Nokia is offering customers an alternative way to set up data center networks by expanding its data center fabric package to support the open-source Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC).
Being developed under the Linux Foundation, SONiC was created by Microsoft for its Azure data centers and then open-sourced by Microsoft in 2017. The SONiC community has grown significantly since and now features some 4,000 contributors and 28 paying members.
Linux-based SONiC decouples network software from the underlying hardware and lets it run on hundreds of switches and ASICs from multiple vendors while supporting a full suite of network features such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), remote direct memory access (RDMA), QoS, and Ethernet/IP.
SONiC is seen as a viable alternative to more traditional, less flexible network operating systems. Its modularity, programmability and general cloud-based architecture could make it a viable option for enterprises and hyperscalers to deploy as cloud networking grows.
In Nokia’s case, by adding SONiC to its data center fabric offerings, its customers gain access to Nokia’s SONiC development and support organization. In addition, enterprises and cloud providers benefit from access to a broader range of data center hardware platforms engineered for reliability, power efficiency and longevity, wrote Michael Bushong, vice president of data center at Nokia, in a blog about the news.
“For customers preferring fully integrated solutions with access to advanced features and a dedicated engineering team, Nokia continues to offer its SR Linux NOS as part of its data center fabric solution offer,” Bushong stated. Nokia’s SR Linux NOS supports a wide range of network protocols and features as well as third-party applications.
Customers can use Nokia’s recently introduced Event Driven Automation (EDA) platform to manage and automate SONiC environments, Bushong wrote. Nokia EDA is an infrastructure automation platform that offers network provisioning, configuration, optimization and troubleshooting features.
“Ultimately, our adoption of SONiC is a key step towards our broader objectives, which are to provide data center networking infrastructure—hardware, software, transport and operations—in a form factor that can help drive human error to zero,” Bushong wrote.
Read more about SONiC
- SONiC pioneer Aviz Networks raises $17M for AI network management push
- Aviz gives its enterprise SONiC offering an AI boost
- Cisco joins $10M funding round for Aviz Networks
- SONiC test lab gains industry support
- Cisco and Aviz coordinate support for enterprise SONiC networks
- eBay scores cost savings and a bandwidth boost with white-box switches running SONiC
- Microsoft shifts SONiC development to the Linux Foundation
Source:: Network World