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SDNCentral Network Virtualization Report 2014 Custom Edition

Market Report

The Independent Community and #1 Resource for SDN and NFV

© 2014 SDNCentral. All Rights Reserved. Page 1

Market Report

Network Virtualization Solutions

Table of Contents

Prelude – What’s New in the 2014 Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

SDNCentral’s NV Survey Insights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A Little Background – Defining Network Virtualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

What is the Relationship between NV, Software-Defined Networks

and Network Overlays? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

What Business Problems Does Network Virtualization Solve? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Benefits of NV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

What are the Main Approaches to Network Virtualization in the Market Today? . . . . . . 13

What are the Main Use Cases for Network Virtualization? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Key Attributes to Look for in Data Center Network Virtualization Solutions. . . . . . . . . 16

Looking Beyond the Data Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Who are the Leading Data Center NV Vendors? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Sponsored Vendor Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

HP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

HP Network VirtualizationDiscover the power of network simplicity

Learn more athp.com/sdn/networkvirtualization

© Copyright 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

• HP offers the industry’s most comprehensive network virtualization portfolio, backed by world-class service and support

• HP is uniquely positioned to navigate you safely through this technology and business transformation


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Prelude – What’s New in the 2014 EditionThe thousands of readers who downloaded the 2013 Network Virtualization Report will find the 2014 edition continues to deliver valuable insights into the progress and shifts of the network virtualization market. This year’s Report includes:

•Anupdateonthedifferentvendorapproachestodatacenternetworkvirtualization,goingbeyondOpenFlow and overlays to encompass more hybrid models.

•AnexpansionofvendorcoveragetoprovideearlyinsightsintohownetworkvirtualizationsolutionsarebeingusedintheWANandaspartofcloudofferings,otherwiseknownasnetworkvirtualizationasaservice (NVaaS).

•Keyinsightsintomarketperceptionsanduptake,withthepresentationofthefindingsfromSDNCentral’s market survey.

We thank you for downloading this Report and hope you will find it a useful resource as you look to understand and adopt network virtualization solutions.

IntroductionIn 2014, network virtualization became mainstream. Discussions around how the network would adapt to support the highly virtualized compute and storage infrastructures in data centers moved from theory to practice. Proof of concepts and deployments in production networks have put theoretical questions to rest – the network is going virtual.

The debate is now in the details – how it will be integrated, implemented and managed are all up in the air. This environment has given rise to a bevy of vendors, new and old, who are each working on a slightly differentapproachtodeliverwhattheyseeastheoptimalnetworkvirtualization(NV)offerings.Therearesome who believe changes should be driven by the network itself, while others feel the applications should be the main influencing factor. In this nascent market, which marks a critical evolutionary step for the communications infrastructure that is relied on by almost everyone and everything, it is too early to tell which approach will win, which will lose or which will morph into something yet to be defined.

Atthispoint,timeandexperiencearescarce.Thisiswhy,asanindustry,thesuccessofserviceproviders,whoareofferingNVaspartoftheirpublicandhybridcloudsolutions,andorganizationsconsumingNVserviceswithintheirenvironmentarebeingcloselywatched.ThisiswhySDNCentral,whichisatthenexusof many of these discussions and debates, has been asked to develop a report that can help organizations identify and understand all the changes going on right now in the market.

This NV Report, produced by SDNCentral, is designed to provide critical information and answers to:

•Whatconstitutesnetworkvirtualization?•WhatistherelationshipbetweenNV,SDNandnetworkoverlays?•Whatbusinessproblemsdoesnetworkvirtualizationsolve?•Whatarethebenefitsofanetworkvirtualizationsolution?•Whatarethemainapproachestonetworkvirtualizationinthemarkettoday?•Whatattributesshouldyoubeawareofinadatacenternetworkvirtualizationsolution?


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•Howwouldanetworkvirtualizationsolutionbedeployed?•Whoaretheleadingvendorsprovidingnetworkvirtualizationsolutions?•Whatproblemsaretheybestatsolving?

This Report primarily covers the NV data center market because that is where most vendors have focused andthatiswherethemajorityoftheconfusionexistsarounddifferentofferings.However,wehaveresponded to reader feedback for more information on emerging deployment scenarios and added additional coverage of NV in the WAN and as a service.

WhiletheReportisdesignedtobeagoodreferencesourcearoundNV,itisnowayexhaustive.Newentrants and changes to the market are occurring daily, so it’s important to stay up to date on the latest news and open up relevant dialogues with vendors, researchers, partners and other industry leaders to find NV implementations that best address your business and technical challenges.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact the research team at [email protected].

SDNCentral’s NV Survey InsightsThe SDNCentral Research Team surveyed the SDNCentral community to gain insights into what the current activity and sentiment is around Network Virtualization. The following represent the results of that survey:

There were 220 respondents representing all types of organizations.

A quick look at the numbers confirms that NV deployments are becoming mainstream. 48% of the

Cloud Service Provider 8%

Large Enterprise

30%

ServiceProvider

22%

SMB24%

Vendor 7%

Researcher 3%Consulting 2%

Other 4%

RESPONDENTS By TyPE


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respondents already have NV solutions in their environment and 73% of the organizations that do not are lookingtodeployNVsolutionsinthenexttwoyears(43%within3–12months,and57%within12–24months).

A Deeper Dive into Who is Adopting NV

41% of Service Providers have deployed NV solutions; of those that have not, 85% have plans to deploy NV solutionsinthenexttwoyears(43%areonanacceleratedschedule,lookingtodeploywithinthenext3–12months). Not surprisingly, 94% of Cloud Service Providers already have or are planning on deploying NV solutions in their environment within the year.

Large enterprises are split – half have already deployed NV solutions, while half have not. 78% of the large enterprisesthatdonothaveNVsolutionshaveplanstoadoptNVtechnologieswithinthenext3–12months(44%) or 12–24 months (56%). Within the enterprise, size seems to matter, as small to medium businesses are slower to adopt NV technologies. 62% of SMBs do not have NV solutions in their environment; 38% of thosewithoutNVhavenoplansfordeploymentsonthehorizon(withinthenexttwoyears).Webelievethose SMBs who have adopted NV solutions skew towards medium-sized versus small companies. As we enter2015,wewouldexpectthemainpathofconsumptionofNVtobeviaNVaaSimplementationsinapublic cloud.

A Look at Where NV is Being Deployed

OVERaLL REPORTED LOCaTIONS fOR NV SOLuTIONS

Num

ber

of

Res

po

nden

ts

50

40

30

20

10

0Everywhere

6

Data Center

43

HybridCloud

23

Development/ Test Labs

3

Public Cloud

4

Private Cloud

29


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Service Providers tend to deploy NV solutions within their Data Centers; while enterprises primarily use NV technologies in their Private Cloud deployments. Overall, respondents cited the following locations for their NV solutions (note, they could chose more than one).

For those respondents with plans to deploy NV technologies, the majority are looking to adopt NV in their Data Centers (note, they could chose more than one).

The Benefits of NV

WhenpeopletoutthebenefitsofNV,itisusuallyaroundcostsavings.Avoidinghighcapitalexpenditures,duetotheuseofgeneral-purpose,off-the-shelfplatforms,andreducingoperationalexpenses,withcentralized management, are generally cited as the greatest value of virtualization. SDNCentral survey responders,however,hadadifferenttake,overwhelminglyciting“Flexibility”asthenumberonebenefitofNV,with“OperationalCostSavings”adistantsecondand“CapitalCostSavings”cominginat5th.

REPORTED PLaNNED LOCaTIONS fOR NV SOLuTIONS

Num

ber

of

Res

po

nden

ts

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Data Center

54

Private Cloud

27

HybridCloud

17

PublicCloud

6

Don’tKnow

5


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The Must Have Features of NV Solutions

Thefeaturesmostrespondentswerelookingforintheirnetworkvirtualizationsolutionswere“Scalability,”followedby“EaseofImplementation”and“CloudManagementPlatformIntegration.”

REPORTED BENEfITS Of NV

Number of Respondents

0 30 60 90 120 150

flexibility

None

Equipment Consolidation

Rapid Service Provisioning/Time to Market

Capital Cost Savings

Scalability

agility

Operational Cost Savings

Ben

efit

REPORTED “MuST HaVES” Of NV


Scalability

Specific Hypervisor Support

Richness of L2/L3 feature Set

Support for L4-7 feature Sets

Performance

Cloud Management Platform Integration

Ease of Implementation

Mus

t H

ave

fea

ture

0 20 40 60 80 120100


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NV Vendor Trends

The solutions that were most often cited as being used or under evaluation by respondents were “VMware’sNSX,”“Cisco’sACI/Nexus1000/Intercloud/AVS,”“Juniper’sContrail,”and“HP’sVirtualCloudNetworking.”1

The69respondentswhoreportedtheirNVsolutionwasinaproductionnetworkingeneralhad“ModerateSuccess,withSomeIssues,”at68%.Ontheextremes,only19%reportedtheirdeploymentwentoffwithoutahitch,whilelessthan6%hadanextremelypoorexperience,citingincompletefeatureset,product

maturityandtheITteam’sinsufficientexperienceasthereasonsfortheissues.

1 The vendors listed in the survey were selected prior to the initiation of the NV Report. As a result, they are a subset of those covered in this report. The other vendors listed in the report should be considered as grouped under the Other category.

REPORTED NV SOLuTIONS uNDER EVaLuaTION

Ven

do

r S

olu

tio

n

0 30 60 90 120 150


Juniper Contrail

Other

HP Virtual Cloud Networking

Nuage VSP

Big Switch

IBM SDN VE

Midokura Midonet

PLuMgrid

Cisco aCI/Nexus 1000/Intercloud/aVS

VMware NSX


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a Little Background – Defining Network VirtualizationNetwork virtualization (NV) creates a logical, virtual network, by decoupling network functions from the hardware that deliver them. Basically, all network functionality is separated from the underlying hardware andsimulatedasa“virtualinstance”thatcanbeloadedontogeneral,off-the-shelfplatforms;asinglehardware platform can be used to support multiple virtual network instances.

NV Today is Not the NV of Yesterday

NV is not necessarily a new concept – elements of NV have been present in switches for years, with 802.1Q virtual Local Area Networks (vLANs) capabilities. VLANs were designed to abstract the network by allowing multiple LANs to share a single physical link, while keeping them isolated from one another. Similarly, Internet protocol security (IPsec) virtual private networks (VPNs), secure socket layer (SSL) VPNs, virtual private LAN service (VPLS) and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) provided elements of network virtualization, logically separating out traffic on the network. All of these historical NV technologies were developed to address specific use cases, and all had limitations because they didn’t fundamentally change the way the network was built. These NV capabilities were still reliant on proprietary hardware network appliances to deliver the functionality.

