All posts by Sreenivas Makam

Open Compute – Networking project

Networking & SDN, , , ,

This is a continuation of my previous blog on White box switches. White box switches allows for dis-aggregation of switch hardware from the software running on the switch. This approach allows the buyer to purchase hardware from 1 vendor and software from another vendor. Open compute project is an Open source project that was started around 4 years back by Facebook to open up the Data center hardware. Multiple other companies like Intel, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs have joined the community since.  Around a year back, Networking charter was started in Open compute project to open up the Networking part of Data center hardware. Facebook, Intel, Broadcom, Cumulus, Arista are some of the vendors participating in this project. In this blog, I will cover the following:

  • Components/Charter of Open compute networking project.
  • Current contributions to the project
  • Facebook’s Wedge and FBOSS
  • Final thoughts

Continue reading Open Compute – Networking project →

NFV Solutions

Cloud Platforms, Networking & SDN, , , ,

This is a continuation from my previous blog on NFV overview. In this blog, I will cover popular NFV solutions in the market. This is not an exhaustive list, these are the NFV solutions that I am aware of. Following are the ones that I will cover:

  • Cisco Evolved services platform(ESP)
  • Alcatel-Lucent Cloudband
  • CloudNFV
  • Overture’s Ensemble OSA

Continue reading NFV Solutions →

NFV Overview

Networking & SDN,

Network function Virtualization(NFV) refers to Services running on commodity hardware(compute, storage, network) which replaces functions that are done in specialized boxes currently. This applies mainly to Telecom sector, but the same concept can be extended into other areas as well. If we look at current products in the Telecom sector, there are separate hardware systems for each functionality. Examples of these systems are CPE switches, BRAS, LTE, mobile backhaul, firewall, load balancer etc. In all these systems, there is a tight coupling between the software stack and the hardware supplied. This causes multiple issues to the carrier/operator like high capital cost, multiple management systems, dependency on few select vendors etc. In the initial days, one of the reasons for using specialized hardware was that general purpose servers did not have enough horsepower. Newer generation servers pack in a lot of horse power that allows both control and data plane functionality to be done with commodity servers. This in addition to the maturity of Virtualization technologies(compute, storage and network) have made NFV more practically possible now. There will still be some scenarios where it is necessary to use hardware systems with  ASICs for high throughput and distributed processing needs etc.

In this blog, I will cover the following:

  • NFV Overview
  • NFV architecture Components
  • Use cases
  • Standards and Opensource components
  • NFV in relation to SDN and white box switches
  • Comparison to data center application
  • Challenges

In the next blog, I will cover popular NFV implementations available in the market today.

Continue reading NFV Overview →

Netconf and Yang

DevOps & Automation, Networking & SDN, , , , ,

Cisco’s acquisition of Tail-f prompted me to look deeper into what Tail-f does. That in-turn made me dig deeper into Netconf and Yang. Netconf is a device configuration and management protocol and Yang is a modeling language that’s used by Netconf. Yang modeling can also be used outside Netconf’s context. From looking at the history behind Netconf and Yang, I realized that Network management as a whole was a widely ignored topic for quite sometime. The current Network management techniques used by Operators seems to be very arcane and the recent SDN wave has triggered a renewed interest in simplifying Network management. In this blog, I will cover the following:

  • Shortcomings of SNMP.
  • Netconf and Yang overview with examples.
  • Comparison with Ovsdb and Openflow.
  • Opendaylight’s use of Yang model
  • Tail-f  NCS system’s use of Netconf and Yang.

Continue reading Netconf and Yang →

Cloud policy – Congress and Opflex

Cloud Platforms, Networking & SDN, , , , , ,

Recently, I saw a lot of press on Cisco’s Opflex protocol that allows a declarative policy model to control a physical or virtual device. There were discussions around if the Opflex protocol would replace Ovsdb and Openflow. Within Openstack, there is a new project called Congress that allows for creating a policy framework within Openstack. This blog is my attempt to get into more details on Congress and Opflex and explain the relationship between them. This is mostly information gathered from different references that I have listed in the end.

