29. So what is SDN and why???
• SDN is about operationalising the entire network and requires an
ecosystem to implement a comprehensive architecture that encompasses
stateless L2-4 and stateful L4-7 network services.
• Benefits
• Improve time-to-market
• Reduce risk
• Reduce operational expenses
Notes de l'éditeur
INNOVATE:
“Innovate and be recognized as a thought leader. MQ eight years in a rolw
Introduce next-generation ADC architecture for hybrid clouds and software defined datacenters
Launch a disruptive suite of hybrid application security services”
EXPAND:
Expand our business models – subscription licensing, cloud services and Silverline service delivery
Expand our strategic partnerships with SDN and cloud technology leaders
Expand our platform reach into new customer accounts and continue driving core share gains and acceleration into technology adjacencies (Security, SP Solutions and Cloud)
Over 300 product features this year alone
DELIVER: financial results and customer satisfaction
Technology shifts are all trying to answer a key question about applications:
How do we secure them?
How do we deliver them?
How do we monetize them?
How do we connect them?
How do we optimize them?
How do we get them to market faster?
Scaling a data center is painful. Number of apps increasing, size of apps increasing, number of legacy apps increasing.
Configuration complexity increasing.
How does an architect know if a change conflicts with existing configuration? Test and break is likely the only way to know.
How does a network engineer update config across the data center in a reliable manner than doesn’t break the network while updating 1000 switches?
Consider the pain in debugging a typo in a config… typos are often difficult and time consuming to debug…
Tyler Vigen, from TylerVigen.com (http://tylervigen.com/?id=1864)
1 CIO Insight http://www.cioinsight.com/it-news-trends/slideshows/enterprise-mobility-dominates-it-agenda-in-2014.html investing in mobile applications, devices and management (MDM) in the next 12-18 months
2 Netcraft http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/01/03/january-2014-web-server-survey.html 2013 has been a year of significant change: the web has grown by more than one third, 630 million web sites in January 2013 to 861 million in January 2014 (+37%)
3 http://readwrite.com/2013/01/07/apple-app-store-growing-by#awesm=~ovbfVaDevFYbKx
Pressure on networks is increasing to be agile in the face of massive growth and scalability needs, to do so more efficiently to reduce costs of business growth, and to be flexible enough to adapt to new business and application models as this new application-driven world evolves.
Let’s think about this, 30 times more often and 8000 times faster, resulting in 12 times faster success and restore rates. F5 is seeing is customers split off specific groups to focus on the DevOps mindset.
There are a lot of technologies in the space. All of which are great but they are all partial solutions to the bigger problem that SDN is trying to solve.
All are good technologies but insufficient on their own
Based on the previous discussion, F5 views SDN as the above statement.
The most important thing to realize is that SDN is an Architecture and not a Technology to operationalize your data center’s network.
With this definition we can now understand how the entire SDN landscape is structured and how things can be composed in a useful manner.
Centralize all policy in a small manageable control plane.
Promises to make it easier to interrogate a network config for planning, implementation, and debugging.
Everything is automated so in the future a SDN control plane should act as a Configuration Management System (CMS) for the network akin to what web monsters have.
System will be fully automated so one can envision making rapid changes to the network knowing that rollback will be easy.
Brand new space…
Need new tools for introspection and understanding of large complicated configs.
Repeatable config is an example of an anti-fragile pattern – Nassim Nicholas Taleb (economist)
SDDC Orchestrator is a symbol for all higher-order orchestrators that are needed to provision everything. It could be Chef/Puppet, OpenStack, VMware, Cisco APIC, whatever…
Federated control/orchestration plane. Unlikely that there will be a single controller for everything as there is too much domain specific knowledge needed per data plane element. Communicate via Open APIs and abstractions.
Data plane is a collection of data plane and forwarding elements that work together to delver a network. Don’t forget the L4-7 services that are vital to a healthy network.
The L2-4 Stateless fabric are primarily switch/routing and other elements that forward packets on a per-packet basis without tracking state. (e.g. TCP state needs to be tracked to know when a flow is finished as Fin-Ack is insufficient).
The L4-7 SDAS fabric all the stateful services that make a network healthy from firewalls, to traffic managers, to application firewalls and beyond.
IMO Service Chaining and VXLAN, etc. are related technologies to accomplish the same concept of virtual wiring differing only in the implementation.
In “traditional SDN” the single controller has to manage all the systems directly. Very challenging and very improbable as no one has succeeded in doing this previously.
The world of stateful L4-7 services is rich and F5 provides off of these services today.
Same as before only…
F5 provides a rich family of “Software Defined Application Services” that are really network based stateful L4-7 services.
F5 is more than just availability and performance
BIG-IQ is a framework for managing F5 SDAS elements and can hide whether the service is running on a virtual edition, physical hardware, is a chassis solution, or a vCMP slice of any of the above.
BIG-IQ can be used to provide a set of simplifying abstractions to the rest of the control/orchestration plane. Big advantage when integrating a number of heterogeneous control/orchestration components.
BIG-IQ is being leveraged heavily in many of our partner integrations.
Abstraction
* NVGRE
* VXLAN
* Integration with L2-3 SDN vendors (VMware, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco)
Standardization
* TMOS as an application service platform
Programmability
* templates (iRules, iApp, iCall)
Automation
* BIG-IQ
* iControl REST (and SOAP)
* iApp
F5 is the first and only Stateful L4-7 SDN company to provide compatibility with Overlay Networks and we support all major protocols.
F5 can also act as a gateway/router between protocols allowing one to switch technologies or bridge between technologies.
It is important to note that NVGRE and OVS Mac In GRE while similar actually have different implementations that are subtly but importantly different.
Our DNA for control and orchestration is deep in our DNA.
BIG-IP/TMOS have supported the capabilities since 2001.
Acquired platforms have also supported both since before acquisition.
LineRate
SDC/Traffix (Diameter router)
Key Points:
The primary “brain” of the F5 Synthesis Intelligent Services Orchestration solution is BIG-IQ
BIG-IQ supports;
Integration with 3rd party management and orchestration services from partners such as VMware, Cisco, and others
Direct plug-in to cloud connector technologies enabling seamless cloud bursting to public cloud environments
F5 Synthesis solution management for F5 platforms
BIG-IQ is the primary tool, a single pane of glass, for managing and enabling the entire High Performance Services Fabric
Support the entire breadth of F5 platform technologies – TMOS, LROS, Traffix – as well as allowing IT to manage individual solutions such as the end-user client and the MAM solution
SDN Integration is allowing the controllers to talk to us via open API’s. When things change in the network they tell us and we dynamically reconfigure the application delivery infrastructure based on changes at the network level.