NV today is designed to create virtual networks within a virtualized infrastructure, which makes the network much more portable and scalable. The physical devices are simply responsible for the forwarding of packets, while the intelligence of the network is delivered by software.

The decoupling of the control and forwarding planes delivers superior operational efficiencies and reduces costs,duetohardwareindependence.Ingeneral,avirtualizednetworkcanofferallthefeaturesandguaranteesthataphysicalnetworkcouldoffer,onlywithgreateragilityandflexibility.

This makes NV today better positioned to integrate and support the increasingly virtual data center environments the network is being asked to connect.

NV Goes Beyond the Boundaries of the Data Center

NV can be used to provision private virtual networks for any application workload, as well as provide any associatedsecurity,accelerationorexternalconnectivityservices.Insomesituations,theseprivatenetworks sit within a rack of servers or across multiple racks in a data center.

An increasing number of deployments span geographically distributed data centers. In these situations, the physical WAN network (underlay) is usually unaware of the virtualized network running on top of it. However,wearestartingtoseecoordinatedsolutions,fromvendorssuchasCyan,Juniper,andNuageNetworks, that are capable of mapping virtualized networks within a data center to virtualized networks in the WAN (MPLS, VPLS etc.).

When considering deploying virtual networks in the WAN, you have to think about optimization. Many WAN services today already use MPLS, VPLS, etc. to provide a level of virtualization, and have done so for manyyears,butthisisdifferentfromthemulti-layeroptimizationsolutionswearestartingtoseefromWAN optical vendors, such as Ciena and Infinera. These vendors are rolling out SDN-enhanced virtual


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WANsthatareprovidingadditionalvalueontopofexistingphysicalWANnetworks,reducingunnecessaryhops and enabling the more efficient use of paths.

Research and proof-of-concepts (POCs) are being released by educational and research institutions interested in creating virtualized, multi-tenant WANs that allow customers to run independent SDNs, each with their own control domains, on top of a shared WAN infrastructure. Not surprisingly, service providers are very interested in these applications and have started to do their own research and run their own POCs.

What is the Relationship between NV, Software-Defined Networks and Network Overlays? Networking terminology is nothing if not confusing, mainly because many technologies go hand-in-hand andco-existwithinoneanother.IfNetworkVirtualizationcreatesalogical,virtualnetwork,bydecouplingnetwork functions from the hardware that deliver them, then software-defined networking is the architecture that enables NV.

At its most basic, SDN is an approach to networking that separates out the control of the network from the data forwarding. It centralizes this control logic to simplify and automate the orchestration of the distributednetwork.SDNalsoexposesprogrammablecontrolapplicationprogramminginterfaces(APIs)that enable applications to orchestrate and automate network services.

SDN can be used to achieve network virtualization either through direct fabric programming or the creationofdirectpathsthroughthenetworkfabric(virtualandphysical)toeffectivelyisolateprivatenetworks from one another. However, this form of network virtualization has been less popular than network virtualization using overlays.

An overlay is essentially a virtual network that sits on top of a physical network. The traffic is simply encapsulated,usingexternalheadersthatmaskwhat’sinside,andthentunneledthroughexistingphysicalnetworks(Layer2or3).Oftenthephysicalnetworkisnotevenawareoftheexistenceofthevirtualone,somost vendors have developed tools that couple the two to make it easier to conduct debugging between them and achieve service level agreements (SLAs). Intelligent coupling can improve the end-to-end connectivity of the network, ensure the necessary bandwidth is available to provide quality of service, and enable recovery in the case of link failure.

ThemostpopularencapsulationformatisVXLAN.OtherfamiliarencapsulationprotocolsincludeMPLS,OTV,NVO3,straightGRE,andevenIPsec.WhenitcomestoVXLAN,therearesomescaleandcomplexityissues associated with its reliance on IP multicast to handle broadcast, unicast and multicast transmissions. Many vendors have come up with work-arounds (often relying on registration and lookup services) and provide special handling for services, such as DHCP and ARP.

There is also a new protocol, called Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE), which was submitted on February 14, 2014 to the Internet Ethernet Technical Forum (IETF). It contains a superset of VXLANandanopposingprotocolNVGRE,aswellasthelegacySTTprotocol,inanattempttohelpunifyand standardize capabilities of an encapsulating protocol.


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When encapsulated packets reach the final gateway, they are unpacked (or de-encapsulated) before being forwarded to the correct target host. These final gateways can be virtual switches attached to VM hosts, or theycanbeexternalgatewaysthatactasbridgesbetweenavirtualnetworkandanexistingphysicalnetwork.

Overlaysprovideagilityandlocationflexibility,withouthavingtoupgradeormodifyexistingphysicalequipment at the core of the network. By pushing intelligence to the edge, overlays can provide additional features and capabilities more rapidly, without requiring forklift upgrades of physical networking equipment.

Pure overlay networks can provide network virtualization without the use of programmatic flow controls. Certainly a centralized, separated control plane is not always needed, however, given that most network virtualization solutions involve Layer 4-7 services and multi-tiered networks, there will always be a programmatic element and, hence, a link to SDN.

What Business Problems Does Network Virtualization Solve?Theexpectationofanytime,anywhereaccessisplacingincredibledemandsonthenetwork.Tomaintainproductivity and ensure ongoing market competitiveness, organizations are looking for efficient, cost effectivewaystodeliverthedataandapplicationsusersrequire.Predictingdemandsandsupportingpotentiallyexponentialgrowthisnosimpletask,particularlywhenyouconsider:

•Mobileusegrew115%in2013.2 •BetweenMarch2013and2014,themessagingappmarketexpandedby148%,adding900million

users.3 •Facebookstores,accessesandanalyzes30petabytesofusergenerateddata.4 •Asof2013,thereisover1Exabyteofdatainthecloud.5

As these stats show, the landscape today is demanding and quickly evolving. An organization’s IT infrastructure has to be able to adapt to meet the challenge. This is driving many to move to more virtualized and cloud-based infrastructures to enable work-loads and resources to be quickly scaled up or down, so services and apps can be delivered quickly and reliably to meet changing needs.

Many see the cloud as a way to achieve better business agility; some are adopting cloud development models,usingthemasbusinessdifferentiatorstocapturemoremarketshare,increaserevenues,andreduce cost. These new deployment best practices and application development models tend to favor a large number of private enclaves or mini-personal data centers, in which developers can develop, test, and debug new applications. Likewise, with the move toward running cloud instances in the web, cloud service providershavetooffersimilaron-demand,mini-datacentersforeachoftheirclients.

NV helps complete the picture and allows data centers to provide the full suite of cloud capabilities businessesneed,fromon-demandself-serviceandrapidelasticity,toflexiblebillinganddepartment

2“MobileUseGrows115%in2013,PropelledbyMessagingApps,”bySiimonKhalaf,Flurry,January13,2014.3“MessagingAppsaretheGrowthStoryoftheDecadeinMoble,”byMarceloBallve,BusinessInsider,June2,2014.4“50PowerfulStatisticsAboutTechMegaTrendsAffectingEveryBusiness,byValaAfshar,Sept.2013,www.slideshare.net/ValaAfshar/6297-top50megatrends-v35“50PowerfulStatisticsAboutTechMegaTrendsAffectingEveryBusiness,byValaAfshar,Sept.2013,www.slideshare.net/ValaAfshar/6297-top50megatrends-v3


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chargebacks.NVsolutionscanmakenetworkchanges,whichusedtotakedays/weeks,inminutes/hours,such as adding and removing VLANs, stretching networks across server racks or even between data centers, adding and deleting firewall functionality or adding and removing load-balancers on the fly.

Virtualization across compute, storage and the network is key to many cloud architectures, as they provide quick provisioning, improved resource utilization, and operational efficiencies. Now, with NV, the network can play the foundational role it has always been supposed to play and start to support the fast pace and scale of today’s environments.

Benefits of NVAs mentioned earlier, one of the most highly touted benefits of virtualization is the potential cost reductions that result from the use of general-purpose hardware and centralized management. But, as the survey responses indicate, cost savings may not actually be the biggest value of NV. Some of the biggest benefits are:

•flexibility. Enabling the network to be quickly moved, provisioned and scaled to meet the ever-changing needs of the highly virtualized compute and storage infrastructures.

•automation. Centralized, automated set-up of service chains, within both Layer 3 and Layer 4-7 services, can accelerate the roll out of services, such as firewalls, IPS, etc.

•Multi-tenancy. The ability to support multiple silos and virtual networks running over the same physical links, allowing multiple networks (even with the same IP space) to share the same physical links.

•Reliability. The ability to save and restore network topologies and configurations, via snapshotting, check pointing, and rollbacks, to allow for faster recovery from both bad configuration decisions and equipment failure in disaster recovery situations.

•Simplified Deployment.“Template-ized”deploymentsofstandardapplicationstacks,withbuilt-innetworking topologies, enables error-free and fast deployment of applications, as well as pre-checks for compliance and the adoption of networking best practices.

•Simplified Management. Centralized control over the distributed network; changes to the physical underlaynetworkdonotimpactthevirtualoverlay,removingalotofthecomplexityofongoingconnectivity management and maintenance.

•VMscanbemovedaroundwithoutimpactingtheflowoftraffic.•Noneedtomanuallyreconfigurephysicallinksorendpointsettingsonthenetwork.•Abilitytoeasilyflowwithinthedatacenterandbetweendatacenters.

• Improved Resource utilization. Higher density of multiple virtual networks improves utilization, without running into IP subnet or VLAN conflicts.

•agility. Modificationstothenetwork’stopologyorhowtrafficishandledcanbetriedindifferentways,withouthavingtomodifytheexistingphysicalnetworks.Forexample,theendpointscanallrunamodifiednetworkingstack,withnewprotocolstunneledthroughexistingphysicallegacynetworks,withoutimpactingexistingnetworks.


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What are the Main approaches to Network Virtualization in the Market Today?The approaches that vendors take to developing network virtualization solutions are often dependent on where the solution is going to be deployed. Data Center environments were the first to integrate NV, which probablyexplainsthevarietyofapproachesonthemarkettodate,asopposedtotheWAN,whichhasjustbegun to emerge as a deployment target for the new generation of NV technologies.

