Pluribus Networks, the company which provides Netvisor
(nvOS), the industry’s most programmable, open-source based
operating system for network connectivity, announced the release of Open
Netvisor 2.3, which includes direct support for hyperscale data centers
used by service-providers. Supporting the Ericsson HDS8000 Hyperscale
cloud offering based upon Intel Rack Scale Architecture, Open Netvisor
2.3 enables both out-of-band and in-band management, fabric wide rolling
software upgrades, and fast convergence of Layer 3 protocols using BFD
(often used to deploy leaf/spine PODs and similar topologies).
Pluribus Open Netvisor 2.3 provides a unique opportunity for the service
provider industry by enabling them to allow businesses to drive their
foundational infrastructure topology, rather than the other way around.
Key features within Open Netvisor 2.3 include:
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Security enhancements to allow the use of TLS and redundant
out-of-band management to secure the control plane for Telco
Datacenter needs, which complements the existing SSL support. This
secured redundant management is a critical need for service providers
as their business is driven by SLA performance.
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High Availability Cluster-Fabric enhancements include a fabric wide
rolling upgrade capability to allow software and security upgrades
without any downtime. Pluribus’ Netvisor Cluster-Fabric offers single
point of management and control, and now the entire fabric can be
upgraded with a single command while the fabric remains in service,
eliminating the need for scheduled downtime.
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The Pluribus Netvisor Cluster-Fabric control plane now operates
independent of Layer 2, Layer 3, or VXLAN based overlay networks.
Netvisor offers broadcast and loop free Layer 2 topologies (necessary
for server virtualization) that can scale to over 1 million MAC
entries or Virtual Ports (“vports”) enabling customers to build large
Layer 2 networks or build large Layer 3 networks based on BGP/ECMP and
use overlays to support Virtual Machine migration. The Open Netvisor
2.3 release also adds BFD support to improve Layer 3 convergence for
customers deploying large clouds.
By incorporating this new set of service-provider specific capabilities,
Pluribus Open Netvisor 2.3 is now being used by Ericsson within its
HDS8000 cloud platform to drive its silicon photonics based switches, as
referenced by Intel’s Rack Scale Architecture (RSA). The RSA
architecture disaggregates compute, storage, and network resources;
introduces the ability to pool these resources; simplifies management of
compute, storage, and network resources; and creates the ability to
dynamically compose resources based on workload-specific demands.
“Pluribus innovative approach to networking in a hyperscaled data center
fits with our vision in creating not only the best in class data center
but the tools and capabilities from a network analytics perspective to
lay the foundation for a data centric infrastructure. We are very
excited to be working with the Pluribus team in building this,” said
Howard Wu, Head of Product Line, Hyper Cloud Solution, Business Unit
Cloud & IP, Ericsson.
“Ericsson’s use of silicon photonics-based systems allows the Netvisor
Distributed and Multi-threaded control plane to offer fabric wide APIs
for fine grained control and easy integration into Openstack and other
cloud management systems,” said Sunay Tripathi, Pluribus Networks’ CTO
and co-founder. “As a result, Netvisor Application level Analytics and
Time Machine helps debug and secure the entire infrastructure in a very
easy manner.”
The RSA architecture supports the use of Ethernet, SAS, and PCI-Express
over Optical links for higher performance, scale and allows individual
components in the rack to be upgraded independently from each other.
HDS8000 Top of the Rack switches use silicon photonics as integrated
circuit components to efficiently convert digital signals to Optical and
back to digital, allowing Netvisor running on these switches to create a
plug and play fabric that works as one logical control plane independent
of the Layer 2, Layer 3, or overlay based connectivity.
Open Netvisor 2.3 will be available in early September 2015.