 | Issue: | Europe II 2014 |
| Article no.: | 13 | |
| Topic: | Getting More from SDN in 2014 | |
| Author: | Markus Nispel | |
| Title: | VP of solutions architecture | |
| Organisation: | Extreme Networks | |
| PDF size: | 391KB |
About author
Markus Nispel is the Vice President Solutions Architecture and Innovation at Extreme Networks. Working closely together with key customers, his focus is the strategic solution development across all technologies provided by Extreme. In his previous role, as the Chief Technology Strategist and VP Solutions Architecture for the Enterasys’ networks solutions portfolio and strategy, he was responsible for NAC (Network Access Control), SDN (Software Defined Networks), DCM (Data Center Management), MDM (Mobile Device Management) Integration, OneFabric, OneFabric Connect and OneFabric Data Center, as well as the network management strategy. His previously held roles in Enterasys were Director Technology Marketing and a member of the CTO Office. In addition, he advises key accounts on a worldwide basis in strategic network decisions. Before Enterasys, Markus served as system Engineer at Cabletron Systems. He collected his first professional experience at E-Plus Mobile Communications within the network optimization group of DCS cellular mobile network.
Markus Nispel studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Dieburg and graduated 1996 as Dipl. – Engineer for communications technology.
Article abstract
SDN trump card is the ability to expose the network capabilities via ‘northbound’ APIs to the application layer. This needs an abstraction of the underlying network. It enables delegating resource control to unskilled personnel in the lines of business within the enterprise, instead of networking experts. How much the application needs to know about the network and how much the network needs to know about the application are the key questions in specifying SDN APIs. The open standard OpenStack allows orchestrating computing and storage resources for Cloud datacentres via the SDN abstraction layer, using open APIs with SOAP and RESTful protocols over XML.
Full Article
There is a lot to think about when evaluating SDN technologies. Open and feature rich North-Bound APIs (NBI) will play a big role in the value that they deliver in the years ahead. SDN’s real value is in aligning the business application with the network while providing automation, so the abstraction and programmability capabilities of SDN help to become agile, enable orchestration and foster innovation. SDN remains a hot subject of debate in 2014, as the technology brings a number of opportunities and challenges to carriers and enterprises alike. Clearly, SDN has the potential to revolutionize networks by providing an unmatched level of agility, innovation and also automation that reduces the complexity and cost of network administration dramatically.
Vendors today are in a race to demonstrate support for applications, while the debate continues with respect to the protocols, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and standards that should be leveraged to deploy a SDN solution. Infonetics, the respected global research firm, recently completed its own survey regarding the technology. The firm found customer perspective regarding SDN ranged widely, yet also focused on a few key notions.
• Network planners design architectures for one primary reason: to support applications and communications. Thus their investment in network equipment corresponds directly to what the network needs to support, regardless of whether or not it is SDN based.
• Network solutions require the basics first, and that is speed, availability, security, resiliency and redundancy. Before SDN protocols can even be considered, these network properties must first be satisfied.
• Infonetics also found that efficiency from virtualization is persuasive, and that the prospects of reducing costs and the amount of equipment deployed to satisfy application requirements will make SDN “unstoppable”.
Due to the vast array of software and protocols, SDN, it turns out, has no single architecture that fits all needs in today’s market. Thus naturally, the SDN market is breaking up to align with the demands of the enterprise, cloud / data center providers and Telecoms operators, in addition to specialized situations, including HPC (High Performance Computing) and research markets pertaining to universities and governments.
‘Pure’ SDN architectures from the beginning of the movement have been augmented by more application and NBI-centric approaches that focus on applications and integration rather than the underlying technologies and protocols. More recently various overlay, virtual switch centric solutions for data centres have been unveiled in the market as well.
When we discuss APIs, a whole new dimension of SDN should be touched upon, one that most network operators want to understand to allow SDN to be customized for their own requirements.
This focus is on open APIs embedded into the network nodes but also in the centralized management and control solutions, which is key for the SDN deployment. The Application environment can then tap directly into the infrastructure via those APIs, whereby a key differentiator is the level of abstraction that the central management and control solution can provide towards those applications. The level of abstraction depends on what an organization needs to be accomplished through the technology. Should the organization only desire to expose all of the capabilities of the existing network devices and topology to a networking administrator simply for access, then abstraction may not be needed at all, but where is the benefit?
On the other hand, the full potential of SDN is truly about driving organizational change and different processes — where resource control is delegated to lines of business within the enterprise that are outside of the network domain, eventually even outside of IT.
Such a scenario, thought harder to achieve, creates real agility. The knowledge about networking in those groups may be non-existent, and they should not need to care about it — it just has to work. However, even inside IT groups, if the administrator deploys applications and workloads in an automated and orchestrated fashion on the network — the typical SDN use case in the data centre – the question still arises: What does the administrator need to know about the network? How much does the application need to know about the network that it gets deployed on? The usability of a SDN solution, the adoption in the enterprise, and also the success of those vendors who provide SDN solutions to the enterprise will depend on how well they strike that balance.
Interestingly, the industry in 2013 saw elements of software abstraction take shape with various vendor specific implementations, but also with OpenStack – a Cloud Orchestration industry-sourced platform. OpenStack, in conjunction with the Ethernet network, can enable management and orchestration service provisioning for the large Enterprise Data Center and Cloud Service Provider markets. OpenStack orchestrates computing and storage configurations with the network via a software plugin that allows the OpenStack platform to access the network and its abstraction layer using open APIs, where SOAP and RESTful over XML are often used.
This multi-faceted approach to building and implementing SDN allows a complementary mix of industry and customer perspectives, enabling many more variants of SDN technologies. The ultimate goal for organizations is to seek an SDN solution that will fit their needs and that will integrate with the underlying network, to provision and orchestrate resources based on dynamic policies, and allow further application level visibility to enable even more granular dynamic policies.
Big Data applications tend to be bursty, with low tolerance for latency, and with varied traffic patterns. These network characteristics tend to increase the complexity and cost of provisioning Big Data networks. An application aware network provides feedback to the SDN management system that can optimize the provisioning of resources for the Big Data applications.
Each and every architectural approach fits best a specific market segment and set of requirements, so customers need to assess their requirements and find the right architectural fit in 2014 and beyond. Several of those new SDN solutions are deployable today. They can scale up and interoperate, as they rely on existing protocols, thus providing a smooth migration and integration into existing, heterogeneous network infrastructures. This means that we will see greater adoption of SDN across the board, including the enterprise. The US and Asia Pacific are leading the adoption curve, while western Europe seems to follow, focussing on more conservatives SDN approaches.
