Being a technology professional who has dabbled in IP Networking since it revolutionized the world at the turn of the century, I have always been amazed at the sheer brilliance of technology ecosystem (of which I am a humble member) that can create excitement & hype and hopefully create a whole new market trend.
The latest in this list has been the SDN. Let’s just examine the way most of the world understands SDN
From Opennetworking.org https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGXbss1BDSU
…In the SDN architecture, the control and data planes are decoupled, network intelligence and state are logically centralized and the underlying infrastructure is abstracted from the applications…
SDN requires some method for the control plane to communicate with the data plane. One such mechanism, OpenFlow, is often misunderstood to be equivalent to SDN, but other mechanisms could also fit into the concept.
There is always a Gartner view with its “Hype Cycle”. According to Gartner, there is the SDN and there are SDN applications. The former is in the trough of disillusionment, while the latter is at the peak of inflated expectations.
All this is enough to confuse anyone!!!
There are a variety of SDN solutions available and a variety of ways to consume these solutions. While some providers are focused on the dynamic movement of virtual workloads and to leverage on their server hypervisor and techniques such as encapsulation and tunneling, others are striving to achieve software control of the network by using the OpenFlow protocol to manipulate the flow tables in switches. I would like to call it controller based switching.
Let’s examine the Vendors on SDN:
1. VMware/Nicira, the touchstone for overlay-based networking, Nicira Networks started by relying on OpenFlow, then changed its mind for purposes of scaling.
2. Juniper Networks acquired Contrail, a start-up who is pitching a distributed control plan that’s analogous to the Internet’s distributed routing table.
3. Nuage Networks, the Alcatel-Lucent subsidiary, has planned their roadmap in similar manner as Juniper.
4. HP is attempting to bridge the gap by integrating its SDN solutions with the VMware tools.
5. Cisco is in a class of its own. Its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) leaves some of the control functionality in the switches and routers and it leverages dedicated hardware.
6. Brocade Communications, is already ready with Vyatta controller, built on open source OpenDayLight codes. They are going aggressive with their solution.
Let’s examine Users or Consumers:
1) The big boys – Google for example, built its own SDN switches so it could run an SDN backbone to interconnect its data centers. Facebook is another example who created quite hype with the open source “Facebook Switch” called Wedge.
2) Network service providers – AT&T, Vodafone and their likes are seeing the potential in using the technology to optimize networks and create revenue-producing services like NaaS (Network as a Service)
3) Large Enterprise – Multinational financial firms – Goldman Sachs, JPMC, Citibank etc. represent a third class of potential SDN consumer. Some of these firms have been active in driving the agenda of the ONF, and many have conducted trials of SDN and related technologies.
Apart from above, everyone else are classified into “Others” category, as they are in the wait and watch stage, reviewing every step taken in this space
Question is on everyone’s mind, how do we evaluate SDN? Here are some of the key criteria for evaluation:
1. The first criteria in evaluating SDN is to ask the “why” question which revolves around the problem(s) IT is attempting to solve, is it dynamic movement of workloads or automating the provisioning of network functions or something else?
2. The second criteria are whether an SDN solution is open? The term “open” refers to Industry Standards such as OpenFlow protocol from interoperability point of view.
3. The third and most critical criteria is Role of hardware versus software based solution should also be considered. For example, VMware & Cisco are completely on two difference sides, While doesn’t see a role for specialized hardware in the data center, Cisco ACI uses specialized hardware.
I am sure there are more interesting viewpoints and key learning to emerge in 2015 on this topic and it would be interesting to see how it shapes up in the Interconnected / Smarter Planet with Internet of Various Things doing their “Hype Tri-Cycle” (I love to call it this way)