Network Virtualization in the Data Center

In the Data Center, there are two main approaches: the first programs the fabric directly; the second developsanetworkoverlay.Programmingthefabric,whichusuallyconsistsofamixofvirtualandphysicalswitches, requires using a flow-control protocol, such as OpenFlow, or a vendor’s proprietary format, such as Cisco’s application centric infrastructure (ACI) to manage the network. There is also the alternate approach, such as Avaya’s, which utilizes standards-based SPB as a means of creating virtual networks.

The direct fabric programming approach usually requires customers to upgrade all the physical switches in thenetworktosupporttheprotocols/proprietaryformats.Inthediagrambelow,methodEisessentiallythe direct-fabric programming approach – coordinating virtual networks via programming the virtual switch and physical switches directly.

Over the past few years, there have been more vendors focusing on the overlay approach, primarily because it does not require any upgrades to the underlying network hardware. There are a variety of ways in which an overlay network is accomplished; the most common of which is via modifying or replacing the virtual switch (method C). In some cases, kernel modules are inserted in the hypervisor (most commonly with KVM as the hypervisor). In situations where the virtual switch cannot be replaced and the hypervisor is proprietary(VMwareESXi),vendorsmaychoosetouseaVMrunningavirtualswitchinstanceastheterminating point for virtual networks (method B).

In the overlay approach to network virtualization, multiple encapsulation protocols are available, ranging from straightGRE,toIPsec,toNVGRE,STT,andVXLAN,amongothers.Currently,VXLANisdominantinthemarket, with support within many physical switches and hardware-based Layer 4-7 devices, however, it will be interesting to see the degree to which GENEVE ends up being adopted as an industry-wide standard.


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Thefollowingtablesummarizesthebenefitsandchallengesofthedifferentapproaches:

ApproachExample Vendors

Pros ConsBest Fit Use Case

Direct Programming –withexplicitcontrol over switches (using OpenFlow, SPB or other proprietary methods)

Avaya, Big Switch, Cisco ACI, Dell, HP, Extreme,Juniper,NEC

No tunneling or encap/de-encap,fragmentation; possible strongQoS/SLA controls, simplified troubleshooting

Requires OpenFlow (or other similar protocol) or vendor equipment throughout the entire infrastructure

Where a user has complete control over entire infrastructure and needs fine grained control over QoS, SLA, etc.

Overlay – virtual switch centric, including kernel modules in the hypervisor

CiscoNexus1000V,ConteXtream,CPLANE NETWORKS, Cyan, Dell, HP, IBM SDN VE, Juniper,Midokura,Nuage Networks, PLUMgrid, VMware NSX

No need for drivers on guest VMs, which supports more VM OSes

Access to the hypervisor is required for kernel modules (not always easy); if running a vSwitch in a VM (due to limitations by VMware), there can be significant performance degradation

EitherKVM/OpenStack deployments with access to hypervisor, or VMware environments, if the vSwitch is certified by VMware

Overlay – guest VM driver, or a driver on a desktop

Pertino Simple to deploy, ability to connect VMs everywhere, regardless of location

Requires client driver on each host; might have scalability limits; little control over QoS; only supports virtual Layer 3, Layer 4-7 services

IaaS environments or other location where the user has little control over the infrastructure

Network Virtualization in the WAN

In the WAN, carriers have been running and selling network virtualization for a long time, as evidenced by thefactthatveryfewofferdedicatedlinksanymore.Today,themajorityofapproachesusedbyprovidersto achieve virtualization consists of using L2 or L3 VPN technology, such as MPLS VPNs (L2 and L3), VPLS, L2TP and OTV, to name a few.

Similar to data center network virtualization, WAN virtualization techniques can be segmented into direct fabric programming, such as running an MPLS VPN over L2, and overlay approaches. Direct fabric programming enables providers to more easily attain tight controls over quality of service (QoS), while overlays will require more advanced handling to achieve those controls. Overlays, however, can provide a littlemoreflexibility,employingWANvirtualizationtechniques,suchasMPLSVPNoverGRE(ormultipointGRE) to allow the traffic to traverse networks that are not MPLS-ready via tunneling. In terms of categorization, IPsec VPNs could be considered an overlay WAN virtualization technology, since it provides the means of running multiple private networks over a shared WAN infrastructure.


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Note, some vendors use the term WAN virtualization, not as a reference to MPLS or IPsec VPNs, but to categorize the virtual bonding or aggregation of network services across multiple WAN connections (usually retail Internet services) to improve the performance of the overall WAN. We should not confuse their use of the term with how we are defining it, as the creation and management of virtualized networks in the wide-area.

Network Virtualization as a Service

Oneofthefastestgrowingnetworkvirtualizationofferingsisactuallynotaproductyoucanpurchase,butrather a packaged service for which you can buy a subscription. With the rise of public cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Dreamhost, Google Compute Engine, and Rackspace,aswellasotherprivate/hybridplatformsofferedbyserviceproviders,includingAT&T,NTT,Verizon and other carriers, many enterprises are migrating their traditionally internal applications to run in public or private clouds operated by service providers.

Increasingly, these migrated applications require more sophisticated networking than just a single public IP address. The cloud providers have responded with improved network virtualization capabilities that allow customerstoprovisionthenetworktomeettheirneeds.Withself-service,dynamicofferings,enterprisescan create multi-node private networks that support virtual routing, L2 over the WAN and Layer 4-7 service chaining for firewalls, load-balancing and other functions. Most of these solutions utilize overlay technologies.Theyareamixofproprietary,customsolutions(e.g.Amazon,Azure,Google)andpackaged,managed versions of commercial products (e.g. NTT). Sometimes they may even involve a blend of commercial, custom and open-source solutions (e.g. Dreamhost, Rackspace).

What are the Main use Cases for Network Virtualization?WiththeadoptionofNVstartingtotakeoff,differentusecasesareemerging.Again,itoftendependsonthe deployment scenario and organization type, but one of the most popular use cases today across both enterprises and service providers is multi-tenancy.

NVisbeingusedtocreateon-demand,multi-tenantslicesofanexistingnetwork–tiedtoprivate,public,orhybrid clouds – to increase agility. These slices may be used for hosting web-facing applications or internal enterpriseapplications,includingbigdataanalytics,aswellassupportingcloudburstingbyusingexternalcloud resources to augment on-premises data center resources.

Across the WAN, network virtualization is used by carriers to improve resource utilization and increase the agilityandflexibilityofexpensiveWANlinks.Withamovetowardsbandwidth-on-demandandconnectivity-on-demand, network virtualization allows for the creation of instant virtual networks, with bandwidth guarantees that support inter-data center data transfers for Big Data applications, backup and disaster recovery and large-scale video streaming or web conferencing use cases.

Other network virtualization use cases include supporting the virtualization of core services within a service provider’s network, such as NFV (network functions virtualization) initiatives to virtualize the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) or evolved packet core (EPC).


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Key attributes to Look for in Data Center Network Virtualization SolutionsIn general, NV solutions should be able to do all that physical networks can do, and more. NV networks should be able to support basic connectivity, Layer 2 and Layer 3 functionality, broadcast, multicast, etc. to ensure traffic can run, without modification, on these virtual networks.

NVshouldalsobeabletosupportadvancedcapabilitiesofferedbytoday’sphysicalnetworks,suchasaccess control lists (ACL), QoS, and high availability. Given the maturity of the market, these advanced capabilitiesarejuststartingtobeoffered.

NVsolutionsarealsostartingtointroducenewcapabilitiesthathaven’tbeenpossiblebefore.Forexample,organizations can better support endpoint mobility, and track virtual machines as they move from one physical VM host to another. They can also improve visualization and troubleshooting, as the network abstractions make it easier for users to understand what is happening within the network’s topology.

The SDNCentral Research Team has developed the following key capabilities you should consider as you evaluateNVsolutions,basedonreal-worlddeploymentexperiences:

Capability Consideration

Hypervisor Compatibility

The virtual switch on the hypervisor plays a key role within any NV deployment. Choosing a hypervisor is often a strategic decision and, once deployed, can be difficult to change, so it is critical to ensure that the network virtualization solution natively supports the hypervisor of choice.

Beawarethatsolutionsmarkedas“compatible”withthehypervisormaybeusinga virtual switch instance that is running in a VM, with port-group mapping or another similar mechanism, to insert itself into the hypervisor environment. This approach often restricts the virtual switch that can be used. This is true particularly withVMwareESXi,whichtodayrestrictschoicesofvirtualswitchestoitsbuilt-inversion,Cisco’sNexus1000V,HP5900v,orIBMDV-5000.Intheseenvironments,theperformanceofthenetworkvirtualizationsolutioncanbeaffectedbypacketstraversing unnecessary multiple paths within the VM host.

Network Model More mature NV solutions will provide a network model that helps visualize and define the topology, including Layer 2, Layer 3, routing, gateways, Layer 4-7 chaining, etc.Themorecomplextheenvironment,themorecriticalthemodelistoensuringitis working properly.

Physical Switch Infrastructure Compatibility

While NV solutions try to operate primarily within the virtual domain, most require integration with the physical infrastructure, which means the availability and performanceofphysicaltovirtualgatewaysiscritical.ForNVsolutionsusingVXLAN,thereisanincreasingnumberofswitchesthatcanactashardwareVTEPs(VXLANtermination endpoint) to facilitate these boundary transitions at wire-speed.


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QoS Support In networks that are jitter- or latency-sensitive, such as those supporting streaming media, voice, or critical apps (e.g. financial and medial apps), the presence of QoS support(Layer2/Layer3)canbehelpful.Insuchenvironments,NVsolutionsbasedon direct-fabric programming may be able to provide better QoS control than pure overlay solutions.

High availability Most NV solutions depend on the physical underlay network to provide Layer 3 connectivity, rather than relying on conventional protocols, those solutions that program the fabric directly may be able to better detect and work around faults to improve overall availability of the network.

Scalability Some NV solution designs may encounter performance challenges when the control planes reach their limits or when the data plane replicates broadcast, unknown unicast, or multicast traffic across the physical fabric unnecessarily. Vendors are working to overcome these limitations, but whether the solutions can scale to support large cloud environments with 10,000s of physical servers is still to be seen.

Cross-Data Center Capabilities

Cross-Data Center capabilities are needed when multiple Data Centers are considered part of a single domain, as well as for disaster recovery (DR) or load rebalancing use cases. The ability to move VMs seamlessly across Data Centers, withoutreconfiguringthenetworkcansignificantlyreduceoperationalcomplexity.

Network Services Invirtualizednetworks,DHCPandIPAM/DNSservicesenablevirtualmachinestobebrought up seamlessly. Some NV solutions have built-in DHCP and IPAM capabilities (usuallybasicandstatic),whileothersdependonthird-partyexternalDNSandIPAMappliances or services.

