How to Transform Operations with Open Networking – Customer Viewpoints

Feels like a blink of the eye, but Open Networking is now over 4 years in the making. And by the looks of things the proverbial genie is out of the bottle and there’s no turning back. The proposition back then, remains the same today, disaggregate the traditional networking stack and innovation will follow, for the industry and for the customer. Just like how when the compute industry transitioned from mainframe to client-server technologies we witnessed a massive wave of innovation combined with an inherent democratization of the technologies, a similar effect is now taking hold in the networking industry. This means a whole lot of ‘new’ – new technologies, new architectures, new economics, new ways of operating networks. Organizations deploying and managing real networks are grappling with real and practical issues. Across the board, big and small, network operation teams are faced with a number of critical requirements as demands on the network and overall complexity increases. In spite of differing industries and businesses, the challenges these companies face and the problems they are trying to solve through Open Networking are consistently similar, as evidenced through a recent IDC study.  They include: Increasing network agility to support virtualized applications Making the network more automated and programmable Improving security Providing greater operational efficiencies From the interviews IDC conducted with Dell EMC customers, it is evident that Open Networking is having a dramatic effect, in terms of addressing the requirements outlined above—and ultimately transforming operations. For example, according to Alex Kurgan, a senior network engineer at AFEX, a private company that provides global payment and risk management solutions, they chose to deploy Dell EMC Open Networking with Big Switch Networks: “The resulting operational agility and operational efficiencies have been considerable, abetted further by visibility into the VMware vCenter orchestrator and related infrastructure like vSAN and NSX. The provisioning of the systems is now much easier and a lot faster, and it requires a lot less involvement for me and troubleshooting has become easier.” And Andrew Martin, network engineer at LogicMonitor, who is using Dell EMC Open Networking paired with Cumulus Linux is experiencing significant operational efficiency improvements, through automated and self-service networking.  Andrew states: “In the past the network team was segregated from the rest of the operations team. Not everyone knew the ins and outs of the various vendor-specific interfaces. This made it difficult and a little bit stressful for the networking team. Now our deployment model is to use Ansible. Everyone on our operations team has access to the Ansible playbook, and anyone can do it. They can deploy the full configuration from nothing to everything in just a few clicks, which is awesome.” These customers’ perspectives are a tribute to Dell EMC’s vision of an open, democratized Networking industry. Today, we offer a complete line-up of Open Networking products spanning data center top-of-rack, fabric, and interconnect; campus/branch; and enterprise access/edge environments all with mix-and-match software capabilities from Dell EMC and Open Networking ecosystem partners. And earlier this year at the Open Networking Summit, we advanced the conversation once again moving the focus of Open Networking toward software disaggregation. And at @DellTechnologies World we unveiled our new Virtual Edge Platform (VEP4600) bringing #OpenNetworking to universal #CPE (uCPE)/virtual branch environments with our partners @SilverPeak, @VeloCloud ( @VMware ), and @VersaNetworks .

https://blog.dellemc.com/en-us/transform-operations-open-networking-customer-viewpoints/

The Linux Foundation Hosts 'DANOS' Project, a Unified Network Operating System

LOS ANGELES, March 27, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- #OpenNetworking Summit -- The #LinuxFoundation today announced the Disaggregated Network Operating System ( #DANOS) project to enable community collaboration across network hardware, forwarding and operating system layers. DANOS is initially based on @AT&T's "dNOS" software framework of an open, cost-effective and flexible alternative to traditional networking operating systems. As part of The Linux Foundation, it will incorporate contributions from complementary open source communities to build a standardized distributed Network Operating System (NOS). NOS creation has historically been challenging due to the complexity and magnitude of software and hardware requirements -- as each device in the network needs its own operating system. However, the growth of open source combined with advances in both software and hardware, has fostered an ecosystem of advanced networking applications, new and open technologies, and building blocks on which to host an open and flexible NOS. "We are pleased to welcome DANOS to The Linux Foundation community of open, collaborative innovation," said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager of Networking, The Linux Foundation. "DANOS will provide an open NOS framework that leverages existing open source resources and complementary platforms such as switches and white box routers. We invite others in the broader ecosystem to join the effort to accelerate innovation and creation of an industry-standard disaggregated NOS." "As far as we know, DANOS is an industry first: an open-source, carrier-grade operating system for wide area networks," said John Medamana, Vice President, Packet Optical Network, AT&T. "DANOS is a milestone for us and the industry, and we're excited to see how developers and other users implement and build upon it." Supporting Quotes: "The FRRouting team welcomes DANOS to the Linux Foundation," said J.R. Rivers, CTO of Cumulus Networks. "With 3,413 commits from 68 authors and 42 organizations in the last year, the team continues to build the most full-featured, high-performance open routing stack available." "On behalf of OpenSwitch I'd like to welcome DANOS to open source NOS and Disaggregated Networking," said Alley Hansen, Board Chair, OpenSwitch, and Director, Strategy Networking Dell. "We look forward to the collaboration with DANOS on leveraging the work OPX has accomplished in order to drive more value for operators and to accelerate the adoption of composable networks." "ONF has been a champion of disaggregation, white boxes and open source and in this regard, we are happy to see DANOS launched as a carrier-grade, open source network OS for white boxes," said Guru Parulkar, Executive Director, ONF. "We are looking forward to DANOS and ONF's recent open source platform Stratum, thin switch OS, working together." "SDKLT is a revolutionary, feature-rich open source Software Development Kit, which enables a new approach to switch configuration," said Eli Karpilovski, Director of Marketing, Switch Products at Broadcom. "Broadcom is thrilled to showcase how this mature switch SDK can advance Linux Foundation projects such as DANOS." "We're excited to see the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) as the hardware abstraction layer for DANOS, which will enable DANOS to work across the wide set of switches and switch ASICs that implement SAI," said Dave Maltz, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft Corp.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-linux-foundation-hosts-danos-project-a-unified-network-operating-system-300620140.html

