Metaswitch Networks today is contributing the initial code base for
Project Calico, an open-source solution that enables the implementation
of large, standards-based, cloud data center infrastructures. The code
is available to the worldwide community of network operators, software
developers and systems integrators at
http://projectcalico.org.
Project
Calico represents a new approach to virtual networking, based on the
same scalable IP networking principles that are widely deployed within
the Internet backbone.
First established in enterprise data
centers, network virtualization techniques are becoming increasingly
important for emerging network operator infrastructures, providing the
foundation for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). While today’s
smaller cloud data centers leverage Layer 2 techniques, such as Ethernet
VLAN, they can quickly hit inherent scaling limits of that technology.
Alternatives such as VXLAN, GRE and SDN-controlled flows, however, are
inherently complex in the networking domain and add unnecessary
processing overheads on host machines.
The technology behind
Project Calico leverages the fact that the vast majority of today’s
workloads are based on IP and that Internet core routing and route
discovery techniques, namely the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), are the
perfect tools for architecting high-performance, large-scale networks.
By tightly integrating with cloud operating systems, such as OpenStack,
Project Calico provides the framework for orchestrated IP routing in
between virtual machines (VMs) and host machines, along with intra and
inter-data center interconnects.
“The largest Internet-based
companies in the world are building hyper-scale data centers that are
virtualizing at Layer 3, and that approach makes a lot of sense,” says
Martin Taylor, Metaswitch’s chief technical officer. “With Project
Calico, we’ve made it possible to build cloud connectivity so that it
looks a lot like Internet connectivity. Project Calico integrates
seamlessly with the cloud orchestration system, such as OpenStack, to
enable secure IP communication between virtual machines and, in doing
so, it provides an approach to virtual networking that is scalable,
efficient and simple.”
Metaswitch believes sharing the Project
Calico code base will encourage more industry innovation and help
today’s network operators evolve into software telcos. The company is in
the process of working with a variety of partners to form an ecosystem
that will support technology interoperability and shared expertise to
help network operators build solutions using Project Calico.
“While
we focus on data plane acceleration to enable NFV, the scalability of
virtual network control plane solutions must also be addressed. Project
Calico appears to address this scalability, enabling [virtualized
network functions] VNFs to communicate without the complexity and
limitations of VLANs or overlay schemes,” says Eric Carmès, founder and
CEO of 6WIND. "Our 6WINDGate packet processing software complements
Project Calico by accelerating Layer 3 forwarding so as to deliver the
highest data plane performance, adding another dimension of scalability
to the solution."
"We were already impressed by Metaswitch's
Project Clearwater. Our collaboration enabled instant IMS deployment,
integration and scaling,” says Maarten Ectors, Ubuntu strategy director.
“Calico is even more ambitious. Ubuntu is happy to extend our strategic
partnership and collaborate on instantly deploying, integrating and
scaling Calico in OpenStack with Juju."
"Cloud networking today
suffers from a lot of complexity that has value in only a handful of use
cases,” says Truman Boyes, a network scientist at Bloomberg LP.
“Project Calico takes out the excess complexity and provides a solution
that is more scalable, more efficient and far easier to configure and
troubleshoot. We're really excited about the possibilities of Project
Calico."
"The architecture behind Calico is a wonderful
demonstration of the networking model that will dominate the next
generation of large-scale data centers,” says Daniel Siders, CEO of
Flynn. “We're delighted that Metaswitch has shared their work with the
community and look forward to collaborating to spread adoption of this
new model.”