Layer 3 Routing Capabilities

Most NV solutions provide some routing capabilities, from limited, static routing to supporting a full suite of routing protocols (BGP, OSPF, and ISIS). Those without built-in protocol handling must integrate a virtual router or third-party virtual router. More mature solutions have distributed routing capabilities that can perform routing functions at the edge to reduce unnecessary packet traversal over physical and virtual links.


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Layer 4-7 Capabilities/NaT/ Service Chaining

ManyNVsolutionshavebuilt-inLayer4-7capabilities,includingLayer3/Layer4StatefulFirewalls,DDoSprevention,caching,WebapplicationFWs,IPS/IDS,IPsecVPN,andSLB.ThesecapabilitiesmitigatetheneedforchainingwithexternalLayer4-7 services (physical or virtual) and make deployment of NV services more cost effective,however,theymaynothaveallthefeaturesorganizationsneed.Ifthesolution needs to be integrated with more mature, feature-rich, third-party solutions, the ease of building service chains will be an important factor to consider.

Without network address translation (NAT), virtual networks that live within a private address space (often overlapping with other tenants) cannot communicate with externalentities.AdvancedNVsolutionsprovidemorefine-grainedcontrolsoverNAT, usually in conjunction with a Layer 4 FW capability.

IPsec VPNs are typically required to integrate with private clouds and are useful in cloud bursting scenarios for hybrid cloud deployments.

Visibility and analytics Visibilityiscriticalfornetworktroubleshootingandmanagement.Forexample,the ability to look into overlay tunnels and understand how they are traversing a particular physical path is key to optimizing the network’s performance.

On the analytics front, NV vendors tout monitoring and analysis within their solutions, with the ability to analyze traffic trends (throughput, latency) within the solution itself. However, most of these implementations are relatively basic, focusing on data capture, look for capabilities to mature in the coming months to improve analysis.

usability and Manageability

Due to the scale of NV solutions, usability and manageability are key considerations. The control and management panels for these solutions have to accommodate tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of networks (perhaps millions in the near future). This unprecedented scaling presents a new challenge for user interfaces. Many early NV solutions have UIs that showcase the ease with which a user can drag anddropavirtualnetworkintoexistence,eschewingthemanagement-at-scaleUIthatwillcertainlylookquitedifferent.Someofthecomplexitymaybehiddenthroughintegration with upper layer orchestration system, however, the monitoring and troubleshooting of large numbers of virtual networks will likely remain a challenge for the foreseeable future.


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Orchestration Stack Integration/ VM Mobility Support

Most cloud environments deployed today have (by necessity) an orchestration system, such as OpenStack, CloudStack, vCloudDirector (vSphere), and Microsoft SCVMM, running them.

Compatibility with the orchestration stack already in place in a cloud environment is critical; many NV solutions claim compatibility with multiple stacks, but the reality is the level of integration varies widely. Many orchestration stacks are still undergoing rapid development and refactoring, so the stability of the networking APIs tends to be low, forcing NV vendors to find alternate means to manage these integrations.

For end users it means evaluating the nature of the stack integration at a deeper levelandensuringthatwhatisneededisdoableviaacombinationofexternalUIandorchestration stack integration. Organizations should also look for the support of VM mobility, which allows VMs to be moved across servers, racks, and Data Centers, while preserving network properties, such as IP address, ACLs, QoS, and other attributes.

automation and Programmability

Most NV solutions claim support for RESTful APIs to enable automation and programmability, however, the granularity of such controls vary widely. In most cases, these APIs still are relatively immature, with only limited role-awareness and a lack of proper security controls, which means they probably can’t be used in any type of compliance-heavy environment.

Company Stability and Longevity

Lookatthepedigreeofthevendorofferingthesolutiontobetterunderstandtheircapabilities, longevity, roadmaps, and capacity for innovation – are they a networking incumbent, infrastructure company new to networking, recently funded startup?

Openness of Solution, Compatibility with Other Elements

Look for NV solutions that support standard protocols to improve compatibility withothernetworkelements.VXLANisthemostpopularencapsulationprotocol,however, NVGRE and GRE have notable market share, and the newly introduced GENEVE may change the landscape. There are also a limited number of solutions using IPsec.

On the direct-fabric programming side of the equation, the OpenFlow protocol is the most prevalent southbound protocol supported by switches, enabling the NV solution to have a wider reach.

Solution availability Many NV solutions are shipping, but many are running in beta or have only limited availability. Customer timelines may dictate which solution is most appropriate, based on solution availability, quality and maturity.

Looking Beyond the Data CenterWAN Network Virtualization

While this Report is primarily focuses on the data center, we will discuss a few key attributes organizations should look for in WAN virtualization solutions from vendors. Of course, these factors will be influenced


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stronglybytheneedfordatacenterintegrationandtheparticularusecase.Forexample,serviceproviderslookingtouseWANvirtualizationtoimplementvirtualizedWANsfortheircustomerswillhavedifferentneedsthanserviceproviderslookingtooptimizeexistingWANofferings,suchasdynamicVPNs,bandwidth on demand, etc..

From a data center perspective, the core requirement for WAN virtualization solutions is integration with the virtual networks within the data center. There are two schools of thought on this today:

1. Overlay networks should run independent of any WAN network virtualization, with no reason to couple them.

2. The coupling between overlay and underlay is useful and important and, in the case of direct-fabric programming,awaytoefficientlyandeffectivelystretchthenetworkacrossdatacenters.

SDNCentral believes that regardless of the network virtualization method selected in the data center, the correlation between the data center and WAN networks is important and valuable for troubleshooting and analytics. We believe that WAN network virtualization solutions that can coordinate with a virtual network running on an OpenStack platform will be well accepted by data center operators.

Similarly, having programmable APIs that the orchestration solution in the data center can use to provision avirtualnetworkintheWANwillbecriticaltotheWANvirtualizationsolution’suptake.Forexample,whenan organization wants to dynamically create an MPLS-based VPN between two data center sites for a new workload, they will need to have APIs that will support that orchestration. Some of the key capabilities that shouldbeexposedintheseAPIsinclude:

•Quickprovisioningandde-provisioningofthevirtualWANnetworkforbandwidthondemandanddynamic services,

•Richqualityofservicecapabilitiesthatallowthedatacenterapplicationtomapappropriatebandwidth,latency and other requirements into the WAN.

•OptionalsecurityincasedataiscarriedoverInternetlinks,viaon-the-flyencryption.•Feedbackandmonitoringthatallowsthedatacenterapplicationtoadapttotheconditionsofthe

WAN network.

Vendors providing network virtualization for the WAN include: Ciena, Cisco Systems, CPLANE, Cyan, InfineraandJuniperNetworks.WhilethevirtualWANhasexistedforalongtime,withtechnologiessuchasMPLS, the recent wave of SDN capabilities that has swept the networking world has driven new innovations andmoreuser-facingfunctionalitytoexposedmoregranularcontrolsfortheseWANs.Asthesenewcapabilitiesbecomemoreprevalent,SDNCentralwillconsiderextendingcoverageofthesesolutions,vendors and uses cases in future reports.

Network Virtualization as a Service

With the uptake of public clouds and virtual private clouds, there is a new category for consideration in network virtualization—network virtualization as a service (NvaaS). As enterprise workloads continue to migrate into the cloud, cloud-based network capabilities become more important. SDNCentral believes thatinthenextfewyears,alargeportionofoperationalvirtualnetworkswillliveinsidethecloudnetworksof service providers (both public and private).


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FrompubliccloudsofferedbyAmazon,Dreamhost,Google,Microsoft,IBMandRackspace,toprivatecloudofferingsfromAT&T,NTT,Verizonandotherserviceproviders,enterprisesarespoiledforchoice.There are public clouds running on proprietary cloud management platforms, open-source OpenStack and othercommercialofferings,fromvendorssuchasVMwareandMicrosoft.

Asthesecloudofferingsmature,theirvirtualnetworkcapabilitiesimprove.Generallythesesolutionsenablethe creation of virtual private cloud (VPC) networks within the cloud compute platforms, with varying degreesofflexibility.Whilethisyear’sReportwillnotgointodetailsoftheseofferings,wewillprovideahigh-level sample of popular cloud platforms and highlights of their NVaaS capabilities. The cloud providers were selected based on their popularity within the SDNCentral community and represent only a small portion of the overall cloud providers in the market today.

Cloud Provider NV Solution Highlights

Public Clouds

amazon aWS Amazon provides an option for VPC (virtual private clouds) within their EC2 IaaS offering.VPCallowsAWScustomerstocreateprivatenetworkswithintheEC2infrastructure, allowing for customized topologies with routing capabilities across these networks.

Some key capabilities of Amazon’s VPC include:•Virtualnetworkssupportingpublicandprivatenetworks•BasicFirewallACLs• Internetgatewaysupport,withmultipleattachedsubnets•NATfunctionality•DirectConnect,whichprovidesprivatedirectconnectivitybetweenenterprise

networks into Amazon’s VPC network•VPNsupport,usingIPsecVPNstocreateconnectivitybetweenon-premises

networks and VPC on Amazon’s EC2

Google Compute Engine

GoogleComputeEngineisGoogle’sIaaScloudoffering.SimilartoAWS,itprovidesusers with the ability to spin up and down virtual machines, along with supporting services.

TheIaaSofferingprovidesNVaaSfunctionality,including:

•Virtualnetworks,viatheGooglecomputeproject,thatsupportbothpublicandprivate networks

•Firewall/ACLs•Routing•NATfunctionality•VPNgatewaysthatuseIPsectoanotherexternalDebian-Linux-basedVPNserver•Outboundproxies•Loadbalancers•DNSservices•Directconnectionoptionsintoenterprises


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IBM SoftLayer IBM SoftLayer provides IaaS solutions, in addition to their bare metal option for IaaS, whichallowsusersfullanddirectaccesstothehardwareonamachine.Forexample,the access can be used to run a hypervisor, such as KVM, take advantage of the performance of optimized device drivers, or a PCI-pass-through).

SoftLayer’s NVaaS solution enables integration with third-party solutions and supports network appliance software that runs on physical servers. Some other attributes of the SoftLayer network solution include:

•VLANsthatcanbemanagedbycustomersfortrafficsegmentation(privatenetwork)

•DNSservices•Load-balancers,fromVyatta,CitrixNetScaler,oraproprietary/private-label

solution•Gatewayappliancesforhandlingingressandegresstraffic,providingVPN

capabilities, and L3 routing from Vyatta, Fortinet or a private-label solutions•DirectLinkforadirectconnectionwithenterprises

BecauseofSoftLayer’sapproachandflexibilityaroundbaremetalservers,otherL4-7softwarestackscanalsoberunwithintheSoftLayerIaaSenvironment,whichexpandthe L3-7 richness of functionality.