AT&T Hits Milestone on Software-Defined Access

@ATT today is releasing a major hardware abstraction framework for #XGSPON into the #OpenNetworkingFoundation, laying further groundwork for #softwaredefinednetworking control of a common access architecture. The release of #VOLTHA 1.0 -- which is pronounced Volt-HA and stands for #VirtualOpticalLine Terminal Hardware Abstraction -- is a follow-on to hardware specifications AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) already submitted to the Open Compute Project and continues the work of the network operator and its vendor and carrier partners to define the access architecture of the future. It is currently operating in AT&T's Labs and will be in two field trials -- in Atlanta and Dallas -- by year's end. (See AT&T Embracing Software-Defined Access). That future architecture needs to support any media -- fiber, copper or wireless -- and must be software-defined and multivendor, breaking down the current system of managing each access vendor's gear with its own element management and network management systems. As explained by Eddy Barker, AVP for technology design and architecture at AT&T, VOLTHA 1.0 goes a long way in this direction. "What VOLTHA does is allow us to abstract out those common commands that should work with any kind of standard equipment -- some that is software VNFs, [virtual network functions] some is physical hardware," he told Light Reading in an interview. "It essentially allows us to go out and talk to that equipment with its interface type. What this is allowing us to do is create the ecosystem that gives us a software infrastructure layer that is common, and it is open source, although commercialized." Currently VOLTHA 1.0 has the capability of talking to gear from seven different OLT makers to support XGS-PON, he says. VOLTHA can take in standard generic command structures and adapt them to specific silicon in a white box it controls, as well as any software applications.

http://www.lightreading.com/gigabit/fttx/atandt-hits-milestone-on-software-defined-access/d/d-id/736999

Dell open networking gets more 25 GbE switches, SD-WAN appliances

@DellEMC has added #SDWAN for the branch office to its open networking portfolio, while introducing faster switches that are most likely to appeal to cloud providers, carriers and large financial institutions. Dell EMC unveiled this week several hardware options for companies willing to use SD-WAN software from @SilverPeak Inc.,  @VeloCloud Networks Inc. or @VersaNetworks. The hardware selection includes a #Precision 5000 Series PC or #PowerEdge server. The choice of hardware within the Dell #opennetworking portfolio will depend on the amount of horsepower a company needs. Dell EMC support is responsible for fixing problems with the hardware or software, even if one of the SD-WAN vendors is called in for assistance, said Jeff Baher, the executive director of networking at Dell EMC. Dell EMC's strategy of one-vendor support for a multivendor product is different from most companies, which sell the SD-WAN software alone or running on their appliance. "It is definitely a novel approach," Rohit Mehra, an analyst at IDC, said of the Dell open networking strategy. "This allows them to make a play in this hot and exploding market." Indeed, revenues from SD-WAN infrastructure and services will rise nearly 70% a year to $8.05 billion in 2021, according to IDC. Companies moving business applications to public clouds and subscribing to software as a service are driving the booming SD-WAN market. The technology lowers the cost for companies connecting branch offices to the internet to reach cloud and SaaS applications. Dell EMC boosts switching performance Dell EMC's latest open switches include the 10/100 Gigabit Ethernet S4200-ON and the 25/100 GbE S5048 and S5148. Dell has switches at these speeds in its portfolio, but achieves better performance in the latest hardware through the use of Broadcom's most recent application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), dubbed Jericho. The Broadcom ASIC provides Dell with the technology to significantly increase the buffer in the S4200-ON -- ON stands for open networking. Also, the chipset makes it possible to support a more extensive routing table than other products in the Dell open networking portfolio. Therefore, the S4200-ON is better suited for handling east-west traffic within cloud computing and virtualized environments found in the mega-data centers of carriers, cloud providers and banks. The switch is also suitable for routing traffic between data centers, according to Dell.

