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A Computer Weekly buyer’s guide to networksNetwork departments face change and challenge on every conceivable front. The enthusiasm of users for software-centric IT and of businesses for cloud computing, outsourcing and virtualisation remains as high as it has ever been, while network service providers are marching under the banner of a network functions virtualisation movement that intends to replace proprietary hardware controls with virtualised software equivalents. In this 10-page buyer’s guide, Computer Weekly looks at an increasingly complex networking environment that could leave the unwary and the unprepared tied up in knots

These articles were originally published

in the Computer Weekly ezine

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Users today take the network for granted. But behind the scenes, IT and networking departments are working feverishly to evolve new strategies and deploy technologies that can satisfy the appetite for more apps, bandwidth and services – cheaper and faster. To accommodate an application-centric perspective, the

concerted shift to software-defined networking (SDN) entails realigning the network architecture conceptually into three distinct layers that are accessible through open application programming interfaces (APIs):n The infrastructure layer, which consists of the network elements and devices that provide packet switching and forwarding;n The Control Layer centralises control functionality and supervises the network forwarding behaviour through an open interface;n The Application Layer, where the business applications are accessed via the SDN communications services.

The SDN architecture has three key attributes: logically centralised intelligence; programmability; and abstraction, where the business applications on the SDN are abstracted from the underlying network technologies.

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Enterprise Networks

– Where do IT pros see

challenges?

SDN security issues:

How secure is the SDN stack?

More speed and bandwidth: the road ahead for networksIT and networking departments are evolving new strategies and technologies to address demand for apps, bandwidth and services. Bernt Ostergaard reports

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Cloud computing realignmentEmbracing the hybrid cloud entails more than just scaled-up server virtualisation. The key to performance improvements and cost reduction involves consolidation and virtualisation, along with changes in management and governance, risk and compliance procedures.

Consolidation entails reducing the number of datacentres and physical servers. It means integrating multiple IT components, such as servers, networking and storage. By combining these components into a single virtual entity, IT can pool and share its collective resources. By centralising the management of those resources, significant cost savings can be achieved.

Recent announcements from legacy IT suppliers, such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Cisco, demonstrate their support for the hybrid cloud. While building out their own clouds, they are also offering most of their software on public clouds, notably Amazon Web Services.

A new directionThe shift to alternative networks in the local area network (LAN) affects the whole Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, from the network layer to the application layer. The traditional OSI layers can be software controlled on bare metal servers. The wide area network (WAN) connection going through a virtual Layer 2 switch filters and forwards traffic only at the data link layer using switches such as Juniper’s MX or HP’s 2920 series.

The next step is a Virtual Layer 3-4 router for Layer 3 routing, typically by partitioning sets of ports into separate virtual LANs and routing between them. The newer series of virtual router products from Cisco, Juniper and other networks can add load balancers, network firewalls, application firewalls, SSL VPN, IPSec VPN, intrusion prevention, content switching, compression and caching. It is not just servers that are being virtualised. Applications, hardware resources and everything in between can reside in virtual containers to reduce costs and increase flexibility. Providers, such as Embrane and Brocade, focus on creating agile networks through the virtualisation of Layer 3-7 network services.

Application performance in highly scalable clusters may require front-end intelligence. This highlights the importance of application-delivery controllers (ADCs). These can also provide compression, caching, connection multiplexing, traffic shaping, application layer security, SSL offload and content switching, distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, advanced routing strategies and server performance monitoring. The focus on applications has redefined the corporate IT service delivery and implementation cycle (DevOps). This encompasses processes from development through quality assessment to staging and operations. This means network planners can build a more intelligent test environment, add more automation into the network and enable a private cloud offering.

DevOps also encompasses processes designed to facilitate the collaboration between app development and IT operations, to bring the portfolio of IT technology and applications forward. To get decision makers involved, IT planners want to combine the business process framework with application and information frameworks. This has led corporate IT to adopt tools, such as Oracle AIA and IBM Maximo, to facilitate integration.

THE ALTERNATIVE NETWORKS AGENDA

n Reduced capital expenditure and operating expense through lower equipment costs and reduced power consumption.

n Faster deployment of new applications and network services.n Improved return on investment from new applications services.n Provision of greater network flexibility to scale up and down, and evolve new services.n Creation of better access to trial new applications and services at lower risk.n Two central strategic concepts guiding developments in both LAN and WAN are cloud

computing and software-defined networking.