Microsoft azure Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s cloud environment, providing both platform as a service(PaaS)andIaaSsolutionsforenterprises.ForbothitsPaaSandIaaSofferings,Azureprovidesflexiblevirtualnetworkingthathasthefollowingcapabilities:

•Multi-tenantnetworkingthatcanspanbothapplicationsinthePaaS,aswellastheIaaS platform

•Site-to-siteVPNsupport•FlexibleIPaddressing(user-definedIPranges)•FullL3support(butnoL2supportformulticastorbroadcastonvirtualnetworks)•NoIPv6supportatthistime

Rackspace Rackspace was historically the second major IaaS provider, behind Amazon’s AWS, before Azure and Google Compute came on the scene. Rackspace is probably best known as one of the biggest supporters behind the OpenStack cloud management platform initiative. Rackspace’s IaaS solution provides the following key NVaaS capabilities:

•Multi-tenantvirtualnetworks•Cross-regionL2networks,maintainingper-tenantisolation•L3routing,firewall,VPNandNATsupport,viaVyattavRouterinstances


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Managed/Private Cloud Services

HP Helion CloudSystem HPoffersaprivatecloudofferingbasedonOpenstack.HP’sHelionCloudSystemscomes in two major flavors, Foundation and Enterprise:

•Foundation(basicversion)withOpenStackAPIsandaccessviaaconsolidatedconsole (HP OneView)

•Enterprise(advancedversion)withpredefinedcatalogofover200+commonservices, drag-and-drop designer for multi-tiered services, integrated disaster recovery, a services marketplace, as well as the ability to cloudburst from HP’s private cloud into public clouds like AWS and Microsoft Azure.

HP’sNVcapabilitiesintheHelionofferinginclude:

•Multi-tenantvirtualnetworks•Supportforvirtualrouters•CloudburstingintopubliccloudslikeAWSandAzure(aswellasHP’sownpublic

cloud)•Firewallrulesets

HP also provides a packaged version of their hybrid cloud solution to be deployed within an enterprise datacenter.

aT&T AT&Tprovidesamanagedcloudservice,calledSynapticComputeasaService,formedium to large enterprises. Primarily aimed at enterprises who require assistance in creatingaprivatecloud,AT&Tdeliversarichsetofmanagedservices,whiletoutingthe improved protection and reliability enterprises need.

AT&T’sprivately-hostedIaaSenvironmentprovidesthefollowingNVaaScapabilities:•Multi-tenantvirtualnetworks•Firewallandload-balancing•SupportforVMwarevCloudConnector•ManagedsolutionsaroundDDoS,IDS/IPS,andfirewallmanagement

Generally,AT&T’sfocusistohavecustomerspickthenetworkfunctionalitytheyrequireandAT&Twillprovidethenecessarymanagedservicestoensurethosefunctions are available within their managed cloud services.


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NTT Communications NTT’sofferingvirtualnetworkplatformasaservice(VNPaaS).PoweredbyVirtela,acquiredbyNTTCominJanuary2014,NTTprovidesitscloudcustomerswithamanaged, multi-tenant virtual network, with pay-per-use services, including firewall andapplicationacceleration.NTTofferstheoptiontoactivateandconfigurecloud-based network services in a self-service manner, as a managed service, or a hybrid of both.

NTT’s NVaaS solution includes:

•Logically-separatedvirtualnetworks•Managedandself-serviceL4-7solutions,includingapplicationacceleration,load-

balancing, IPS, firewall, URL filtering and IPsec and SSL VPN solutions•Additionalcapabilities,includinganti-virus,emailprotection,applicationandnetwork

profiling, virtual patch management, application firewall and malware detection

All these services run across NTT’s 50 data centers, worldwide.

Verizon VerizonprovidestwomainIaaSofferings:theEnterpriseCloud,whichisTerremark’sIaaSthatusesVMware,andVerizonCloud,whichisanIaaSofferingbuiltontopofaproprietary system that promises API compatibility with OpenStack.

Verizon Cloud recently launched, providing a public IaaS option, as well as private deployment options with managed services. Similar to other managed cloud offerings,VerizonCloudprovidesenterprise-classsecurity,connectivityandmanageability capabilities, as well as the option to manage the private cloud infrastructure on a customer’s premises (managed private cloud).

Verizon’s Cloud provides the following NVaaS capabilities:

•Logicalseparationofvirtualnetworks•VPNtoconnectintoexistingdatacenters•BuiltinDHCPorDHCPexternal•BasicIPfunctionality,includingsupportforpublicandprivateIPsandtrusted

networks•NAT•Firewallrules

Verizon Cloud is still in the process of being built-out, with limited documentation around the networking capabilities, so it is unclear what direct connectivity options are available.

Weexpectthecloudmarkettocontinuetogrowandnewproviderstojumpintothefray.Forexample,Dreamhost, which has traditionally provided web hosting for personal, small and medium business web sites,recentlyannouncedDreamCompute.ThissolutionisanOpenStack-basedIaaSoffering,withanetworkvirtualizationservicepoweredbyOpenStackNeutron,VMwareNSXandDreamhost’sownopen-source Akanda project to provide L3 services).

Asthemarketgrowsandmatures,werecommendyouusethefollowingquestionstodifferentiatebetweenNVaaSofferingsandmorepreciselydeterminewhichcloudproviderbestfitsyourneeds:


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•Arethenetworkvirtualizationserviceson-demandself-serviceorishumaninterventionrequired?•Dothevirtualnetworkscreatedspandatacentersoraretheylimitedtoasingledatacenter?•Howflexibleisthetopologyforthevirtualnetworks?•ArethenetworksL3-onlynetworksorL2-networks,withmulticastandbroadcastsupport?•DotheysupportIPv6?•WhatL2/L3built-inservicesareprovided?(IPAM,DNS,DHCP,NTP)Dotheysupport3rd-party

services like DHCP or DNS?•HowflexibleistheIPrangesupport?Doesitsupportbring-your-ownIP(BYOIP)?•HowstrongistheVPNsupportandwhatVPNvendorsaresupported?•WhatL4-7built-inservicesareprovided?NAT,FW,load-balancing,IDS/IPS?•Doesitsupport3rd-partyL4-7services?

Overthenextfewyears,asNVaaSbecomesmoreprevalent,wewillexpandbothourcoverageinthisReport.For now, we will focus the remainder of the Report on NV in the data center. Note that service providers will most likely depend on many of these same vendors to provide them with NVaaS capabilities in the future.

Who are the Leading Data Center NV Vendors?Leading vendors that provide network virtualization today include not only some of the largest networking vendors, but also a set of new aggressive startups hoping to gain traction in the marketplace by taking advantage of the shift from physical to virtual networking.

Vendors included in this Report were selected based on feedback from the SDNCentral community. All 17 vendors listed in the Report have solutions running in production networks or as proof-of-concept deploymentswithinenterpriseandserviceprovidernetworks.WhilenotanexhaustivesetofalltheavailableNVsolutions,webelieveitrepresentsahealthymixofwell-knownsolutionsfromnetworkingcompanies,suchasAlcatel-Lucent/NuageNetworks,Cisco,Dell,Extreme,HP,IBM,NEC,JuniperandVMware,andstartups,includingBigSwitch,ConteXtream,CPLANENETWORKS,MidokuraandPLUMgrid.

Thisyear’sReportalsoincludevendorswithslightlydifferentapproachestoNV,includingAvaya,withtheirSPB-basedoffering,Cyan,withtheirabilitytointegratedatacentervirtualnetworkswiththeWAN,viaorchestration,andPertino,withtheirofferingtargetedatmediumandsmallenterprises.TheinclusionofthesevendorshelpsdemonstratethediversityofNVofferingsthatexistinthemarkettoday.

Asourresearchersanalyzedthesolutionofferingsfromvariousvendorsforthisyear’sReport,wenoticedacouple of key trends, including:

•a mix of overlay and direct fabric programming solutions. Duetothedifferentbenefitsofbothapproaches,weexpectbothwillcontinuetogainfavorwithcustomers. Coordination between the two will become more important for vendors that provide both approaches.

•The need for better correlation between virtual overlay and physical underlay solutions. Overlay solutions need to run on a physical underlay, so for ease of troubleshooting and to ensure the appropriate QoS and SLAs are met (fault recovery, etc.), vendors are going to need to bring both together under the same management umbrella.


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•More coordination. For hybrid deployments, where virtual networks have to integrate with bare metal machines or physical appliances, there will need to be more coordination between them.

•More mature L2-3 services. Weexpectbuilt-inL2andL3services,suchasDHCP,DNS,routing,etc.tomatureandaddfunctionality.

•More built-in L4-7 services. WeexpecttoseemoreL4-7services,suchasbasicACLsandload-balancing,becomeregular(table-stakes)featuresofanyoffering.

• Increased adoption of OpenDaylight (ODL). More vendors are starting to base their solution on OpenDaylight Project as a controller, which is not surprising, given the richness of the code-base on ODL and the level of combined investment from all the major networking vendors.

The table below provides a quick snapshot of the NV vendors, followed by more detailed reviews of their approachesandofferings(inVendorProfiles).

Vendors Portfolio NV ClassificationDeployment Location Focus

Target Verticals

HP Virtual Application Networks; Virtual Cloud Network, HP-VMwareNSX,Distributed Cloud Network

Overlay; Hybrid Intra-Data CenterInter-Data CenterCampus

Mid to Large Enterprises; Service Providers

HPhastakena3-prongapproachtonetworkvirtualization,offering:(1)VirtualCloudNetworking,whichisintegrated into their HP Helion OpenStack distribution for OpenStack-based deployments, including those on KVM,(2)aVMwareNSXfederatedsolution,usingtheHPVirtualApplicationNetworks(VAN)controller,and(3)their recently announced OEMed Distributed Cloud Networking (DCN) solution, which is aimed at building multi-cloudsolutionsthatcanintegratewithacustomer’sexistingphysicalinfrastructure.HP’secosystemincludestheir SDN App Store, with applications that run on the VAN controller. With one of the most complete solution portfolios in the marketplace and one of the earliest to invest in OpenFlow support on their switches, HP is making a significant push into SDN, as well as OpenStack and NFV. With so many parts of their strategy launched just this year, customer traction is still not easily measurable. HP has built a reputation for investing for the long-term, and we will be closely watching market response in 2015.