http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/news/450427761/Dell-open-networking-gets-more-25-GbE-switches-SD-WAN-appliances

Intel: The Next Catalyst Is 5G

Sep. 19, 2017 4:21 PM • INTC Summary #Intel: The Next Catalyst Is #5Gs 5G Mobile Trial Platform ( #MTP) is aimed at ensuring successful operability of devices in 5G cellular network. 5G will boost the sales of Intel’s commodity hardware as well as hardware accelerators. With semiconductor stocks rallying, I believe Intel’s stock also will join in the league. Intel (INTC) announced its 5G Mobile Trial Platform (NYSE:MTP). Intel has taken this initiative as the first tech company to quickly expand the adoption of upcoming new radio standards, better known as 5G new radio (NR), in the telecom industry. Once the finalization of the non-standalone NR specification is over, Intel will start working with the world’s leading TEMs (telecommunications equipment manufacturers) to ensure the successful operability of devices in the network of the initial NR standard.  Image Credit: Intel Intel’s Competitive Advantage: 5G Meets AI 5G is an advanced wireless network where the scope of applying AI (artificial intelligence) tools would be far more compared to 4G. With virtualization-based SDN (software-defined networking) maturing rapidly, AI software applications are now capable of running 5G wireless networks smartly and intelligently. It’s software that would be at the helm of 5G. And that’s good news for Intel despite it's a hardware company. Why? Well, you write part of the program inside hardware accelerators, and the rest at the app level. Some leading network operators in the world, such as #ATT (T), #Verizon (V) and #Google (GOOGL)(GOOG), have formed the #OpenNetworkingFoundation, or #ONF in short, to bring open resources in this area. Hardware vendors like Intel, #Cisco (CSCO) and #Huawei have joined hands with ONF. For Intel this is a tremendous opportunity to boost hardware sales, particularly hardware accelerators. ONF has embarked on a project called Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter (CORD), which has successfully finished the huge task of virtualizing the existing hardware devices. To learn more about this, click here for a research report. According to the report: CORD has successfully completed the virtualization of existing hardware devices such as CPE (customer premises equipment), OLT (optical line transmission) and BNG (broadband network gateway), and produced software counterparts (e.g., applications running on open network operating system (ONOS)) on top of commodity hardware. Moreover, CORD has provided a framework on which these software elements (plus any other cloud services an operator may want to run) can be plugged into, leading to a coherent end-to-end system. Advertisement  Investors' Angle Again, product diversification is Intel’s competitive edge. For successful 5G deployment around the world, operators have to ensure the network is fully operable with tomorrow’s smart devices in the cloud environment. In a previous article I explained how product diversification will help Intel boost its IoT (Internet of Things) group and programmable solutions group (PGG) revenues. As far as 5G is concerned, SDN and NFV (network functions virtualization) will be two integral parts of it. According to Verizon: SDN (software-defined networking) and NFV (network functions virtualization) are really a foundation for how 5G will be deployed. The separation of the control and user plan are all coming from what we see in the web-based environment and are part of what is happening with 5G. And for NFV, FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) play a significant role. It's no longer a secret that 5G will boost Intel's FPGA sales, although Intel's stock isn't pricing in. Meanwhile, FPGA-maker Xilinx (XLNX) has seen a huge surge in its stock price in the last one year. Image Source: Wikipedia This implies the Street isn't unaware about the prospects of FPGAs. As a competitor of GPU (as a parallel processing product), FPGA is increasingly being used in the datacenters. That's why Xilinx is trading at a PS multiple of 7.8x and PE multiple of 30x. In this light, I believe Intel is a good bet for the long term. Conclusion Intel's effort to create the 5G Mobile Trial Platform will help it stay ahead of the curve in the 5G hardware game. Not only the demand for its commodity processors will increase, the demand for its highly specialized Xeon Phi co-processors and of course FPGAs will increase as well. I'd recommend buying Intel on dips. Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4108105-intel-next-catalyst-5g

Pluribus Networks Adds D-Link Systems as an Open Networking Partner

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- #Pluribus Networks today announced that it has added D-Link Systems as an #OpenNetworking Partner and that its #Netvisor® #networkvirtualization software is now certified to support the D-Link #DSX5000 series of open networking hardware platforms. As part of the partnership, D-Link will integrate and resell the Pluribus Netvisor OS with its switching platforms to provide a turn-key, integrated open networking solution for its customers through its global network of value-added resellers, distributors and online retailers. This partnership provides D-Link customers with seamless access to the innovative Netvisor OS integrated on D-Link hardware, and significantly expands the routes to market for Pluribus Networks – extending the range of open networking hardware and software options for a much broader range of organizations globally.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170822005487/en/Pluribus-Networks-Adds-D-Link-Systems-Open-Networking

