There is a train of thought that is popular with some network vendors and long time network engineers that there is a compelling need to “orchestrate” the physical network and the visualized-networking world. This is expressed as a desire to ensure that VLANs are synchronized between the physical network switches and the virtual switches on the visualization hosts.
The Orchestrated VLAN Model
VMware has a concept of a “backing VLAN”. This simply put means that traffic belonging to a portgroup uses a configured transport VLAN when it traverses the physical network. For example, if a group of VMs belong to a portgroup “backed” by a VLAN, that VLAN must be “allowed” on the trunk ports connecting all of the physical ESX hosts that are hosting any of those VMs.
In addition to this, it is argued that the trunk ports to ESX hosts that do not host a VM belonging to that portgroup should not “allow” the presence of the VLAN that backs that portgroup. It is suggested that the reason for this requirement is that the unbridled propagation of VLANs will cause the ESX host to process broadcast packets it does not need to, with potentially dire consequences.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Why Network Latency Matters for Virtualized Applications
My colleague Russell Skingsley has an interesting take on the effects of latency on virtualized application performance. The purpose of virtualization is to optimize resource utilization. As Russell pointed out it isn’t just an academic conversation. For the cloud hosting provider it’s about revenue maximization. Network latency has a direct impact on virtualized application performance and therefore revenue for the service provider. Your choice of network infrastructure will impact your business, but it can be difficult to see how investing in high performance networking solutions will improve your business. I will try to connect the dots.
Don't Sell it Just Once
It’s a service provider axiom that you don’t want to waste your valuable assets by selling them to a single customer, even at a premium. Take dark fiber for instance, every SP has come to learn that selling a fiber to a single customer will never bring scalable revenues. Making the move to adding DWDM to the service mix allows you to scale up the number of customers and is an improvement over selling dark fiber, but is limited by the number of lamdas that can fit in the spectrum on a single fiber. The scaling is linear. A similar situation exists for shared cloud computing resources.
Don't Sell it Just Once
It’s a service provider axiom that you don’t want to waste your valuable assets by selling them to a single customer, even at a premium. Take dark fiber for instance, every SP has come to learn that selling a fiber to a single customer will never bring scalable revenues. Making the move to adding DWDM to the service mix allows you to scale up the number of customers and is an improvement over selling dark fiber, but is limited by the number of lamdas that can fit in the spectrum on a single fiber. The scaling is linear. A similar situation exists for shared cloud computing resources.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Is There a Real Use Case for LISP, The Locator/ID Separation Protocol?
LISP is a protocol that pops back in the news just when you might have forgot that it existed. It happened again in June when Cisco re-launched LISP for fast mobility at their annual user conference, complete with an on stage demo and much fanfare. While the demo’s are impressive, the history of LISP makes me wonder what is going on behind the curtain. This isn’t the first time that Cisco has proposed LISP for a new use case. In 2011, Cisco positioned LISP as a solution for IPv6 transition and virtual machine mobility, along with VXLAN and OTV, creating a triumvirate of proprietary protocols to further pioneering use cases. But is there real value in LISP?
What is LISP?
LISP is a protocol and an addressing architecture originally discussed at the IETF in 2006 to help contain the growth of the route tables in core routers. The LISP proposal which was submitted in 2010 is still under development as an experimental draft in the IETF, see link. As far as I have see there is not much consensus regarding the usefulness of LISP, and it has several open issues in the areas of security, service migration and deployability. Because the cost and risk associated with LISP are significant, network operators have scaled their routing systems using other techniques such as by deploying routers with sufficient FIB capacity, and by deploying NAT.
What is LISP?
LISP is a protocol and an addressing architecture originally discussed at the IETF in 2006 to help contain the growth of the route tables in core routers. The LISP proposal which was submitted in 2010 is still under development as an experimental draft in the IETF, see link. As far as I have see there is not much consensus regarding the usefulness of LISP, and it has several open issues in the areas of security, service migration and deployability. Because the cost and risk associated with LISP are significant, network operators have scaled their routing systems using other techniques such as by deploying routers with sufficient FIB capacity, and by deploying NAT.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Juniper’s Vision for SDN Enables Network Innovation
The importance of the network continues to grow and innovation in the network needs to support new businesses models, and drive social and economic change. SDN will help address challenges currently faced by the network as it evolves to support business applications. It is worthwhile to step back and determine what the big-picture problem is to be solved. SDN is about adding value and solving a problem that has not been solved. It is about helping network operators to combine best-of-breed networking equipment with SDN control to facilitate cost effective networks that provide new business opportunities is key to Juniper’s strategy. I’d like to elaborate on a few key points.