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Target Verticals

avaya Avaya Fabric Connect;

Overlay; Direct Fabric Programming (fabric can be used as underlay)

Intra-Data CenterInter-Data CenterCampusWAN

Service Providers; Government/PublicSector Agencies; Enterprises

Avaya is probably best known for their Unified Communications (UC) product lines. However, they also have a significant enterprise networking product line, which they obtained when they purchased the enterprise networking assets of Nortel. Avaya has historically been focused on using their network products as the foundation for building reliable UC solutions, making it an application-focused approach. Avaya’s Fabric Connect is based on network virtualization standards, including shortest-path bridging (SPB), which is an IEEE standard (802.1aq)thatAvayahasbuiltextensionsfortoaddLayer3routing,multicastandothercapabilities.Avayaplansto open their Fabric Connect platform up to other applications, beyond their own, and use it as their foundation to enter the SDN and NFV markets. The key to their long-term success will rely on their ability to broaden their ecosystem and recruit partners onto their Fabric platform.

Big Switch Networks

Big Cloud Fabric Direct Fabric Programming

Intra-Data Center Mid to Large Enterprises

An early entrant in the SDN market, Big Switch has changed its focus a few times. First, Big Switch focused on acontrollersolution,thenonexpandingtoapplications,includingtapaggregation.Intheirmostrecentmove,they developed a network virtualization fabric, called Big Cloud Fabric, that includes elements of their previous strategy, as well as bare metal switches and a software switch. The software switch, called SwitchLight can run both as a vSwitch and on ODM hardware. Big Switch has indicated they are getting early traction with this approach, but it remains to be seen if the market is ready for a unified network virtualization platform that consists of bare metal switches, a virtual switch and a controller.

Cisco Systems CiscoACIandNexus1000V/Intercloud

Direct Fabric Programming (ACI)Overlay(NX1000V)

Intra-Data Center (ACI,NX1000VInter-Data Center (ACI,NX1000V)Campus and WAN (ACI)

Service Providers;Government;Mid to Large Enterprises

Cisco has a two-pronged solution for network virtualization. They recommend using ACI in situations where customersareabletoreplacethephysicalswitchinginfrastructurewithNexus9000switchesandtheNX1000Vsolution for traditional networks. ACI is their proprietary, policy-driven approach designed to manage large networks. It has seen early traction with service providers and enterprises, including Cisco’s internal IT, Sungard and Cerner.BecauseACIisdependentonhavingNexus9000switchesavailableintheinfrastructure,uptakewillmostlikelybelimited,initially,untilswitchreplacementcycleskick-inandCiscocustomersswaptheirexistingswitchesforNexusswitches.Onthe1000Vside,CiscoispushingavirtualsolutionthatrunsasanoverlayonbothanexistingCiscoswitchinginfrastructureandamixedinfrastructure.TheyarealsobankingonNX1000VIntercloud,with a $1B investment, to tie together massive overlays that reach into private clouds from major carriers around theworld,suchasAT&T,BT,DeutscheTelekom,EquinixandNTT,aswellaspublicclouds,includingAmazonandMicrosoft.AsforintegrationbetweenACIandNX1000V,itremainstoseewhatformitwilleventuallytake.


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Target Verticals

ConteXtream ContexNetFabric;ContexView

Overlay Intra-Data CenterInter-Data Center

Mobile,FixedBroadband and Cable Providers

ConteXtreamcontinuestofocusontheserviceproviderenvironment,bothwirelessandcable.Theyofferafabricthat manages the flow of packets across the network and into virtualized services stacks for common functions, such as an Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and IMS. The fabric aims to be a complete solution for service providers looking to virtualize their main application functions, providing both L2 and L3 functionality, as well as built-in L4-7 functions.RecentupdatestothesolutionincludeamigrationtotheOpenDaylight-basedcontroller.ConteXtreamhas shown traction among a limited set of mobile carriers and MSOs with production deployments, including Comcast,whoisbothacustomerandinvestor.Itremainstobeseeniftheyareabletoexpandtheirsolutionsetinto a wider range of service providers or enterprises.

CPLaNE NETWORKS

Dynamic Virtual Networks; Dynamic WANs

Hybrid – Virtual overlay via VXLANandMPLSL2/L3VPNs

Intra-Data CenterInter-Data CenterWAN

Mid to Large Enterprises; Cloud Service Providers

A relatively new entrant in the space, CPLANE NETWORKS’ foray into SDN and NV is based on their Dynamic VirtualNetworks(DVN)platformandtheirDVNInterconnect(DVNi)offering.ItintegrateswithOpenStacktocreateVXLANvirtualnetworks.ItcoordinatestheseVXLANnetworkswithdynamicallycreatedMPLSLayer2andLayer3VPNs,withtrafficengineeringsupport.TheirDVNofferingisnew,buttheintegrationwithMPLSnetworks stems from intellectual property the company previously developed previously. They are leveraging this IP to move into the NV space. CPLANE NETWORKS has a small number of active POCs in place that it believes willenterproductioninthenextfewmonths.

Cyan Planet Orchestrate; Planet Operate; Planet View

Overlay; Direct Fabric Programming; Hybrid

WAN with integration with Intra-Data Center solutions

Cloud, Wholesale, Wireless and Cable Providers

CyanisanewadditiontoourlistofvendorswhoprovideNVsolutionsthatintegratewithOpenStackofferings.Cyan’s solution is based on its Blue Planet Framework, which is able to coordinate the creation of virtual networks within the data center. Note, Cyan is not providing NV directly within the data center because it relies on OpenStack’sexistingvirtualizationortheVMwarevCloudsuitethatprovidesoverlaynetworks.ByorchestratingtheintegrationwithopticalWANinterconnects,Cyanhasdemonstratedtheycanexpandthereachofvirtualnetworks across the WAN. It has been successfully deployed in production networks of service providers around the world. Cyan’s success provides an interesting indication of the value of orchestration versus network virtualization technology; while both are required, it’s still unclear where the value-capture will be, which is why we are closely watching their progress in the space.


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Target Verticals

Dell Dell Active Fabric and Open Networking



Enterprise; Public Cloud, Service Providers

Dell continues on its open ecosystem strategy, supporting all the major NV overlay protocols, as well as investing in partnerships and distribution agreements with SDN and NV technology providers, such as Cumulus and Big Switch Networks. Dell actively supports the major hypervisors, including Microsoft, VMware and KVM, and orchestration with DevOps tools. Core to its SDN deployment is its Active Fabric architecture that provides a strong physical underlay, as well as an orchestration and control system, via the Dell Active Fabric Manager. SDNCentralbelievesitisstilltooearlytotellwhetherthis“Switzerland”-basedapproachwillbearfruitintheenterprise marketplace.

Extreme SDN Platform Direct Fabric Programming; Overlay (in development)


Enterprises

ExtremeNetworkshasemergedfromitsmergerwithEnterasyswithanewSDNplatform,builtaroundtheOpenDaylightController.Extreme’sOneControllerusesbothSNMPandOpenFlowsouthboundprotocolsandtheir switches support common NV encapsulation formats. Available to developers in September of 2014, OneControllerisstillnascent,butcertainlylookspromising,intermsofthevision.CustomeruptakeandExtreme’sabilitytoexecuteontheirvisionwillultimatelydeterminetheirsuccessinthemarketplace.

IBM IBM SDN VE Overlay; Direct Fabric Programming

Intra-Data CenterInter-Data CenterCampusCloud

Enterprises; Cloud Providers; Hosting Providers

The last year has seen some significant changes for IBM, who was one of the original forces behind the OpenDaylightProjectandanearlyOpenFlowsupporter.Inparticular,IBMsoldofftheirnetworkinghardwarebusiness to Lenovo and with it their OpenFlow switches. They retained, however, the SDN software assets. SDN for Virtual Environments (SDN VE) is IBM’s framework for SDN solutions. Within SDN VE, IBM uses Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) to unify NV across both VMware and KVM. Notably, IBM has also contributed an open version of DOVE through the OpenDaylight Project. Recent changes in strategy indicate that IBM will be moving from selling packaged SDN solutions to end users in favor of deploying their SDN solutions as managed services. Most notably, their SDN technology will be incorporated into SoftLayer’s cloud platforms.


Market Report



Target Verticals

Juniper JuniperSDNPlatform – Contrail and NorthStar; JuniperNFVPlatform


Intra-Data CenterInter-Data CenterWAN

Cloud Providers; Web Services Companies; Enterprises

Juniperhastakenatwo-controllerapproachtoSDN,utilizingitsNorthStarWANcontrollerforserviceproviderwide-areanetworks,whileofferingContrailfordatacenternetworkvirtualization.Juniperhasinvestedinintegrating with OpenStack to provide improved orchestration capabilities for its Contrail NV solution. In an attempttoachievewideradoptionofContrail,Juniperhasbeenprovidinganopen-sourceversion,OpenContrail,to the community at large. There has been some initial uptake from service providers and integrators worldwide. Juniper’ssolutionreliesheavilyontheirstrengthinrouting(basedontheirMXrouterfamily)andtheirsecurityassets, using them as part of service chains. With their ability to integrate seamlessly with WAN MPLS networks, Contrail has been seen in many SP evaluations and POCs as a viable NV platform.

Midokura MidoNet Overlay Intra-Data CenterInter-Data Center

Cloud Providers

With roots in the cloud IaaS space (founders are from Amazon), Midokura has recently taken the bold step of open-sourcing their solution in the marketplace. Midokura’s MidoNet provides an overlay-based solution that is agnostic to the underlying infrastructure. MidoNet has focused on providing a distributed architecture, but had notinvestedsignificantlyintheintegrationwithexternalnetworksandL4-7services,untilrecently.MidoNethadlimitedtractioninthemarketplace,withmostcustomersinJapan,however,theirmovetoopenuptheircodebaseand hitch their bandwagon to OpenStack might give them the boost they need to accelerate adoption.

NEC NEC ProgrammableFlow Networking Suite

Direct Fabric Programming; Hybrid


Service Provider; Government; Enterprise

OneoftheearliestontheOpenFlowbandwagon,NECcontinuestopushitsDirectFabricOpenFlow+approach.NECalsoprovidesintegrationswithvirtualswitchesonKVMandXenviaOVSandESXiviaport-groupmapping,as well as its own vSwitch on Hyper-V (PF1000). It is one of the few Direct Fabric vendors with a good number of production use cases in the market, powering critical infrastructure at service providers like NTT, enterprises, hospitals and national infrastructure providers (national railways). Their ProgrammableFlow networking suite has been touted by customers as being mature and is well-regarded. Recent enhancements to their products include additional scale, the ability to cross data centers and a richer RESTful API for integration with orchestration stacks. NEC’s virtual network technology (VTN) has also been contributed to the OpenDaylight Project. NEC continues to makeinvestmentsworldwidetobroadenitscustomerbaseoutsideofJapan.