Congress:

Congress is a new Openstack project that is used to enforce compliance within the cloud environment. The end goal would be to integrate Congress with other cloud orchestration software as well. Compliance could be needed because of Government regulations, contracts between organizations, SLA enforcement etc. Following picture illustrates the need for Congress.

Continue reading Cloud policy – Congress and Opflex →

White box switches – Overview and current models

Networking & SDN, , , ,

In this blog, I will cover the basics of White box switches, current software models in White box switches, architecture overview of popular White box vendors(Cumulus, Big Switch, Pica8), popular Opensource projects related to White box switches and some final thoughts on the future direction.

In the current Networking switches, hardware and software are tightly coupled and it is not possible to change the software from 1 vendor to another keeping the hardware as same. This is different from Server space where hardware and software are decoupled completely.

The term White box Switch refers to a Networking Switch where hardware and software are loosely coupled and it is possible to change 1 of them keeping the other as same.

Following are some of the advantages of White box switches.

  • Multiple choices and no vertical lock-in to a single vendor.
  • Can increase speed of innovation.
  • Can reduce capex and opex.

Following are 3 models that seems to be emerging among White box switches.

Continue reading White box switches – Overview and current models →

Openstack Networking Demo

Cloud Platforms, Storage & Virtualization, ,

This blog covers a hands-on session demonstrating Openstack networking capabilities. This is a followup to my previous blog where I covered the Openstack Icehouse installation and basic usage. I have covered the following in the video.

  • Connectivity between VMs in a single subnet.
  • Connectivity between VMs across different subnets by having a router between the 2 subnets.
  • Connectivity between VMs across 2 different hosts and establish connectivity between the VMs using GRE tunnel between the 2 hosts.
  • Using Access security control policies to control access to VM.

VMs used are same as previous blog:

Controller localrc can be found here. Compute localrc can be found here. I had some issues getting connectivity across hosts working with network type vlan and vxlan. I am not clear if the issues are with the ovs switch version that I have or with the localrc configuration. Open vswitch version I am using is 1.4.6.

Continue reading Openstack Networking Demo →

Openstack Icehouse install using Devstack

Cloud Platforms, DevOps & Automation, ,

In this blog, I will cover steps to install Openstack Icehouse release using Devstack. I will cover Single node installation as well as Multi-node installation. In a single node installation, both control and compute instance runs in the same VM. In multi-node install, control and compute instance runs in 1 VM/host and a compute instance runs in another separate VM/host. In multi-node install, we can spin as many compute instances as needed. With 12GB RAM in my host, I was running out of memory with single control and compute instance and a bunch of host applications running in my system.

My environment:

  • Windows 7 with Virtualbox 4.3.10
  • 12 GB RAM

Downloadable VM:

I have created OVA files for both the controller and compute instance that can be downloaded from below links. Import the OVA files into any VM manager software like Virtualbox to try this out. These VMs are running Ubuntu 12.04.

Alternate locations for downloading VMs in case the Dropbox link above does not work:

Following are the steps that I did to create the VMs above. If you are downloading the OVA files, you don’t need to follow the steps below. Continue reading Openstack Icehouse install using Devstack →

Openstack Overview

Cloud Platforms

In 1 of my previous blogs, I have given overview of Cloud OS and comparison of the popular Cloud OS available in the market today. Currently, the most popular opensource cloud OS in the market is Openstack. Openstack has lot of momentum going for it along with a great industry backing.

Following blog gives a good overview of Openstack components, release history along with comparison of Openstack components with AWS.

Openstack can be downloaded from here. It is pretty complex to install Openstack since there are multiple components involved. Similar to linux distributions provided by linux vendors, there are multiple vendors offering Openstack distributions. Following blog covers popularOpenstack distribution vendors. More vendors are joining into the fray now. These distributions offer easier deployment, customizations, performance tuning as well as support. The best way to try out Openstack is using devstack. Devstack offers a scripted approach to install and try out Openstack. In 1 of the next blogs, I will cover the Openstack install procedure using Devstack.