Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2014. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Markus Nispel, Vice President of Solutions Architecture for Extreme Networks
SDN Brings Radical Changes in Network Management and Control in 2014
Software Defined Networks (SDN) made serious traction within
the industry this year, evolving from trend to reality. SDN is all about
increased agility and lower operational cost through automation and
orchestration with the rest of the IT infrastructure, as well as increased
visibility and control within the network infrastructure. This is achieved by
providing centralized management and control, network programmability with an open
API and vendor interoperability as well as integration capabilities. It takes
advantage of a programmatic interface in the network fabric to enable IT to
provision new services on the fly, provide network virtualization, automate
tasks and orchestrate different systems in both physical and virtual networks.
As a result we get improved:
-
Network efficiency along with a higher degree of
orchestration and automation
-
IT agility through fast and reliable application
services, and;
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Advanced analytics of all resources so the
organization can easily monitor and control these resources and make strategic
business decisions.
The majority of SDN solutions provide applications an
interface for programmability but the network itself, for the most part, is not
application flow aware because this requires a different level of scale at the data
plane level. That often results in the lack of proper abstraction of the
network infrastructure towards the applications. In 2014, IT will transition
its focus on application awareness at both the control AND the data plane to
improve SDN and deliver better results.
In general, the network must be aware of the application and
the applications need to be aware of the network (but not the details of
network topology, configuration and so on: the key is a proper abstraction into
the API between the network and those applications) to ensure services can be
easily provisioned and managed to deliver on its promises of automation, simplicity,
agility and reliability. Where thinking has traditionally faltered, is the
belief that to become application centric you only need to do so at the control
network - wrong - it also needs to be in the data plane. I recently
explained
some key ways to achieve application awareness and deliver a detailed,
real-time understanding of traffic.
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Awareness needs to go beyond the control plane into
the data plane. Today's SDN solutions are too narrowly focused on large cloud
data centers and not enough on the specific requirements of the enterprise data
center. In doing so, it has become reliant on a data plane that is based on
commodity silicon, which in turn limits capabilities and scale. For enterprise
networks, this can be a critical function compared to a service-provider
network that focuses on connectivity services. In order to achieve true
visibility and control with high granularity and scale, specific network
infrastructure capabilities need to be present. Those are provided today by use
of custom flow-based ASIC technologies. In 2014 the industry will come to this
conclusion as technologies like Openflow are heading towards the trough of
disillusionment in the (Gartner) hype cycle.
-
Looking beyond the network data-plane layer, Deep
Packet Inspection (DPI) and application policy technologies also have a role. You
must be able to classify applications within the network and then apply policy
to those application flows - whether on a virtual switch, within a flow-based
physical switch or at a control layer working with a switch. Such capabilities
provide an even higher degree of abstraction and so they
are a key ingredient for a deployable SDN architecture. Again, it's up to the
applications to determine how the policy will look - we are certain to hear
more on this in 2014.
In 2014, SDNs will become much more deployable to address the
enterprises practical needs to create a dynamic and agile network
infrastructure aimed at the deployment of new services through common APIs.
With more of a focus on the applications though, end users will see increased
network reliability, simplicity and security. As a result, enterprises benefit
from the consistent user experience coupled with compelling OpEx savings.
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About the Author
Markus
Nispel is the Vice President of Solutions Architecture for Extreme Networks.
Working closely with key customers, his focus is on strategic product
development across all key technology areas for Extreme.