Market Report



Target Verticals

Nuage Networks

Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform (VSP)

Overlay Intra-Data CenterInter-Data CenterCampusWANTelecommunications/Mobile Networks

Enterprise; Cloud and Service Providers

Nuage Networks has shown good momentum in the marketplace, adding customer wins in 2014 for their Virtualized Services Platform (VSP) solution. VSP provides support for multiple hypervisors, including KVM, XenandESXi,aswellasmultiplecloudmanagementsystems.WhiledeliveredasaVXLAN-basedoverlaysolution, Nuage Networks also has hardware switches that act as high-speed gateways (VTEPs), with support for distributed routing and firewalling. VSP provides multiple, built-in L2 services, as well as very robust L3 stacks, which stem from their Alcatel-Lucent roots. With the ability to integrate seamlessly with MPLS WANs, it has become a choice for many POCs and some production deployments within the service provider space. Nuage Networkshasalsodemonstratedtractionrecentlyintheenterprise,surprisinglyaroundESXideployments,asanalternativetoNSX.NuageNetworkshascontinueditsinnovationinNVwithrecentannouncementsonitssupportforLinuxContainersandbranchextensiontotheNVplatform.

Pertino Pertino Cloud Network Engine

Overlay Inter-Data CenterWANMobile&RemoteAccess

SMB

PertinoisarecentadditiontotheNVReport.Theyhighlightadifferentapproachtoadifferentmarketplace,namely the small and medium enterprise. Pertino’s approach to NV provides businesses with an overlay LAN that allows devices anywhere to connect to each other and provide services, such as file sharing, printing and otherLAN-specificservices.Theirsolutionextendstocloudservicesaswellascontainers.WiththeirAppScapeapp store, they are able to dynamically add and remove services from the virtual network, including security and monitoringservices.Withafreemiummodel,theirofferinghasseengooduptake,with12,000organizationsusingit. It remains to be seen if they are able to monetize their customer base sufficiently to grow their niche, as one of thefewNVvendorswithSMBofferingsinthemarketplace.

PLuMgrid PLUMgrid Open Networking Suite

Overlay Intra-Data CenterInter-Data CenterPublic, Private, Hybrid and Hosted OpenStack Clouds

Enterprises; Cloud and Service Providers

PLUMgrid has emerged with initial traction from some brand-name customers, like Swisscom. With the availability of the Open Network Suite for OpenStack, PLUMgrid has chosen to focus on a rapidly growing slice of the marketplace, looking for more robust and scalable NV solutions on OpenStack deployments. Their well-regarded IO Visor technology has won them some early traction with service provider cloud deployments. Taking an overlay-based approach, PLUMgrid partners with switch vendors, such as Arista and Cumulus, to integrate with acustomer’sexistingphysicalinfrastructure.Recentadditionstotheirproductsuiteincludemorebuilt-inL4-7services,LinuxContainersupport,aswellassupportfortheRedHatEnterpriseLinuxOpenStack(RHEL-OSP5)platform. 2015 will tell if their bet on OpenStack as a primary vehicle will enable them to accelerate their growth.


Market Report



Target Verticals

VMware NSXNetworkVirtualization Platform

Overlay; Policy Insertion in the virtual NIC (hypervisor kernel)

Intra-Data CenterInter-Data Center

Service Providers; Government/PublicSector Agencies; Enterprises

VMwarecontinuesitsNSXinvestment,growingitsorganizationaroundvirtualnetworkingwitharecenthiringspree. They added Martin Casado as the SVP of the business unit, recruited Guido Appenzeller (the former Big Switchfounder/CEO)andhaveputrecruiterstoworktobuildouttheirorganization.NSXhasshownmarkettractionatover200+customers,thoughtherehasbeendebatewhethertheseareenterpriselicensesalesthathappentoincludeNSXorfullNSXpurchases.Regardless,thereisclearmomentumbuildingbehindNSX,aseverydayseemstoaddnewNSXpartnersandresellerstotheecosystem.Recentenhancementstothesolutionincludesupport for micro-segmentation, with security and compliance as a key use case, and improved scalability and troubleshooting. Instead of the flash and buzz that preceded its announcement at 2013’s VMworld, 2014 showed continuedproductimprovementsarounddeploy-abilityandexecutionandtheoverallecosystem,withnewpartners and channels. While there are detractors, who complained about the lack of significant capabilities in the solutionatthisyear’sVMworld,NSXisstilltheincumbentinanyESXienvironmentandthevendortoovercome.


Market Report


Sponsored Vendor Profile - HPThiscustomreporthasbeensponsoredbyHPandthenextsectionprovidesanin-depthviewofHP’snetworkvirtualizationoffering.

While every attempt has been made to validate the capabilities listed here, SDNCentral recommends that readers contact HP directly to obtain more information and details about HP’s network virtualization solution portfolio.

SDNCentral welcomes feedback and additional information from end users based on their real-world experienceswiththeproductsandtechnologieslisted.TheSDNCentralresearchteamcanbereachedatresearch@sdncentral.com.


Market Report


HP


HPdeliversSDNandNetworkVirtualizationthroughits“VirtualApplicationNetworks”(VAN)framework.VANoffersanend-to-endvirtualizationsolutionthat,whendeliveredthroughHP’sIntelligentManagementCenter (IMC), enables policy-based automation and orchestration for traditional networks. The HP VAN SDN Controller provides a centralized control plane that abstracts the physical hardware from the logical deployment, providing a centralized view and automating network configuration of all devices in the infrastructure.

HP delivers a simplified data center operating model that frees customers from the constraints of legacy networking by improving service velocity, ensuring IT and business resiliency and lowering cost. Built on the industry’s most comprehensive Network Virtualization portfolio, and backed by world-class service and support – HP is uniquely positioned to safely navigate customers through this technology and business transformation to embrace the new style of IT.

From enterprise to service providers, customers have unique requirements that drive infrastructure choices. In turn, customers require a tailored network virtualization solution that fits their specific business outcomes. In order to meet this unique requirement, HP has brought to market a portfolio of network virtualization solutions.

HP

Click to Watch HP’s Network Virtualization Highlight Video on SDNCentral


Market Report


Virtual Cloud Networking (VCN)

HP Virtual Cloud Networking (VCN) is an enhanced Neutron distribution for HP’s Helion OpenStack®. HP Helion OpenStack is a hardened and secured multi-tenant enterprise and service provider solution that speeds cloud deployment and application development, while simplifying management for large scale private, public and hybrid clouds. VCN provides a Neutron network virtualization service for multi-hypervisor, multi-tenantDataCenterapplications.Itenablessupportforthe HPNetworkingFlexFabricportfolio.

HP-VMware Networking Solution (NSX Federation)

TheHP-VMwarenetworkingsolutionenablessupportfederationwithVMwareNSXformulti-hypervisorenvironments. The HP-VMware networking solution delivers an interoperable SDN and network virtualization solution that provides customers unified automation and visibility into the physical and virtual Data Center networks.ThesolutioncombinestheHPVANSDNControllerandVMwareNSXnetworkvirtualizationplatform through federation APIs to deliver SDN automation across large enterprise physical and virtual Data Center networks.

In2014,HPexpandedtheHPandVMwarepartnershiptoincludeenhancedinteroperabilityacrosscloudandvirtualization solutions, as well as go-to-market engagements targeted to help customers build better software-defined Data Centers (SDDCs) and cloud environments. This collaboration delivers technologies andstrategiesthatexpediteanorganization’stransitiontohybridcloudenvironments.

Distributed Cloud Networking (DCN)

With Distributed Cloud Networking, large enterprises and service providers can unify private, public and hybrid Data Centers through software-defined networking (SDN). DCN helps communication service providers’ (CSP) accelerate their journey to Network Function Virtualization (NFV) by optimizing network resources, increasing agility and speeding time-to-market through dynamic, service-driven configuration.

DCN leverages a MPLS control plane capability allowing IT teams to control the distributed environment from one central location, versus having to manually control each system. DCN enables a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by combining intelligent workload management with policy based network optimization. ThefederatedSDNcontrolarchitecturebasedonMP-BGPandBGP-EVPNsallowsseamlessextensionofL2and L3 networks across data centers and MPLS networks.

HP SDN App Store

Each of these solutions provides an open, standards-based foundation for customers to (optionally) move towards broader SDN application deployment. HP’s open SDN ecosystem and HP SDN App Store help customerstoquicklydrivebottom-linevalueandimproveend-userapplicationexperience.

HP


Market Report


Data Category Company Strategy / Solution Attributes

Company data PublicFounded: 1939Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA

HP is one of the world’s largest information technology companies, developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware; designing software; and delivering services. In addition to the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), HP participates in OpenStack, the OpenDaylight consortium and ETSI standards groups.

Management team •MegWhitman,CEO•AntonioNeri,SrVPandGM,HPServersandNetworking

Company size 300,000 employees

Target Verticals HPs network virtualization solutions target enterprise and mid- to large scale cloud environments and service provider use cases across all major verticals.

Number of production customers as of august 2014

More than 2,000 enterprise customers and 37% of the Fortune 100 use the HP cloud solutions today, serving as the foundation for HP Helion.

Number of active POCs as of august 2014

Not Applicable

HP


Market Report



NV Product Portfolio HPdeliversNetworkVirtualizationthroughits“VirtualApplicationNetworks”(VAN)framework. The HP strategy is to provide enterprise-class solutions, with an emphasis on a broader range of network virtualization options and use cases.

Virtual Cloud Networking (VCN) – provides an SDN application that is integrated into HP’s Helion OpenStack® distribution. HP Helion OpenStack is a hardened and secured multi-tenant enterprise and service provider solution that speeds cloud deployment. VCN provides a Neutron network virtualization service for multi-hypervisor and multi-tenant Data Center applications.

The HP-VMware Networking Solution – delivers the industry’s first interoperable SDN and network virtualization solution to provide customers unified automation and visibilityofthephysicalandvirtual(NSXFederation)DataCenternetworks,enablingbusiness agility and improving business continuity.

Distributed Cloud Networking (DCN) – helps communication service providers’ (CSP) accelerate their journey to Network Function Virtualization (NFV) by optimizing network resources, increasing agility and speeding time-to-market through dynamic, service-drivenconfiguration.DCNalsousesSDNtoletserviceprovidersofferservicesacross multiple sites.