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Commercial network virtualisationTo realise their own performance and cost requirements, telcos and infrastructure providers are implementing network function virtualisation (NFV) to address:n The increasing variety of proprietary hardware appliances;n The complexity of integrating and deploying these appliances in a network;n The still shorter hardware lifecycles as innovation accelerates.

This is achieved by evolving standard IT virtualisation technology to consolidate multiple network equipment types onto industry-standard high-volume servers, switches and storage. Network functions are implemented in software that can run on a range of industry-standard bare-metal server hardware, which can be instantiated in various locations in the network as required. This technology promises significant benefits for network operators and their customers by virtualising and consolidating network functions that traditionally have been implemented in dedicated hardware. NFV is thus highly complementary to SDN, being mutually beneficial but not dependent on each other.

By using cloud technologies, network operators expect to achieve greater agility and accelerate new service deployments while driving down operating expense and capital expenditure costs. Over-the-top-services, such as Facebook; e-commerce suppliers such as Amazon; and telcos such as BT and Verizon, are all going down this path. This threatens the proprietary business models of companies such as Citrix, Microsoft, F5 Networks, Red Hat, Sourcefire, Canonical, Embrane, Juniper, Brocade, Arista Networks, Big Switch Networks, Extreme Networks and NoviFlow.

However, it is good news for the dominant X86 server manufacturers, notably HP, Dell and Lenovo. Dell is using specialised compute pods to provide acceleration for SDN to facilitate NFV, such as a high-density Z9500 switch. It also has an OpenStack fabric controller to simplify NFV deployments. With its active infrastructure, Dell offers IT services with a workload-optimised, automated and integrated infrastructure, unified management (Active Systems Manager) and pre-integrated solutions (Active Systems).

Networking equipment suppliers have responded with their own hardware platforms, notably Cisco, by launching a series of software and platform releases that emphasise new degrees of openness (for example, OpFlex to replace Open Flow). These network hardware providers are able to offer not only their own underlying hardware, but also their own global intercloud network infrastructure. After the SDN-NFV consolidation of high-cost dedicated single-purpose hardware appliances, service providers see the creation of software as a service (SaaS) SDN-NFV clouds emerging in 2015-16, leading to virtual service providers offering seamless capacity and scalability by 2020.

Buyers bewareMarket and technology indicators point in the same direction: consolidation, convergence and virtualisation with SDN in a hybrid cloud environment – in the WAN and the LAN. Network performance will improve with lower operating expenditure. But right now standards are still fluid, and suppliers are jockeying for positions, creating dead ends and lock-ins to first-generation, end-to-end systems.

Migrating systems and apps to virtual servers in the cloud or between cloud providers is still tricky, requiring snapshotting data/apps from the old server and reloading them to the

new server while restarting the apps. To minimise cost and downtime, extra tools, such as Vision Solutions Double-Take Move, are often needed. Decision-makers must weigh investing now (and expect to pay a premium) to get the performance, against waiting, but factor in capital expenditure investments

in migration tools and more mature software platforms in a few years when the technology passes the hype phase and stabilises more. Now is the right time to establish the integrated business-IT DevOps organisation to lead the development and implementation process with a phased SDN-cloud migration, adapted to the existing asset depreciation cycle. n

› IP networks “inherently less secure”› Haulage firm Palletline overhauls network

› Is passive optical networking good for firms?

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IT suppliers often talk of “evolution, not revolution” as being the way forward. However, the introduction of cloud computing, mass outsourcing and widespread virtualisation means that a revolution is surely what we now have on our hands.

Do we also need a revolution in terms of the technology at hand, to successfully deploy and manage this new wave of virtualised networks?

Network management tools, even later-generation examples such as application monitor-ing, are based on building up knowledge around a known (fixed) network and application set.

However, the new generation of hybrid networks, which may be part private, part public (cloud, managed services, and so on) are truly dynamic. There is no longer a one-to-one rela-tionship between the physical connections of two network nodes or elements. This means that any fixed knowledge base is always going to be out of date immediately and therefore, arguably, largely useless unless working with traditionally deployed networks.

