Below are some of the videos I came across that gives you a glitch into the Nicira NVP cluster.
- VMware Nicira Network Virtualization and VPLEX
- OpenStack with VMware vSphere
Showing posts with label nicira. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nicira. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Nicira NVP network controller
Networking is evolution and often going toward automation and virtual networking. Looking at the available resources we can say that there is a lot of stuff to read about Cisco Nexus platform and the VXLAN protocol. Comparing this with the SDN vendors like Nicira or Midokura the situation is not the same. There isn't available open documentation for the products. There is only a few videos on YouTube that demonstrate what the products do and how they look like.
Below are some of the videos I came across that gives you a glitch into the Nicira NVP cluster.
Below are some of the videos I came across that gives you a glitch into the Nicira NVP cluster.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
SDN system software architecture
By reading about various companies like (Nicira, Midokura) that provide SDN solutions you hear various technology acronyms like Openflow, Openvswitch and others. After a while once you allow this knowledge to sink your appetite grows and you begin to ask more questions like:
There is no much info about internal architecture or deployment options on the vendor's home site. We can find only very generic descriptions like the ones below.
Nicira [1]
What is Nicira's architecture?
Nicira's Distributed Virtual Network Infrastructure (DVNI) is an architecture that builds on a distributed software system that decouples virtual services from the network hardware and works with any server hypervisor.
How does the platform work?
The NVP Controller Cluster dynamically updates the state of tunnel connections between OVS switches through the physical network. These tunnels allow virtual networks to span across the data center, even between data centers. Data communications between workloads connected to virtual networks is encapsulated and traverses the physical network, enabling VM mobility across subnet boundaries, while maintaining L2 adjacency. The operational state of the network is computed algorithmically in the NVP Controller Cluster,
Midokura [2]
Fully Distributed Architecture with no single points of failure
Midokura has built MidoNet to be completely distributed and scalable. These advantages are key in building your infrastructure.
Furthermore, MidoNet is a completely distributed scale-out system, offering no single point of failure.
Architecture differences
But there is one thing that can be read between the lines. Although both vendors claim to offer SDN solution that is based on a distributed architecture is seems they interpret this in a different way.
It looks like that for Nicira the distributed attribute is mainly a property of its NVP cluster. NVP is a central place that holds all network (like flows, port, tenants, network ...) related information that is relevant to implement a control plane.
For Midokura the distributed attribute is a way they designed the whole solution they have. There is no single central component (in a form of a single or multi-server distributed cluster) that holds and manages all network information. It looks like that every Midonet node has limited knowledge but in the same time has enough information to perform tasks done normally by the control plane.
Comparison of the architecture types
Depending on the architecture type both companies facing different challenges that they need to solved. An interesting summary of types and problems that you may encounter can be found in this wiki article SDN deployment models. The article list following types that matching quite well above descriptions that should give us enough info to realize how different are both approaches:
- How did they create this
- What tread off and compromises exist in the architecture
- What could be the limitations
- How complex is the architecture and deployment
- What software, languages etc.. did they use
- How much operational intensive it is to support this
There is no much info about internal architecture or deployment options on the vendor's home site. We can find only very generic descriptions like the ones below.
Nicira [1]
What is Nicira's architecture?
Nicira's Distributed Virtual Network Infrastructure (DVNI) is an architecture that builds on a distributed software system that decouples virtual services from the network hardware and works with any server hypervisor.
How does the platform work?
The NVP Controller Cluster dynamically updates the state of tunnel connections between OVS switches through the physical network. These tunnels allow virtual networks to span across the data center, even between data centers. Data communications between workloads connected to virtual networks is encapsulated and traverses the physical network, enabling VM mobility across subnet boundaries, while maintaining L2 adjacency. The operational state of the network is computed algorithmically in the NVP Controller Cluster,
Midokura [2]
Fully Distributed Architecture with no single points of failure
Midokura has built MidoNet to be completely distributed and scalable. These advantages are key in building your infrastructure.
Furthermore, MidoNet is a completely distributed scale-out system, offering no single point of failure.
Architecture differences
But there is one thing that can be read between the lines. Although both vendors claim to offer SDN solution that is based on a distributed architecture is seems they interpret this in a different way.
It looks like that for Nicira the distributed attribute is mainly a property of its NVP cluster. NVP is a central place that holds all network (like flows, port, tenants, network ...) related information that is relevant to implement a control plane.
For Midokura the distributed attribute is a way they designed the whole solution they have. There is no single central component (in a form of a single or multi-server distributed cluster) that holds and manages all network information. It looks like that every Midonet node has limited knowledge but in the same time has enough information to perform tasks done normally by the control plane.
Comparison of the architecture types
Depending on the architecture type both companies facing different challenges that they need to solved. An interesting summary of types and problems that you may encounter can be found in this wiki article SDN deployment models. The article list following types that matching quite well above descriptions that should give us enough info to realize how different are both approaches:
- Symmetric vs asymmetric
- Floodless vs flood-based
- Host-based vs Network-centric
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Does Rackspace use SDN to build its network in data centers
Rackspace have lunched a while ago cloud network product that provide the networking services as well as is the network infrastructure building block for the Openstack based cloud images. It can be pictured in this simple way like below.
But what vendor does Rackspace use to build its SDN based cloud network?
The cloud network at Rack is based on Nicira NVP product line. More info how we use and what it allows us to achieve can be found in the 'Nicira: Creating Virtual Networks in Cloud Data Centers' video.
But what vendor does Rackspace use to build its SDN based cloud network?
