Could you provide an overview of
the most recent developments at Big Switch Networks and the latest developments
on the software defined networking (SDN) Controller?
Big
Switch is at the forefront of the industry’s evolution to SDN based approach to
software-enabled networks. Recently, we announced OpenStack support, allowing developers
to plug-in to our open source OpenFlow Controller, Floodlight, for programmable
networking in multi-tenant cloud and virtualized environments. Continuing on the movement towards an open
SDN architecture, the new plugin allows OpenStack users to create and manage
virtual networks using both hypervisor-based and physical OpenFlow switches
controlled by Floodlight.
And why is this important to
developers?
This
particular announcement allows for developers to have the programmability and
vendor independence of OpenFlow on top of the benefits of cloud automation from
OpenStack. Overall, we are seeing the beginning of the modernization of the
networking ecosystem built on an open SDN architecture. The pillars of that
architecture – open source, open APIs and open standards – are the pillars that
we stand by and are constantly working
towards.
What exactly is Floodlight?
Released
this past January, Floodlight is an Apache-licensed open source OpenFlow
controller. OpenFlow controllers are central components of SDN as they capture
control information from OpenFlow-enabled switches to centrally manage
networks. Floodlight serves the needs of academics, offers a powerful platform
to commercial developers to build SDN network services and helps network
administrators experience OpenFlow first hand. Floodlight is an open, production-ready OpenFlow controller, with
quite a few ready-made networking services that the OpenStack community can
leverage and innovate upon.
How does Floodlight’s
Openstack support work?
Floodlight’s
OpenStack support relies on Quantum, a network connectivity as a service
between interface devices (e.g. vNICs) managed by other OpenStack services. There
are two pieces of technology we have developed to integrate Floodlight and
OpenStack Quantum. First, there is a Quantum plugin we’ve called RestProxy,
which packages Quantum data and exposes it over a Rest interface. Second is a
Layer 2 virtual networking module for Floodlight, which allows the user to
segment sets of MAC addresses into virtual networks as the Quantum API
requires. In addition to support for hypervisor-based switches like Open
vSwitch, Floodlight brings support for a growing ecosystem of physical OpenFlow
switches.
What has the response from the
industry been on SDN and OpenFlow switches?
We have
been extremely excited by the growing momentum around SDN, with major
infrastructure vendors bringing OpenFlow switches to market. In terms of Floodlight,
we have had great feedback and fast adoption. The controller is now downloaded
more than 1200 times per month by a development community spanning four
continents.
Tell me about Big Switch’s
customers? What types of organizations and people are you seeing using this
product?
We are
seeing benefits and trends with our customers and other SDN solution customers,
especially in enterprise data centers, WAN/carrier data centers and on
campuses.
In
enterprise data centers, SDN solutions provide a better optimization of the
compute resources, allowing virtual machine mobility across network segments.
Multi-tenancy is also frequently deployed helping public cloud providers to
offer Network-as-a-Service to their customers without over provisioning or
helping enterprises to offer isolated virtual networks to departments requiring
different networking properties but sharing the same underlying infrastructure.
We have also seen several cases of Data Analysis Networks, where traffic is
filtered, replicated, and delivered to a variety of traffic analysis tools
using an SDN and OpenFlow-enabled switches instead of using dedicated hardware.
In
WAN/carrier or hyperscale data centers, the main driver is to reduce the
operational and equipment cost. SDN solutions provide automated traffic
engineering as well as more granular billing for end-users for instance.
In the
academic setting, SDN solutions are deployed to manage phones, credit card
registers, laptops and other multiple device configurations and policies across
wired and wireless networks. We have also seen several multi-tenant scenarios,
including dev labs, students, university staff and other employees, as well as
more flexible network access control deployments.
What can we expect to see from
Big Switch Networks in the remainder of 2012?
Our product
is in controlled release and we are building up our sales and support processes
to be more efficient before scaling.
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