes to network services when the associated compute and storage

are created, moved, snapshotted, deleted, or cloned. So, network provisioning and change

management both remain slow.

1. RightScale, “2015 State of the Cloud Report,” February 2015.

of enterprises have mapped out a hybrid cloud strategy82%

Decoupled

Hardware

Software

General Purpose Networking Hardware

Network HypervisorRequirement: IP Transport

Virtual Network

Virtual Network

Virtual Network

Workload Workload Workload

L2, L3, L4-7 Network Services

General Purpose Server Hardware

Server HypervisorRequirement: x86

Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine

Application Application Application

x86 Environment

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What Is Network Virtualization?

Much as server virtualization recreates the traits

of a physical server within software, network

virtualization likewise replicates the components of

network and security services in a software container.

Consequently, the virtualized network is provisioned

and managed independent of your hardware, and the

physical networking devices simply become a vehicle

for forwarding packets. With network virtualization,

your network administrators can create and provision

virtual networks—logical switches, routers, firewalls,

load balancers, VPN, and workload security—in

minutes rather than days or even weeks.

What does this mean for IT organizations? Enterprises

can use network virtualization to connect to the

hybrid cloud without worrying about network

hardware dependency, interoperability, or service

provider lock-in. The resulting hybrid cloud provides

much greater business agility, dramatically simpler

operations, and lower cost.

The Four Cs of Legacy NetworkingHardware-centric networking poses a range of challenges for IT organizations. By exploring

each of these four significant disadvantages, it’s easier to recognize the need to transition

to network virtualization.

1. Complexity

According to a recent study by Dynamic Markets, 90 percent of companies

surveyed acknowledge that they are limited by the complexities of their

networks when it comes to deploying applications and services.2 In fact, the

study found that businesses spend 270 days per year on average waiting for

IT to deliver a new or updated service.

Other findings from the study include:

Much of the complication reflected in this report can be traced back to

hardware-centric networking, a closed black-box approach that requires

custom operating systems, ASICs, CLIs, and management. It’s an approach

that ties the enterprise to existing hardware and network architecture, but

diverts IT professionals from making strategic contributions in order to tackle

a host of manual tasks.

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2. Dynamic Markets, “Network Agility Research 2014,” February 2014.

3. Dynamic Markets, “Network Agility Research 2014,” February 2014.

In a 12-month period,

IT makes an average

of 10 changes to the

corporate network that

require a maintenance

window. The average

wait for maintenance

windows is 27 days

each.

82 percent of respondents

experienced at least some

network downtime due

to change errors, and 80

percent lost revenue due

to downtime.

Larger enterprises

require significantly

more of these changes

and wait even longer for

maintenance windows.3

2. Configuration

For instance, the IT team needs to carry out a series of configuration steps whenever a line of business asks for a new application or service, or to move an existing application. Steps include establishing VLANs, mapping VLANs across switches and uplinks, creating port groups, updating service profiles, and more. The task is further complicated when configuration work is performed through CLIs.

The sluggish nature of these manual tasks is exacerbated by the likelihood of human error during configuration. Studies find that roughly one-third of network outages are caused by manual configuration mistakes.4

3. Costs

Hardware-centric networking can also run up operational and capital costs in the data center. First, consider the impact on operational expenditures (OpEx). Think of the manual processes required for managing a physical network, and then apply those manual tasks to each of the environments in the enterprise that need IT support—i.e., DevOps, departmental networks, application environments, primary and recovery sites. IT teams can spend hours, days, even weeks, to deploy networks.

Next, weigh the cost of unnecessary capital expenditures (CapEx). Supporting legacy networks means spending on standalone solutions—i.e., routing, firewalling, load balancing—to maintain networking and security functions. Additionally, physical networks can force the enterprise to overprovision hardware in order to meet peak demands, and require periodic forklift upgrades to keep up with advancements in networking technology.

of network outages are caused by manual configuration mistakes

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4. Dimension Data, “2015 Network Barometer Report,” June 2015.

$

33%

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4. Cyber Attacks

Legacy three-tier network architectures, as well as perimeter-centric firewalls

can also expose data centers to security risks. In cases where a cyber attack

breaches a perimeter firewall, we’ve learned that legacy networking systems

are limited in their ability to stop attacks from spreading inside the data

center. That’s because it’s proving too expensive to establish firewalls for

traffic between workloads, or east-west traffic.

Three Trends Reshaping the Networking Industry

What are the factors causing IT organizations to rethink networking architecture? We see

three forces at work that are fundamentally changing how we approach networking, and

the move away from legacy systems.

1. Redirecting Intelligence from Hardware to Software

By designing abstraction layers into their infrastructures, cloud service pacesetters such as

Amazon, Facebook, and Google are achieving industry-altering speed, agility, security, and

efficiency in their data centers. With this ability to decouple networking components and

services from hardware and integrate them into software applications, these IT visionaries

have discovered the benefits of software intelligence—automation—and freedom from

reliance on a hardware-centric network architecture.

This shift is significant in two ways and can apply to enterprises of all sizes. First, with

network infrastructure in the software, there’s greater agility in the data center. IT teams can

quickly provision and move virtual machines in a manner that’s more secure, reliable, and

scalable than is possible with legacy systems. Second, network virtualization makes it easier

to release applications in greater numbers and frequency, which enables the enterprise to

capture more business opportunities.

5. Taneja Group, “Transforming the Datacenter with VMware’s Software‐Defined Data Center vCloud Suite,” June 2014.

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2. The Rise of the Software-Defined Data Center

Time to value has become a measuring stick for the success of IT operations. And the

Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), which allows IT organizations to deploy resources

automatically without the need for manual intervention, provides a foundation for efficiency

and the rapid delivery of applications and services.

With the SDDC, compute, storage, and networking are all virtualized and sorted into pools

of resources. Consequently, the IT infrastructure is controlled by software, reducing the time

it takes to deploy new applications from days or hours down to minutes. All of the benefits

of automation—agility, security, flexibility, and savings—are at your fingertips.

3. The Rapid Adoption of Network Virtualization

As IT organizations race to keep up with the demands of their stakeholders, they are keen

to achieve flexibility, scalability, and savings. And they are increasingly finding the answer

lies in network virtualization.

A new 2015 survey by SDx Central found that 88 percent of respondents said it was either

“important” or “mission critical” to adapt a network virtualization solution within the next

five years.6 By making the move to network virtualization, organizations are realizing they

can deploy resources fast, scale to meet changing demands, and support applications as

they shift from their legacy hardware model to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach.

ConclusionBy turning to the hybrid cloud, enterprises can expedite the delivery of IT services while

cutting back on OpEx and CapEx costs. But for IT organizations that remain tied to legacy

network infrastructure, they face an obstacle—inflexible hardware—in their path to the

hybrid cloud. As the new definition of networking, network virtualization provides a bridge

to the hybrid cloud and all of the benefits—i.e., agility, simplicity, flexibility—that it provides.

To find more information about the benefits of network virtualization, visit

https://www.vmware.com/products/nsx.

Software-Defined Savings

In a recent study, the Taneja Group reported that Software-Defined Data

Centers deliver a 56 percent reduction in annual operational costs for

provisioning and management. Additionally, the study showed that the time

required to provision a production network for a new application was slashed

from three or four weeks to a matter of minutes.5

5. Taneja Group, “Transforming the Datacenter with VMware’s Software-Defined Data Center vCloud Suite,” June 2014.

6. SDx Central, “2015 Special Report: Network Virtualization in the Data Center,” November 2015.

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