Netronome, a leading provider of
high-performance intelligent networking solutions, today announced the
SDN and NFV industry’s first ever demonstrations of high-performance,
efficient cloud networking orchestration using OpenStack together with a
comprehensive range of popular open source server-based networking
solutions. With Agilio CX intelligent server adapters and software from
Netronome, hardware-based efficiencies currently available in OpenStack
networking can now be extended beyond small point-of-presence (POP) NFV
clusters to a wide range of cloud networking applications seen in
mega-scale data centers.
These demonstrations, developed in collaboration with industry partners
such as Ericsson and Mirantis, showcase seamless acceleration of open
source datapath implementations, specifically, Open vSwitch (OVS),
Stateful Firewall (Connection Tracking) and OpenContrail vRouter using
Agilio CX intelligent server adapters. At the same time, the
enterprise-grade cloud orchestration and agility benefits delivered by
OpenStack are preserved. The result of this effort, which also will be
incorporated as an enhanced OpenStack networking plug-in architecture
specification, is that data centers can accelerate applications such as
network virtualization, security, load balancing and telemetry using
different data plane options suitable for use cases spanning traditional
IT to IaaS and Telco NFV workloads.
Server-based networking has evolved as the most widely deployed form of
SDN, enabling significant data center infrastructure efficiencies and
faster pace of innovation. The demonstrations and proposed specification
incorporate enhancements that extend existing OpenStack networking
plug-ins to incorporate seamless hardware-based acceleration of the
entire data path implemented in server-based networking technologies
such as OVS, Connection Tracking for Stateful Firewall, and OpenContrail
vRouter. As a result, critical networking functions that would otherwise
hamper performance of the OpenStack implementation are offloaded to the
Agilio platform, accommodating significantly more virtual machines per
server leading to up to 6X lower TCO and higher services revenue per
server compared to traditional NICs.
"The OpenStack platform has become the de facto cloud and SDN
orchestration tool and server-based networking has become the
cornerstone of pervasive SDN and cloud-based networks," said Sujal Das,
senior vice president and general manager, strategy and marketing at
Netronome. "Our flagship Agilio product-based demonstrations and
proposed open specification bring much needed hardware-based efficiency
to that mix."
"Mirantis OpenStack delivers comprehensive cloud orchestration tools
that are optimized for Enterprise IT and NFV deployments," said Kamesh
Pemmaraju, vice president of product marketing at Mirantis. "Utilizing
Netronome's expertise in server-based networking and its Agilio
intelligent server adapters, our joint pioneering work promises to
provide the industry with new OpenStack networking capabilities that
will enable rapid SDN deployments, delivering significantly higher
networking performance and increases in server efficiency."
"Whether for traditional IT workloads or Telco NFV workloads, the
integration of Ericson Cloud SDN Controller (based on OpenDaylight) with
Agilio CX demonstrates significant improvement in both the performance
delivered to VMs and the gains in server efficiency," said Francois
Lemarchand, head of SDN strategy at Ericsson. "Ericsson supports open
collaborative work in this area and is excited to participate with
Netronome in the development and deployment of OVS data path offload,
which we hope will become a standard OpenStack offering in the near
future."
"OpenStack orchestration combined with open source networking solutions
is one of the top use cases for SDN/NFV, and high performance with
detailed application telemetry allowing large scale cost effective data
center deployments are a must have," said Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., IHS
senior research director for data center, cloud and SDN. "The
technologies and capabilities demonstrated by Netronome with its Agilio
CX products, integrated with OpenStack, target this important market
requirement, a strategic thought leadership position for Netronome."
Product Availability
Beta releases of products that integrate OpenStack with Agilio Software
for OVS, Stateful Firewall and OpenContrail vRouter, and an open
enhanced OpenStack networking plug-in architecture specification are
expected in Q3 2016. The specification enhancements will propose
extension of the current SR-IOV OpenStack plug-in mechanism for
efficient packet delivery to virtual machines and add the OVS, Stateful
Firewall and vRouter data paths implemented in intelligent server
adapters such as Netronome's Agilio CX products. Through support of
innovative VirtIO extensions, hardware-based performance and efficiency
benefits are delivered without compromising operational agility, while
virtual machine migration capabilities needed for efficient server
resource utilization are preserved.
Product Demonstrations Featured During OpenStack Summit (April 25-28,
2016)
Multiple demonstrations will showcase prototype implementations of the
enhanced OpenStack networking plug-in architecture, and how such
solutions can be applied to a broader range of cloud networking
applications:
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Demonstrations at the Netronome booth (C5) will showcase OpenStack
integration with Agilio-accelerated Stateful Firewall for enterprise
IT workloads and micro-segmentation based zero-trust security
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Demonstrations at the Netronome booth (C5) will showcase OpenStack
integration with Agilio-accelerated Contrail vRouter for enterprise
and Telco NFV applications
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Demonstration at the Ericsson booth (D5) will showcase OpenStack
integration with Agilio-accelerated Open vSwitch and Ericsson Cloud
SDN platform for traditional IT and NFV applications