Big Switch joins the HPE Open Networking Ecosystem

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 8, 2017) - #BigSwitch Networks®, The Next-Generation Data Center Networking Company, today announced it has joined the #HPE #OpenNetworking ecosystem. As Big Switch Networks continues to see a global increase in interest and adoption of open networking solutions from web-scale organizations, service providers, enterprise data centers, and government agencies, this expands the reach of its software offerings for the open networking community. With the offering, customers will gain the advantage of dramatically simplified network management and better visibility of networking flows, and Big Switch's highly differentiated networking software. "We continue to see customers vote for choice, as witnessed by the rise in demand for open networking solutions. We're pleased to extend our open networking ecosystem with #HPE," said Susheel Chitre, VP of Business Development, #BigSwitch Networks. "HPE and Big Switch will provide customers with the best solutions for their specific needs, including #SDN -based data center fabric optimized for #VMware workloads, scalable, high performance #OpenStack #NFV deployments, next-generation out-of-band network monitoring, and a scale-out SDN service-chaining fabric for #DMZ security." HPE will resell #BigMonitoringFabric™ ( #BigMon ) and #BigCloudFabric™ ( #BCF ) with its #Altoline #OpenNetworking switching solutions. In addition, Big Switch products will provide HPE Altoline data center networking offering with automated and easy-to-deploy network switching, monitoring and security solutions. This expands the appeal of the Altoline solutions to new customers in the network visibility and security markets via Big Switch's network packet broker (NPB) products. Big Switch's fabric-based solutions offer a better alternative to the status quo of a manual, switch-by-switch approach to networking. "With the addition of Big Switch to our portfolio, customers gain access to easy-to-use, easy-to-deploy solutions for network management, visibility and security," said Philippe Michelet, Senior Director of Product Line Management, Data Center Networking, HPE. "This cooperation shows our commitment to provide our customers with innovative open networking solutions that address their network agility and scalability challenges." Big Monitoring Fabric Big Monitoring Fabric is a next-generation network packet broker (NPB) that leverages software-defined networking (SDN) principles, Altoline Open Networking switches, and a high-performance x86-based DPDK service nodes to provide feature-rich, scale-out, and intent-driven data center monitoring at up to 50% lower cost than traditional NPBs. By combining the functions of traditional NPBs with the intelligence, agility, and flexibility of an SDN controller-based architecture, Big Mon provides customers with pervasive visibility in all physical and virtual (VM, container, cloud) workloads for security, performance management, and compliance tools. Customer use cases for Big Monitoring Fabric include: monitor every rack, monitor every location, monitor mobile/LTE networks, and DMZ/Extranet Inline security. With Big Mon, end-users can experience the benefits of single pane of glass management, zero-touch scale-out, and built-in analytics to simplify operations and troubleshooting. Big Mon also supports multi-tenancy for different IT teams -- such as NetOps, DevOps, and SecOps -- to share the visibility and security fabric with overlapping yet segmented access to network flows and tools. Big Monitoring Fabric supports 1G, 10G, 40G as well as newer 25G/100G for the most demanding and high volume network monitoring and security environments. Benefits of Big Mon include: Deploy faster Auto-discovery and configuration of Big Mon nodes Tools can receive traffic from anywhere in the network, regardless of physical location Delivery policies are programmed from a single interface Activate packet and flow level services with high-performance, scale-out service nodes Operate faster Real time & historic visibility and analytics for quick troubleshooting REST APIs for tool and workflow integration and automation (event triggered monitoring, alerts, and tool interactions) Scale-out attack mitigation -- automated or user-driven Scale and innovate faster Zero-touch scale out for pervasive monitoring Built-in advanced analytics for visibility and historical analysis Add inline tools without impacting network operation Reprogram policies in real time based on newly discovered threats Centralized Tooling for Significant Tool License Savings Intelligent traffic routing as well as advanced packet modification functions enhances performance while reducing appliance capacity requirements, resulting in lower license fees Immediate ROI with Tool consolidation Big Cloud Fabric Big Cloud Fabric incorporates design principles that hyperscale organizations like Google and Facebook pioneered, implementing a logical, scale-out switch architecture that leverages intent-based principles to deliver agile and flexible datacenter switching based on SDN controls, HPE Altoline Open Networking switches, and fabric design. By deploying a disaggregated third party software / industry-standard switch hardware model, end-users can experience up to 50% TCO savings over