Below is a list of some of the key products that support these solutions:•VaN SDN Controller: provides a centralized control plane that abstracts the physical

hardware from the logical deployment•HP flexfabric 12900 and 7900:offersanOpenFlow-enabledcoreswitch•flexfabric 5930 Top-of-Rack Switch:supportsOpenFlowandVXLAN•HP ConvergedControl app: integrates the physical underlay and virtual overlay for automatedVXLANtermination

•HP Virtualized Services Router (VSR): allows services to be delivered on a VM, eliminating unnecessary hardware, by leveraging NFV

•HP flexfabric Virtual Switch 5900v: provides a kernel-based software solution that unifies the virtual and physical fabric. This virtual switch replaces standard vSwitch in theVMwareESXiinfrastructure.

Value proposition HP’s SDN architecture, coupled with innovative network virtualization technologies, alter the current network landscape by provisioning multi-tenant cloud environments in ways that were not possible with legacy Data Center networks.

HPofferscustomersthebroadestchoicefornetworkvirtualization,withopensource-based,VMwareandserviceprovider-centricusecaseofferings.

HP’s network virtualization strategy focuses on using open standards and building an open ecosystem to deliver SDN-driven solutions.

Deployment location focus

• Intra-Datacenter• Inter-Datacenter•Campus

NV Classification •Overlay•Hybrid

HP


Market Report



Southbound Protocols Supported

•OpenFlow1.3•OVSDB•Netconf

NV Encapsulation formats used

•VXLAN•GRE•NVGRE

Built-in Layer 2+ network services

•DHCP•DNS•VLAN(non-encapsulated)

Broadcast, unknown unicast and Multicast optimizations

Yes–MACaddressesandIPtablesarepre-provisionedtolimitdynamiclearning(BUMtraffic).VXLANmulticastishandledthroughhead-endreplicationtoeliminatefabrichardware scaling limitations.

QoS Support •L2QoS(DCN)•L3QoS(DCN)

Layer 3 network services •L3staticrouting•L3distributedrouting

Built-in routing protocols supported

•BGP(DCN)• ISIS(DCN)

Built-in Layer 4-7 Services

•L3Firewall•L4StatefulFirewall(IPtables)•L3Loadbalancing•L4-L7StatefulLoadbalancer(LBaaSHAProxy)•VPN(IPSec,SSL)

Layer 4-7 service insertion capabilities

•Basicservicechaining–noserviceawarenessrules•Chainingofvirtualservices•Chainingofphysicalservices•Rewritecapabilities:MAC,IP,VLAN•Loadbalancingacrossserviceinsertionchains

Certified L4-7 Partners Load-balancing: F5, Radware, KempSecurity: BlueCat, F5, Radware, Guardicore

Others: VMware and many others, as part of the HP SDN ecosystem. Current SDN ecosystem partners registered for the HP SDN Developer Kit include: Aastra, Blue CoatSystems,BlueCat,CitrixSystems,EcodeNetworks,F5,Infoblox,Infranics,Intel,Microsoft, MIMOS, PwC, Qosmos, Radware, Real Status, Riverbed, RMIT University, ShoreTel Inc., SAP, Tech Mahindra, VMware, Versatile and Websense.

www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1495044#.UleAclBeY1M

HP


Market Report



Physical/virtual integration

Yes–theHPandVMwareNetworkingSolutionprovidesFederationAPIsthatdeliverafederationoftheHPVANSDNControllerandtheVMwareNSXControllerforconvergedvirtualoverlay/physicalunderlaynetworks.

The HP Helion OpenStack VCN networking solution integrates the HP VAN SDN Controllerasanoptionalcomponenttoprovideconvergedvirtualoverlay/physicalunderlay networks. Integration is planned for DCN in a future release.

The Converged Control App terminates the virtual overlay on physical network elements.

Troubleshooting and Visibility

•TheIMCelementmanagementprovidesacompleteFCAPSsolutionforthephysicalswitch network, as well as delivering SDN-managed switch visibility and debugging capabilities.

•SDNapplications,suchastheRealStatus“Hyperglance”product,provideunifiedvisibility and tracing of VNI across virtual and physical networks.

Supported hypervisors and type of integration

•KVMsupportedbyVCNasanunmodifiedOpenvSwitchandbyDCNasamodifiedOpen vSwitch)

•ESXisupportedbyVM,withvSwitch,5900vESXkernelswitchandportgroups•XensupportedbyDCNonly,withmodifiedOpenvSwitch

Orchestration stack integration

OpenStack, via VCN integration is through open source ML2 drivers; with DCN it is a monolithic plug-in.

HPhashelpeddefinethenextgenerationcomputingplatforms,andisdoingitagainwithHPHelionandthenext-generationopensourcecomputingplatform.HPworkswith OpenStack, Cloud Foundry foundations and communities to set standards and developeffectivesolutionsthataddresscustomers’networkingrequirements,todayand in the future.

Northbound aPIs for application programming

VAN SDN Controller NBI – used for network SDN application programming, providing physical network programming enhancement to a virtual or overlay-based solution. Provides the benefits of direct programming approach without the rip-and-replace physical switch upgrade required by ACI or other direct switching approaches.

automation aPIs Neutron API – used for cloud network orchestration

Hybrid – private/ public cloud (amazon, azure, Rackspace, Google Compute etc integration support)

HP Helion and CloudSystem 8 provide integration and migration services with AWS and Azure through the CSA software platform.HP Helion runs public and private clouds, plus the HP Helion network - www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1695194#.VCMvZStdXpY

Cross-data center (stretching) support

Yes–EVI(EthernetVirtualInterconnect)extendsLayer2domainsacrossgeographically separated Data Centers for workload and data mobility, business continuity and disaster recovery. Unlike legacy Data Center Interconnect (DCI) solutions, HP EVI can be deployed over any network (e.g. IP MPLS, DWDM), regardless of the underlying transport mechanism.

DCNcanbeusedforVXLANorMPLSDataCenterinterconnects.

HP


Market Report



Specific product/solution details

See Above

Key differentiation in approach

See Above

Pricing •HPVCNisincludedaspartofHPHelionOpenStack.BasepricingforHPHelionOpenstack is $1,400 per year, per server subscription.

•HP-VMwarenetworkingsolutioncomponents:•HPFlexFabric5930-32QSFP+MSRP$34,995•HPVANSDNControllerpricing-$20,000(foraHAconfiguration)•HPConvergedControlSDNAppisafreedownloadattheHPSDNAppStore•HPDCNpricingstartsat$65,585forasingleinstanceandwillalsobeoffered

for enhanced virtual networking as part of the previously announced HP OpenNFV program.

Key product or company announcements in recent months

1. HP Simplifies Datacenter Deployments with New Network Virtualization HPexpandsnetworkvirtualizationportfoliowithanewDistributedCloudNetworking (DCN) solution. 10/14/14 www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1815961#.VGDRtE2BEik

2. HP Launches Industry’s first SDN app Store, unleashing New Wave of Networking Innovations Enterprise-ready HP SDN App Store accelerates ROI with integrated and validated applications 9/25/14 www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1798074#.VFZ7Lb4ins0

3. HP and VMware Collaborate to Simplify Software-Defined Data Center and Hybrid Cloud adoption SolutionUnifiesAutomationacrossPhysicalandVirtualNetworks;JointEffortsHelp Streamline Enterprise Adoption of OpenStack® 8/25/14 www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1753932#.VFzxSU2BFFQ

4. HP Software-defined Networking Paves the Way for Customer Success in the Cloud New open standards-based software-defined networking (SDN) solution - HP Virtual Cloud Networking SDN Application 6/9/14 www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2014/HPDiscover2014/HPSDNforCloud.pdf

Key customers •TheHP-VMwaresolutionandDCNsolutionwasshippedinOctober2014.•VCN–Asadeveloperandoperator,HPPublicCloudoperatestheHPVCNNeutron

networking capabilities, at scale, in the public cloud; over 2,000 customers use HP cloud solutions.

•HPVirtualApplicationNetworks(VAN)SDNController–hasbeendownloadedmorethan 3,000 times.

•HPSDNSoftwareDevelopmentKit–hasbeendownloadedmorethan5,000times.

HP


Market Report



Key channel partners 250+partnersarecertifiedandsellingHPCloud,othersolutionsarejustbeginningtoramp,buttheyincludemanyexistingHPNetworkingandHPVirtualizationpartners:

•HPisthegloballeader(#1inx86ESXservers–42%share)inVMware-basedvirtualized Data Center solutions, from end-user desktops to the cloud; HP will be leveragingleadershipforNSXaswell.

•HPdeliverspre-testedandpre-validatedVMwaresolutionsandhasmorethan1,100certified VMware professionals.

Key technology partners AspartoftheHPSDNAppStorelaunch,HPisintroducingsixpartnerapplications,inaddition to two applications developed by HP:

•BlueCat DNS Director delivers network-driven enforcement of DNS policies that allow security infrastructures to gain complete visibility and control through IP address management, across all devices and applications.

•Ecode evolve™ is an SDN orchestrator that facilitates dynamic service provisioning, with built-in quality of service and denial-of-service mitigation. Streamlining network design, change simulation and automated policy provisioning, it accelerates operations.

•f5 BIG DDoS umbrella allows customers to implement network, application, DNS and SSL DDoS protection near the network edge, closer to the attacker.

•GuardiCore Defense Suite provides highly scalable, SDN-based network security for software-defined data centers, detecting and mitigating advanced persistent threats, malware propagation and insider attacks at an early stage.

•KEMP adaptive Load Balancer application is integrated with the HP VAN SDN Controller solution, provides end-to-end visibility of network paths for optimal routing of applications across the server and switching infrastructures.

•Real Status Hyperglance is a hybrid cloud and SDN simplified-management platform that provides a unified, full-scale, interactive topology view, with 360-degree navigation,intuitivemonitoringandcontext-awarecontrolsforconfidentinsightandaction.

NEC is also a key HP technology partner in this space. Their UNC Univerge PF6800 Network Coordinator integrates with the HP VAN SDN Controller. The NEC PF6800 Network Coordinator (UNC) provides network orchestration and visibility across multiple data centers, while controlling both physical and virtual network resources, via network virtualization

Company resources Company website URL: www.hp.comNVwebsiteURL:http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/networking/solutions/technology/sdn/network-virtualization.aspx#.VCySmk2BG_E

HP

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© Copyright 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

• HP offers the industry’s most comprehensive network virtualization portfolio, backed by world-class service and support

• HP is uniquely positioned to navigate you safely through this technology and business transformation

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