There is also the human element to consider. With the introduction of the virtual envi-ronment, multiple groups across an organisation are responsible for different parts of the

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Juniper and Nokia expand

partnership to address

telco clouds

Building a hybrid

network with SDN, network virtualisation

After VLANs: managing the new virtualised networksManaging an ever-changing network landscape calls for as much automation as possible. Steve Broadhead examines whether global suppliers Juniper, HP and Cisco can provide the answer

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network, such as servers, local and remote datacentre administration and the physical network. This makes the traditional game of pointing the finger of blame in the event of a networking issue all the more complex; new rules apply. And to what extent can the human element be taken completely out of the equation with automation?

In other words, we need a means to manage an ever-changing networking landscape with as much automation as possible, which is no easy task. So what is the solution? Here we look at three global suppliers – Juniper, HP and Cisco – to see if they have the answer.

Juniper NetworksDavid Noguer Bau, head of service provider marketing at Juniper Networks, says the main reason for change is simply that the increased complexity of the current network model across both the enterprise and service provider landscapes has resulted in processes – and physical connections – slowing down, while the agility required to launch new services in a timely fashion has been compromised.

“In the datacentre, for example, the compute side has built up massively in the past 10 years, while networking has basically stayed the same,” says Noguer Bau. “Yes, we have created bigger, more capable fabrics, but the time it takes to provision a VLAN [virtual LAN] between two servers can be minutes and major deployments can take hours or days, yet it takes seconds for a VM [virtual machine] to be deployed within a server.”

Noguer Bau believes software-defined networks (SDNs) provide part of the answer – the virtualisation aspect, for example – but still require interaction with the physical networking hardware and other elements. Juniper’s approach is to take an open-standards model that encompasses all aspects of network management and control, whereby all they need is IP connectivity to deploy and manage the virtualised network.

At the heart of the system is a product called Contrail. This deploys a virtual router inside each virtual server, while a Contrail controller sits in the datacentre and manages the virtual routers, creating secure connec-tions between any servers in the datacentre. At this point, the majority of tasks are automated. The system is also completely open from an integration perspective, so is not designed as a purely Juniper play.

HPHP was quick of out the traps to announce its SDN blueprint and support for OpenFlow and it has since developed a system called OpenNFV.

This is designed to be a comprehensive network functions virtualisation (NFV) program with the aim of accelerating innovation in the service provider/telco market, allowing HP to launch new services more quickly, more easily and more cheaply through the virtualisa-tion of telecommunications core networks and network functions. In other words, a very similar set of aims to those of its competitor Juniper, the key being an obvious return on investment (ROI). As part of this process, HP has launched an open-standards-based NFV reference architecture – HP OpenNFV Labs – and a partner ecosystem of what it describes as best-in-class NFV applications and services.

At the heart of the HP OpenNFV program is the HP open-standards-based OpenNFV Reference Architecture (NFV RA), which provides a complete architectural ecosystem

“In the datacentre, the compute sIde has buIlt up massIvely In the past 10 years, whIle networkIng has basIcally stayed the same”davId noguer bau,

JunIper networks

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covering physical servers, storage and networking, virtualisation, controllers for SDN, resource management and orchestration, analytics, telco applications, and a complete operations support system (OSS).

The HP NFV RA incorporates SDN capabilities, including the HP SDN Controller, SDN Ecosystem and virtual services router (VSR) designed for multi-tenant, virtual private clouds and virtual customer premise equipment (CPE) deployments. This forms a ready-to-be-deployed architecture designed to enable a service provider or telco to move from a tradi-tional network to an NFV/SDN-based architecture in one transition.

Cisco SystemsWith its Open Network Environment (ONE), Cisco also has a system to help move networks into being more open, programmable and application-aware, including SDN.

Again, the model is to simplify operations and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by extending the capa-bilities of an existing infrastructure, enabling it to deliver advanced applications and services for physi-cal, virtual and cloud environments with a fully inte-grated framework. At the heart of Cisco ONE is what it calls a dynamic feedback loop that gathers network intelligence and programs individual network layers to optimise user conditions and which can be tailored for any number of individual applications.