legacy networks. BCF delivers zero-touch operations, network automation, and deep visibility for software-defined data centers (SDDC) and cloud-native applications. BCF supports physical, virtual (multi-hypervisor), and container workloads and choice of orchestration software. It provides distributed L2 switching, distributed L3 routing, and L4-7 service insertion and chaining while ensuring high bisectional bandwidth. The scalable fabric is fully resilient with no single point of failure and supports headless mode operations. The solution has built-in integration for VMware SDDC (vSphere, NSX, vSAN, VIO, VIC, Horizon, vCenter GUI and vRealize Log Insight), Red Hat/Mirantis OpenStack clouds, and Red Hat OpenShift/Kubernetes/Docker container environments. BCF can be deployed in existing data centers as a new pod without disruption to traditional networks. Big Cloud Fabric Benefits Simplicity: zero-touch fabric and single-point of management Agility: network automation with vSphere, OpenStack and container integration, REST APIs for optional NetOps/DevOps automation Visibility and Troubleshooting: Built-in analytics with historical replay, leaf-spine-leaf fabric tracing for rapid troubleshooting, end-point visibility at VM-level Economics: Dramatic reduction in OpEx and CapEx Innovation Velocity: Faster time to service enablement as well as rapid (hitless) software upgrade enables rapid consumption of new features Big Cloud Fabric supports traditional 1G/10G/40G as well as newer 25G/50G/100G speeds for the most demanding and high volume network monitoring and security environments. Support for Altoline Open Networking Hardware The HPE Altoline is a family of disaggregated networking switches designed to accelerate the adoption of open networking in cloud data centers. Altoline offerings span the full spectrum of networking speeds -- from 10, 100, or 1000BASE-T to 10GbE, 25GbE, 40GbE, 50GbE, or 100GbE. Big Monitoring Fabric and Big Cloud Fabric will support the following Altoline switches at GA: Altoline 6960 -- 25/100GbE spine/leaf switch -- Tomahawk, 32 x 100GbE QSFP28 ports supporting 10GbE, 25GbE, 40GbE, 50GbE, or 100GbE. The Altoline 6960 switch series provides an open network platform for high-performance spine/leaf deployments. Dig deeper into the hardware to see how you will benefit from: High performance -- Top-of-rack 1U 100GbE switch High scalability -- 32 x 25GbE, 50GbE, or 100GbE QSFP28 ports (alternatively, 128 x 10GbE or 25GbE ports) Flexibility -- Deploying as 40GbE, 50GbE, or 100GbE spine, or ToR with 10GbE or 25GbE to servers and 40GbE, 50GbE, or 100GbE uplinks Easy network virtualization and cloud -- VXLAN support, especially with Trident ii+ ASIC Higher reliability -- Redundant fans and power supplies for data center deployment Altoline 6941 -- 10/40GbE spine/leaf switch -- Trident II+, 32 x 40GbE ports supporting up to 128 10GbE ports using breakout cables Altoline 6921 -- 10GbE leaf/spine switch -- Trident II+, 48 x 10GbE SFP+ ports+6 x 40GbE QSFP+ uplink ports Big Switch's Big Cloud Fabric and Big Monitoring Fabric are GA and available to purchase today from HPE. Supporting Materials Solution Brief: HPE Altoline Switch Series Partner Page: http://www.bigswitch.com/partners/hpe Explainer Video: Big Cloud Fabric Explainer Video: Big Monitoring Fabric Explainer Video: Big Monitoring Fabric Inline Gartner Report: Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking Gartner Peer Insights: Data Center Networking / Big Switch Networks TechValidate: Check out what Big Switch customers are saying Data Sheet: Big Cloud Fabric Data Sheet: Big Monitoring Fabric About Big Switch Networks Big Switch Networks is the Next-Generation Data Center Networking Company. We disrupt the status quo of networking by designing intelligent, automated, and flexible networks for our customers around the world. We do so by leveraging the principles of software-defined networking (SDN), coupled with a choice of industry-standard hardware. Big Switch Networks has two solutions: Big Monitoring Fabric, a Next-Generation Network Packet Broker, which enables pervasive security and monitoring of data center and cloud traffic for inline or out-of-band deployments and Big Cloud Fabric, the industry's first Next-Generation switching fabric that allows for choice of switching hardware for OpenStack, VMware, Container, and Big Data use cases. Big Switch Networks is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, with offices located in Tokyo, Sydney, London, and Istanbul. For additional information, email info@bigswitch.com, visit www.bigswitch.com or follow us on Twitter @bigswitch and LinkedIn. Big Switch Networks, Big Cloud Fabric, Big Monitoring Fabric, BigSecure, Big Chain, Switch Light OS, and Switch Light VX are trademarks or registered trademarks of Big Switch Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.

http://m.digitaljournal.com/pr/3441194

Dell EMC Announces New Open Networking Products

#DellEMC has unveiled new capabilities for their #OpenNetworking portfolio--switches designed offer an innovative disaggregated-hardware/software solution for data center networking. These new features and products were built to help customers transform their IT operations by lowering overall IT costs, attaining returns on investments more quickly, and delivering new digital capabilities.

