Avaya today announced it has extended the hyper-segmentation capabilities of its fabric networking to OpenStack. The integration between Avaya's Fabric Connect and the OpenStack networking subproject called Neutron relies on a simple plugin that improves security and eases provisioning of virtual networks from data center to desktop.

OpenStack is an open industry project aimed at data centers that act like a cloud service for their enterprise. Enterprises continue to adopt the OpenStack software platform as a means to simplify orchestration of virtual compute, storage, and networking resources for best-of-breed implementations.

With increasing demands at the edge of the network causing traditional enterprise data centers to morph into Everywhere Data Centers, however, the ability to extend virtual networks from the core to the desktop requires arduous configuration and increases complexity.

Avaya Fabric Connect simplifies configuration through automation from the core to the edge, and increases security via hyper-segmentation -- isolated, secure lanes for network traffic that mitigate the potential impacts of cyberattacks and unauthorized access.

In collaboration with Mirantis, Inc., a company specializing in building and managing private cloud infrastructure using OpenStack, the new plugin -- called ML2 -- replaces complexity with automation available through Avaya Fabric Connect. As a result, the secure, hyper-segmentation capabilities of Fabric Connect are extended through OpenStack, alleviating concerns about typical border problems including onboarding and cyberattacks.

The ML2 plugin will be released to open source community in May and will immediately work on standard OpenStack implementations.