Ian Foddering, chief technology officer at Cisco UK and Ireland, says one of the most important elements is being able to provide very high availability for applications while keeping operating expenses low, regardless of the geographical location. To enable all the benefits of geographically dispersed datacentres, the network must extend Layer 2 connectivity across the diverse locations.

Cisco’s Overlay Transport Virtualisation (OTV) provides a solution here, being a “MAC address in IP” technique for supporting Layer 2 virtual private networks (VPNs) to extend LANs over any transport. The transport can be Layer 2-based, Layer 3-based, IP-switched, label-switched or anything else as long as it can carry IP packets.

By using the principles of MAC routing, OTV provides an overlay that enables Layer 2 connectivity between separate Layer 2 domains while keeping these domains independent and preserving the fault-isolation, resilience and load-balancing benefits of an IP-based interconnection.

No single answerClearly, there is no single solution here for deploying and managing a distributed, virtual-ised network. SDN was excessively hyped as the new saviour of networking, but forms only part of the overall solution set – something outlined here by the approaches of Cisco, HP and Juniper. At the same time, there is an argument that no single networking supplier has the ability to fully manage its global environment. Products such as Incident.MOOG from Moogsoft support a multi-supplier environment.

What we are seeing here is undoubtedly work in progress, but it is ultimately a networking revolution, not a trivial update of existing infrastructures and, as such, is a long-term change, not an over-the-weekend makeover. n

“one of the most Important elements Is beIng able to provIde very hIgh avaIlabIlIty for applIcatIons whIle keepIng operatIng expenses low”Ian fodderIng, cIsco

uk and Ireland

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The network is changing. Or to be more specific, the way we manage our networks is changing. Networking functions are shifting to increasingly virtualised software-defined controls that were

previously the domain of proprietary dedicated hardware. This trend is being coalesced and propagated under the label network functions virtualisation (NFV), a movement that was first postulated at the SDN and OpenFlow World Congress exhibition in October 2012.

The concept for NFV was proposed by a group of network service providers which envisaged a route to decreasing the quantity of proprietary hardware needed to create and operate network services. This would mean that network functions formerly executed and managed by core “usual suspect” network elements such as routers, firewalls, load balancers and application delivery controllers could now be managed by virtual machines (VMs). The network services provided by these appliances are delivered as self-contained virtualised functions that can be logically chained together as required.

NFV is now being developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Industry Specification Group for NFV. So how does network functions virtualisation develop beyond its embryonic developmental stage? Does an IT operation need to have already embraced software-defined networking (SDN) to be able to benefit from NFV? Will cloud service providers have an important role to play in delivering NFV? How should business IT teams position themselves to exploit the new possibilities that could exist here?

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Three approaches

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Why companies are

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Virtualisation is reshaping the networkNetwork functions virtualisation aims to reduce network complexity by decreasing business reliance on hardware. Adrian Bridgwater considers the implications for IT

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Don’t junk the routers yetIn reality, it appears firms should not junk their proprietary router and server base just yet, especially for larger-scale networks where performance is paramount. Tom Nolle, president of Cimi Corporation, says the path to expenditure reduction is fuzzy at best, but it could mean new service revenue possibilities.

“The idea is that NFV will let operators virtualise network appliances and services, which can then be dynamically provisioned and integrated into a larger orchestration context. Essentially, network services such as firewalling and load balancing will be provisioned as flexibly as the applications they support,” writes Nolle in an article in Computer Weekly sister title, SearchSDN. This, then, is the pure mathematical possibility, but what of the applied reality?

Looking at Riverbed Technology, most of its network hardware appliances are also available as software virtual appliances. Technical director for the Office of the CTO at Riverbed is Steve Riley. He reminds us that NFV is, potentially, a route to better agility as it removes the “organisational politics and procedural barriers” that used to exist when all infrastructure was hardware.

Riley says it is now easier for a business unit or a customer to design an application workflow, define the networking requirements and build this into a recipe that enables these functions to be stitched together when they are needed.

“NFV is currently in a stage of growth, with the primary users being service providers and telcos, rather than enterprises. We’re already seeing actual production of network functions virtualisation technologies in service providers, and we expect larger telco providers to put it into production this year,” says Riley.