S5100-ON and S4100-ON series

The new S5100-ON series is the company’s first 25GbE Open Networking switch. Dell claims performance gains equating to double the throughput of 10GbE switches for in-rack connectivity as well as native 25GbE support. The S5100-ON series switches are designed for 100GbE fabric connectivity, which significantly improves rack-to-rack (east-west) network traffic and ideal for Web 2.0 enterprises as well as cloud service providers that need to make the most of application and service performance.

Also announced is the new S4100-ON series, which is built to offer multifunctional, top-of-rack data center Open Networking switches optimized for high densities of 10GbE fiber/copper or Fibre Channel 8/16/32 server and converged local area networks LAN)/SAN within racks. All switches in this new line are equipped with high-performance 100GbE uplink ports for inter-rack communication.

Among the models in the S4100-ON series is the S4148U, a new unified switch for both Ethernet and Fibre Channel traffic and connecting to Dell EMC’s storage solutions. Dell EMC has designed this Open Networking switch to “pushes the upper limits” of Fibre Channel connectivity and is touted as the first optimized switch to support 32Gb Fibre Channel for those looking to further converge LAN/SAN operations. Dell EMC adds that, due to its “unique design,” customers can also deploy Ethernet top-of-rack and Fibre Channel switching in the same physical switch or further converge LAN/SAN using Fibre Channel-over-Ethernet.

Both S5100-ON and S4100-ON series are the first to ship Dell EMC’s new flagship networking operating system standard, OS10 Enterprise Edition. This new comprehensive version is built on open source technologies from the Linux Foundation and Open Compute Project, making it a modular and programmable network OS for both traditional networking and DevOps environments. 

In addition to its layer 2 and layer 3 networking functionality, OS10 Enterprise Edition enables customers to customize the software for different environments. Dell EMC indicates that users can integrate additional open source capabilities, add third-party Linux applications, or develop their own software via standard Linux and DevOps tools.

N1100-ON series

The new Dell EMC N1100-ON series is comprised of energy-efficient and cost-effective switches specifically designed for campus-type environments. Included in this family are a number of fanless switches available in both half- and full-width options, POE/POE+ and non-POE versions, as well as port configurations from 10/100/1000Mbps to 1/10GbE. The N1100-ON series switches are also designed to work well with Aerohive’s HiveManager NG, a next-gen cloud-based management solution that simplifies end-user wired and wireless access.

Built for small to medium size business environments, Dell EMC’s N1100 line support IoT initiatives and workforce transformations that help support a wireless-first work space so end users and access points get connected wherever they are located.

Dell EMC has also announced new Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Advisory features:

A workshop to research the customer’s foundational requirements and provide design recommendations to implement NFV infrastructure solutionsProof of technology for a detailed on-site assessment of an operator’s infrastructure and operational environment as well as their readiness for the insertion of virtualized network nodesThe return on investment advisory, which delivers a detailed analysis on the key financial impacts that will result in the transformation to NFV and SDN

Availability

Dell indicated the following availability for their new products:

The Dell EMC S5100-ON series is expected to available in the third quarter of Dell Technologies’ 2018 fiscal yearThe Dell EMC S4100-ON series is expected to begin shipping select models in the second quarter of Dell Technologies’ 2018 fiscal year. Additional models will begin shipping throughout the yearThe Dell EMC N1100-ON series is expected to be available in the second quarter of Dell Technologies’ 2018 fiscal yearThe NFV Advisory Services are expected to be available in the second quarter of Dell Technologies’ 2018 fiscal yearThe IoT Technology Advisory Services are available now

http://www.storagereview.com/dell_emc_announces_new_open_networking_products

Dell EMC's newest switches will come with its open network OS

#Dell' s drive into #opennetworking accelerated on Monday with the announcement of the first switches to ship with #OS10, the company's network operating system that's based on open source. At #DellEMC World in Las Vegas, the company introduced two data-center switches running OS10 Enterprise Edition, an enhanced version of the open-source OS that Dell announced early last year.

The software is based on technologies from the #LinuxFoundation and the Open Compute Project and is already available through an extended beta to customers who already have hardware. The Enterprise Edition is a complete software platform, including Dell's networking stack, but its open-source foundation means it can be extended with third-party software, said Jeff Baher, Dell EMC's executive director, networking.

Dell was one of the earliest of the big vendors supporting open networking, a movement to separate hardware from software and some software components from others. The idea is to prevent lock-in to proprietary equipment, operating systems and interfaces.

 itworld

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Dell EMC's newest switches will come with its open network OSThe company will let customers buy the data-center switches with OS10 or add their own OS

By Stephen Lawson

Senior U.S. Correspondent, IDG News Service | MAY 8, 2017

Credit: Dell EMC

Dell's drive into open networking accelerated on Monday with the announcement of the first switches to ship with OS10, the company's network operating system that's based on open source.