The cloud network at Rack is based on Nicira NVP product line. More info how we use and what it allows us to achieve can be found in the 'Nicira: Creating Virtual Networks in Cloud Data Centers' video.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
What does Software Defined Data Center means
After the industry created a
Software Defined Network (SDN)
[1]
term it is time for a new one. A new emerging IT buzz word is a
Software Defined Data Center (SDDC)
[2]. It appears that only VMware is marketing this extensively at the moment.
From a technical point of view its all makes sense: compute resources are already largely virtualized, virtual storage and virtual networks are following. Looking at the last VMware acquisition of Nicira [3] the company has many if not all necessary products to build such a SDDC Data Center.
Let's see how the market will respond to it and if other vendors start looking and using this as well in the near future.
References
From a technical point of view its all makes sense: compute resources are already largely virtualized, virtual storage and virtual networks are following. Looking at the last VMware acquisition of Nicira [3] the company has many if not all necessary products to build such a SDDC Data Center.
Let's see how the market will respond to it and if other vendors start looking and using this as well in the near future.
References
- SDN http://rtomaszewski.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/software-defined-network-sdn-as-example.html
- SDDC http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-center/the-software-defined-data-center-dissect/240006848
- Openstack, Nicira and VMware http://www.infoworld.com/t/data-center/what-the-software-defined-data-center-really-means-199930
http://rtomaszewski.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/google-does-use-sdn-in-its-data-centers.html
http://rtomaszewski.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/emerging-of-virtual-network-aka-quantum.html
http://www.vmware.com/solutions/datacenter/software-defined-datacenter/index.html
http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2012/08/the-software-defined-datacenter-meets-vmworld.html
What your Dev, Engineering and sales teams can achieve by using Openstack cloud and Quantum network
Nicira NVP controller can be used together with Quantum as a plugin to enable extend virtual networking capabilities in Openstack. With NVP help the providers, operators and users can start building Software Defined Network (SDN) networks to interconnect the virtual machines.
It was predicted and by many it is seen as a natural evolution and a step forward for Openstack and cloud network in general.
We are no longer tight to static, unchangeable set of switches and routers when it comes to building and designing networks. The more flexible networking allow us to build more agile cloud infrastructures that will allow us to meet changing demands of rapidly evolving applications.
As a real business example of cloud flexibility this is a video of how Nicira is using Quantum to solve its internal infrastructure challenges for the Dev, Engineering and Sales teams: Running Quantum on Quantum @ Nicira's Multi-tenant OpenStack.
For these who don't like videos I have copied some of the key point from the presentation:
It was predicted and by many it is seen as a natural evolution and a step forward for Openstack and cloud network in general.
We are no longer tight to static, unchangeable set of switches and routers when it comes to building and designing networks. The more flexible networking allow us to build more agile cloud infrastructures that will allow us to meet changing demands of rapidly evolving applications.
As a real business example of cloud flexibility this is a video of how Nicira is using Quantum to solve its internal infrastructure challenges for the Dev, Engineering and Sales teams: Running Quantum on Quantum @ Nicira's Multi-tenant OpenStack.
For these who don't like videos I have copied some of the key point from the presentation:
- In a physical word it is difficult to achieve full automation and implement provisioning process that can build new configuration in a few minutes only
- This is a challenge for the operational team to deliver results in a rapidly changing environment and keep the some quality of work when your company grows fast
- There is always a risk of a human error that can potentially bring your production network down
- Most network are designed to meet only the requirements that are known initially; It is difficult to plan ahead and new changes can be impossible to implement later on
- Developers need to have a flexibility to test without a risk of bringing a company network down
- You can easily provision new isolated environments for new projects or new hires
- For better resource utilization you want to have an automation in place that allows you to tier down and spin up whole environments (cloud servers + networking) as easy as possible during a day
- Not only a compute resources have to be easy to provision but as well as interconnecting and isolating them to achieve infrastructure resources agility; This is important especially for tier application typologies where we have web, db and application servers.
- Quickly building POC for new projects and customers demonstration
- Flexible network infrastructure allows collaboration between different development teams; breaking the network isolation boundaries in a statically built network may be impossible
- Within minutes or second you can create and build new networks as well as to decommission them
- You can add new resources and boost capacity when you need it; More flexible handling of cloud bursting; You don't have to oversubscribe resource only to meet the pick application requirements
Friday, November 2, 2012
After server virtualization there is a time for network to be virtualized
Virtualization become today de facto a standard in almost every company. What about 10 years ago was a revolution in computing it has become a mature product for everyone. But when we look at the history how it was evolving we can see one component to remain unmodified: the network, one of the very few unvirtualized technology bastions.
But today the market is changing. To understand the changes and what all this means I recommend to read at least these 2 blogs:
VMWARE BUYS NICIRA: A HYPERVISOR VENDOR WOKE UP
VMware’s Acquisition of Nicira – VMware confirming the hypervisor is dead
The changes the blogs describe are already happening. As a practical example is a Rackspace Cloud Network product, a hybrid network that was created to leverage the potential in software defined network that data center provider can benefit from.
Further reading & references
But today the market is changing. To understand the changes and what all this means I recommend to read at least these 2 blogs:
VMWARE BUYS NICIRA: A HYPERVISOR VENDOR WOKE UP
VMware’s Acquisition of Nicira – VMware confirming the hypervisor is dead
The changes the blogs describe are already happening. As a practical example is a Rackspace Cloud Network product, a hybrid network that was created to leverage the potential in software defined network that data center provider can benefit from.
Further reading & references
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