Juniper’s Vision For The New Network And Software-Defined Networking Are Aligned
I’ve talked in previous blogs about Juniper’s New Network Platform Architecture. Juniper is delivering the New Network to increase the rate of innovation, streamline network operating costs through automation, and reduce overall capital expenses. Legacy networks have grown large and complex. This has stifled innovation and made networks costly to build and maintain. Both the New Network and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are about removing complexity, treating the network itself as a platform, and shifting the emphasis from maintenance to innovation.
SDN provides an abstracted, logical view of the network with externalized software-based control and reduced control points for better network control and simplified network operations. Juniper’s vision for SDN includes bi-directional interaction between the network and applications and a real-time feedback loop to ensure an optimal outcome for all elements and a predictable experience for users. This capability is transparent allowing customers to augment their existing network infrastructures to be SDN-enabled.
Juniper’s Vision For The New Network And Software-Defined Networking Are Aligned
I’ve talked in previous blogs about Juniper’s New Network Platform Architecture. Juniper is delivering the New Network to increase the rate of innovation, streamline network operating costs through automation, and reduce overall capital expenses. Legacy networks have grown large and complex. This has stifled innovation and made networks costly to build and maintain. Both the New Network and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are about removing complexity, treating the network itself as a platform, and shifting the emphasis from maintenance to innovation.
SDN provides an abstracted, logical view of the network with externalized software-based control and reduced control points for better network control and simplified network operations. Juniper’s vision for SDN includes bi-directional interaction between the network and applications and a real-time feedback loop to ensure an optimal outcome for all elements and a predictable experience for users. This capability is transparent allowing customers to augment their existing network infrastructures to be SDN-enabled.
How the QFabric System Enables a High-Performance, Scalable Big Data Infrastructure
Big Data Analytics is a trend that is changing the way businesses gather intelligence and evaluate their operations. Driven by a combination of technology innovation, maturing open source software, commodity hardware, ubiquitous social networking and pervasive mobile devices, the rise of big data has created an inflection point across all verticals, such as financial services, public sector and health care, that must be addressed in order for organizations to do business effectively and economically.
Analytics Drive Business Decisions
Big data has recently become a top area of interest for IT organizations due to the dramatic increase in the volume of data being created and due to innovations in data gathering techniques that enable the synthesis and analysis of the data to provide powerful business intelligence that can often be acted upon in real time. For example, retailers can experience increased operational margins by responding to customer’s buying patterns and in the health industry, big data can enhance outcomes in diagnosis and treatment.
The big data phenomenon brings up a challenging question to CIOs and CTOs: What is the big data infrastructure strategy? A unique characteristic of big data is that, does not work well in traditional Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) data stores or with structured query language (SQL) analysis tools. Big data requires a flat, horizontally scalable database, accessed with unique query tools that work in real time. As a result of this requirement IT must invest in new technologies and architectures to utilize the power of real-time data streams.
Analytics Drive Business Decisions
Big data has recently become a top area of interest for IT organizations due to the dramatic increase in the volume of data being created and due to innovations in data gathering techniques that enable the synthesis and analysis of the data to provide powerful business intelligence that can often be acted upon in real time. For example, retailers can experience increased operational margins by responding to customer’s buying patterns and in the health industry, big data can enhance outcomes in diagnosis and treatment.
The big data phenomenon brings up a challenging question to CIOs and CTOs: What is the big data infrastructure strategy? A unique characteristic of big data is that, does not work well in traditional Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) data stores or with structured query language (SQL) analysis tools. Big data requires a flat, horizontally scalable database, accessed with unique query tools that work in real time. As a result of this requirement IT must invest in new technologies and architectures to utilize the power of real-time data streams.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Juniper's Campus Validated Design Guide
In my previous blog (link) I wrote about the New Network Platform Architecture and how Juniper is delivering network designs that will enable our customers to optimize their network investments. With these designs Juniper’s goal is to help customers overcome technology limitations so that they can deliver greater efficiency, and increased business value, by leveraging their networks more effectively. To this end Juniper has released the Juniper Networks Horizontal Campus Validated Design Guide.