At Dell EMC World in Las Vegas, the company introduced two data-center switches running OS10 Enterprise Edition, an enhanced version of the open-source OS that Dell announced early last year.

The software is based on technologies from the Linux Foundation and the Open Compute Project and is already available through an extended beta to customers who already have hardware. The Enterprise Edition is a complete software platform, including Dell's networking stack, but its open-source foundation means it can be extended with third-party software, said Jeff Baher, Dell EMC's executive director, networking.

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Dell was one of the earliest of the big vendors supporting open networking, a movement to separate hardware from software and some software components from others. The idea is to prevent lock-in to proprietary equipment, operating systems and interfaces.

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The company already sells switches that are compliant with ONIE (Open Network Install Environment), so customers can buy them without software and install third-party OSes from companies like Cumulus Networks and Big Switch Networks. The new gear is available that way, too.

OS10 is Dell's platform of the future, which over time will be the basis of all its network equipment and eventually computing and storage products, too. As the distinctions between those components blur, analysts say some enterprises and service providers will want a common OS to get the kind of flexibility that big cloud companies like Amazon and Google enjoy in their homegrown data-center infrastructure.

On Monday, the company announced the S5100-ON series, a line of in-rack switches based on OS10 with 25-Gigabit Ethernet ports. These are a match for the latest Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, which also have 25-Gigabit, the company said.

The 5100 line has 100-Gigabit Ethernet uplinks that are designed for fabrics that link racks in a data center for "east-west" network traffic. The 5100-ON series is expected to ship by the end of October, starting at approximately US$22,000 with OS10.

http://www.itworld.com/article/3195211/networking/dell-emcs-newest-switches-will-come-with-its-open-network-os.html

Cisco Facing a Maturing Open Network Environment

#Opennetworking has been on a roll lately as large operators warm up to the idea of reducing hardware to white box infrastructure while architecting all of the tricky stuff on increasingly intelligent software. This rightly has large switch vendors like #Cisco in a knot. On the one hand, the writing seems to be on the wall that open platforms are the way of the future, but the transition will be extremely detrimental to the bottom line if it happens too quickly. Fortunately, there is precedence for this kind of thing. Back in the PC days of the 1980s, #IBM dominated with the idea that an integrated hardware/software approach would rule forever because, after all, only experts know how to use computers. Even after ushering in the clone era by allowing Microsoft to license DOS to third-party manufacturers, the company still thought it could control the market with its PS/2-OS/2 bundle. Ultimately, it failed, but IBM learned a valuable lesson about the relationship between hardware and software. That lesson has guided the company through the shift to cloud and software-defined compute and storage infrastructure. Advertisement Cisco is in much the same position today. As software-defined architectures allow non-experts to provision their own networks, the company is faced with the likely transition from its integrated platforms to white box solutions running open source management stacks. The company is actually aiding this process through support for efforts like the Open Network Automation Project (ONAP), which recently released its first code through the Linux Foundation. ONAP, in fact, saw a major boost this week when AT&T demonstrated its ECOMP management stack. ECOMP was recently added to ONAP, providing wide area networking (WAN) orchestration across multi-vendor white box infrastructure. None of this is catching Cisco by surprise, mind you. Back in 2015, then-CEO John Chambers called out the threat that proprietary systems faced from white box infrastructure. That is why the company is said to be preparing to launch the Lindt operating system that will function on non-Cisco hardware. As Light Reading’s James Crawshaw notes, the company is facing pressure from hyperscale organizations that are willing to sacrifice some of the performance benefits of integrated platforms for increased control and programmability. At the same time, Cisco is separating its hardware and software engineering teams and has put the word out that it is interested in hiring more programming talent. In the meantime, Cisco is out to prove that it can stay a step ahead of open solutions when it comes to automating scale-out data environments. The company recently added a Layered Services Architecture (LSA) to its Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) platform. This change should boost horizontal scalability for the coming era of connected devices. The system is designed to manage upwards of 1 million endpoints on a single network architecture, allowing organizations to automate a wealth of services across traditional and virtual networks. Although details are sketchy, LSA appears to do for services what a layered software architecture does for applications; that is, logically separate key functions so they can be managed independently across complex systems. In this way, organizations can develop, distribute and update services on the fly without having to manually reconfigure end-to-end network environments. There is nothing preventing the Linux community from building the same kind of functionality into ONAP, of course. But with Cisco, the enterprise gains the ability to implement software-defined networks on a proprietary solution first and then tie it over to open architectures gradually. Ultimately, it seems that Cisco, like IBM before it, has a choice: to either be king of a rapidly dwindling proprietary architecture or a key player in an interoperable, multivendor data ecosystem.