“Service providers and telcos came up with the idea of NFV. They were tired of buying hardware boxes. As a matter of fact, one of the largest telcos has told their vendors, ‘Don’t ever sell us another box again.’ So it’s not uncommon for telcos to demand that providers sell them software instead of hardware boxes,” he says.

So how do we ‘do’ NFV?In terms of implementation, NFV will be the responsibility of network managers, senior systems administrators, experienced development and operations professionals, soft-ware system architects and others. However, the accountability is shared out. NFV is undeniably markedly different from previous network principles; the components and ingredients are the same, but the recipe and mechanisms have changed. Experimental “proof of concept” labs are, where affordable, the best way to start learning how to move NFV into live production.

Darrell Jordan-Smith, global sales head for telco vertical at Red Hat, also advises that content service providers (CSPs) need to become more comfortable with the technology through limited trials. Red Hat takes the view that this is accelerating in the market because the return on investment for NFV, in general, is compelling, he says.

“Also, the agility that NFV facilitates will enable CSPs to provision new services much more quickly than before. CSPs are also actively engaged in developing the requirements for OpenStack to support applications (legacy and new) in this environment. Red Hat is working with a number of CSPs to define what the roadmap looks like and how it will develop over time so that the technology remains open (verses forked or proprietary)

“nfv Is currently In a stage of growth, wIth the prImary users beIng servIce provIders and telcos, rather than enterprIses”steve rIley, rIverbed

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and thus continues to realise the proven technological and economical benefits of open source,” says Jordan-Smith.

So does an IT operation need to have already embraced SDN to be able to benefit from NFV? Jordan-Smith says NFV is typically deployed inside a CSP’s network and is therefore highly coupled with SDN. “Clients in this area are very familiar with networking and have been looking at SDN for some time. In fact, one could argue that SDN and NFV are converging technologies in a CSP’s network,” he says.

So how should business IT departments position themselves to exploit the new possibilities that could exist here? Jordan-Smith insists that, over time, traditional appliance-like infrastructure will be replaced with applications that sit on the cloud. He says IT shops can deliver value through integration services, application modernisation and business process re-engineering.

The SDN factorAs a closely related family cousin, the relationship played by software-defined networking is thrown up for discussion here time and time again. Director of CME/NFV at HP Europe Amjad Shah says that one aspect important to keep in mind is that the basic benefits of NFV can be achieved without having embraced SDN.

“However, SDN, especially when based on OpenFlow, has the potential of multiplying the benefits of NFV. In many ways, NFV is a logical response from the national communications service providers to increase the flexibility of their assets, to provide cloud services on a much more distributed and local footprint. As such, cloud service providers have played a role as an example of what can be done with a standardised, virtualised and automated infrastructure, he says.

Shah adds: “Fundamentally, NFV is bringing IT methodologies to the telecoms domain and, in doing so, providing the methods and resources to rebuild the world’s circuit-switched voice networks to efficiently transmit packet-switched video. As a result, IT shops that are capable of bringing IT methodologies and technologies to help network service providers use NFV to deliver business outcomes are well positioned to build new, or strengthen existing, relationships.”

The state of the NFV nation todayThe ETSI specifications for network function virtualisation state that early deployments are already underway and are expected to accelerate during 2014-15. The specification itself states that it “challenges the industry” to work with ETSI to get NFV and related technolo-

gies “into the mainstream” of the networking industry – and to make them the mainstay of service provider networks.

David Noguer Bau, head of service provider marketing at Juniper Networks, says that as has happened in many other technologies before, the market is not waiting to see the final standard specification to jump into NFV. “Some NFV solutions

are being implemented already and I expect them to evolve to be fully compliant with the ETSI ISG in new releases. At Juniper, we’ve been offering virtual network functions for over a year now, including the Firefly portfolio,” he says.

NFV is still in its initial growth phase, but if its capabilities for dynamic provisioning of network services, firewall protection and load balancing all flourish as promised, then it could have a major impact on IT service agility, networks and cloud before the end of the decade. n

› The SDN transition: Understanding SDN vendors, concepts and challenges

› Choices in SDN wireless technology emerge

cloud servIce provIders offer an example of what can be done wIth a standardIsed, vIrtualIsed and automated Infrastructure