A Step-by-Step Process
This guide provides a simple, step-by-step process that businesses can use to rapidly deploy a small campus network solution. The deployment in this guide is based on a tested reference topology designed by Juniper that can easily be scaled and adapted to specific customer requirements. This guide is for network administrators who are tasked with designing and deploying a small campus network for a small enterprise who want to complement their understanding of networks, with specific guidelines and configurations from Juniper.
Juniper Networks offers this validated design guide for the campus and branch domain to help customers start building and configuring their own networks. A validated design represents a specific configuration of Juniper Networks hardware and software platforms that has been tested together and represents a reliable foundation on which to base a customized network for a business.
A Step-by-Step Process
This guide provides a simple, step-by-step process that businesses can use to rapidly deploy a small campus network solution. The deployment in this guide is based on a tested reference topology designed by Juniper that can easily be scaled and adapted to specific customer requirements. This guide is for network administrators who are tasked with designing and deploying a small campus network for a small enterprise who want to complement their understanding of networks, with specific guidelines and configurations from Juniper.
Juniper Networks offers this validated design guide for the campus and branch domain to help customers start building and configuring their own networks. A validated design represents a specific configuration of Juniper Networks hardware and software platforms that has been tested together and represents a reliable foundation on which to base a customized network for a business.
Juniper’s New Network Platform Architecture
If you talked with me at Interop, Las Vegas last week you heard me speak of Juniper’s New Network Platform Architecture. The New Network Platform Architecture is an initiative that brings together Juniper’s innovations in silicon, software, and systems to deliver best-in-class network designs that enable business advantages for our customers. This is a milestone for Juniper, and it shows the commitment that we have to delivering value to our customers to help them compete in today’s market place.
Juniper’s Focus on the Customer
Juniper’s approach to designing network architectures is to solve today’s business and technology limitations with designs that deliver greater efficiency, increased business value, better performance, and opportunity that will last. With a focus on our customer’s business objectives, the demands of their applications, and workflow needs, our approach is to design architectures that lift legacy limitations and transform our customer’s expectations for the network. Our objective is to drive business value for our customers by optimizing their network investments. We simplify architectures, operation models, and workflows to optimize network investments. By using our domain designs customer can optimize their network investments to increase productivity, generate revenue, and enhance the quality of the user experience.
The Changing Environment
With soaring growth in bandwidth demand, mobile consumer devices, cloud, and M2M, network needs and pace of innovation have changed dramatically, and Juniper is enabling our customers to grow and capture the opportunity. Our differentiation is our ability to take complex architectures, legacy operating systems, and simplify, modernize, and scale for our customers. From core routing to data centers, Juniper has consistently delivered breakthrough innovations leveraging our expertise in silicon, systems, and software to help our customers increase efficiency, drive business value, and accelerate service delivery.
Juniper’s Focus on the Customer
Juniper’s approach to designing network architectures is to solve today’s business and technology limitations with designs that deliver greater efficiency, increased business value, better performance, and opportunity that will last. With a focus on our customer’s business objectives, the demands of their applications, and workflow needs, our approach is to design architectures that lift legacy limitations and transform our customer’s expectations for the network. Our objective is to drive business value for our customers by optimizing their network investments. We simplify architectures, operation models, and workflows to optimize network investments. By using our domain designs customer can optimize their network investments to increase productivity, generate revenue, and enhance the quality of the user experience.
The Changing Environment
With soaring growth in bandwidth demand, mobile consumer devices, cloud, and M2M, network needs and pace of innovation have changed dramatically, and Juniper is enabling our customers to grow and capture the opportunity. Our differentiation is our ability to take complex architectures, legacy operating systems, and simplify, modernize, and scale for our customers. From core routing to data centers, Juniper has consistently delivered breakthrough innovations leveraging our expertise in silicon, systems, and software to help our customers increase efficiency, drive business value, and accelerate service delivery.
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