http://mobile.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/datacenter/datacenter-blog/cisco-facing-a-maturing-open-network-environment.html

Big Switch Networks to Showcase Customer Deployments and Exhibit Big Monitoring Fabric and Big Cloud Fabric at Dell EMC World 2016

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 17, 2016) - #BigSwitch Networks®, the leader in bringing hyperscale-inspired networking to data centers worldwide, today announced it will demo Big Monitoring Fabric™ and Big Cloud Fabric™ solutions, which operate on #Dell #EMC #OpenNetworking switches, at Booth F4 at #Dell #EMC World in Austin, Texas, October 18th - 20th. "Dell has been a long-standing partner for Big Switch as customers leverage Dell Open Networking to outfit their data centers with next-generation technologies," said Douglas Murray, CEO, Big Switch Networks. "Through our joint solutions, we are able to provide our customers with the best options for their specific needs, including #SDN -based data center fabric optimized for #VMware workloads, scalable, high performance #OpenStack NFV deployments at #Verizon and other leading service providers, next-generation out-of-band network monitoring, and a scalable SDN service-chaining fabric for DMZ security." Big Switch has two solutions that work with multiple Dell EMC Open Networking Switches, Big Cloud Fabric, an open Software-defined networking (SDN) fabric and Big Monitoring Fabric, a next-generation out-of-band network visibility fabric and inline software-based service chaining security fabric. The combination of Dell EMC hardware switch technology with Big Switch's open SDN fabric solutions brings together the advanced feature sets enabled by SDN software with the industry service assurance provided by Dell EMC Open Networking switches (see Gartner's Is Brite-box Switching Switching Right for Everyone?) "Dell EMC's Open Networking strategy is centered around customer choice. Through our collaborative solutions with Big Switch Networks, we help provide customers the best options to fit their specific needs," said Tom Burns, SVP and GM, Dell EMC Networking, Enterprise Infrastructure & Service Provider Solutions. "Our work with Big Switch is a prime example of our focus in bringing next-generation, flexible, open networking solutions to our joint customers." This partnership offers Dell EMC enterprise customers the ability to achieve significant cost savings and operational efficiencies compared to traditional networking solutions. One such customer is National Instruments, the global leader in test, measurement, and control solutions, to equip engineers and scientists with systems that accelerate productivity, innovation, and discovery. National Instruments' modernized network infrastructure is deployed on Dell EMC Open Networking and Big Cloud Fabric, utilizing a core and pod, leaf/spine architecture inspired by hyperscale players. According to ACG Research this design delivers agility to the networking team and enables applications to get deployed 4x times faster, troubleshooting to be completed 12 times faster, and upgrades to become automated, completed without downtime (see ACG research report under Supporting Materials).

http://m.marketwired.com/press-release/big-switch-networks-showcase-customer-deployments-exhibit-big-monitoring-fabric-big-2167041.htm

Inocybe and Oracle Collaborate on OpenDaylight and Oracle Solaris

MONTREAL, Sept. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Inocybe Technologies, the leading pure-play #OpenDaylight (ODL) company, today announced that Inocybe's commercially supported OpenDaylight platform is available and includes support for #Oracle Solaris. Inocybe's #OpenNetworking Platform is a turn-key, optimized OpenDaylight Software-as-a-Service ( #SaaS ) platform designed to create and provide stable, enterprise-grade ODL instances for Software Defined Networking ( #SDN ) deployments. Customers seeking to solve key networking challenges such as network virtualization with #OpenStack, Wide Area Network optimization, and campus-wide security enforcement features, can do so with the comfort of having their networking environment supported by the leading ODL experts at Inocybe. As a testament to the power the Inocybe Open Networking Platform provides, Oracle has chosen Inocybe as their OpenDaylight partner, leveraging out-of-the-box Oracle Solaris support, and has become a customer of the platform itself.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/inocybe-and-oracle-collaborate-on-opendaylight-and-oracle-solaris-593101541.html

Inside AT&T's open source, software-defined transformation

John Donovan, Chief Strategy Officer and Group President, Technology and Operations at #AT&T said during his keynote at #OpenNetworking Summitearlier this month that they are going through a data explosion at AT&T. The has been more than 150,000% growth in data traffic on AT&T’s wireless network from 2007 through 2015. Out of all this traffic, over 60% is video. And virtual reality (VR) promises to push networks to their limits.

To address these changing market dynamics, companies like AT&T need more agile, scalable networks. Donovan told the audience that the “traditional hardware approach is too slow. The only way to stay ahead of that kind of demand curve is software. We are all in in virtualizing our network.”

http://www.cio.com/article/3047268/open-source-tools/inside-atandts-open-source-software-defined-transformation.html