Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Converging Optical and Higher Layers With SDN
Converging Optical and Higher Layers With SDN
New products link service provider networks with cloud-enabled data centers SUMMARY
In a nutshell
New network infrastructure products based on software-defined networking (SDN) are being developed to extend network programmability to the optical layer. These products will help service providers adapt to the cloud era by delivering a flatter network architecture that is likely to first be employed to deliver better scalability, lower latency, and deterministic performance for data center interconnect. By integrating optical transport, a switching function (typically label switch routing), and network applications with management and control layer software, these new products provide an abstraction layer between the physical transport infrastructure and higher-layer software functions. With network control abstracted from physical devices, this programmable transport layer can connect to higher-level cloud and virtualization platforms, through application programming interfaces (APIs), for orchestration and network automation. Current data center interconnect (DCI) solutions based on traditional product architectures cannot readily adjust to accommodate dynamic and sporadic traffic flows. The new SDN converged optical platforms with virtual machine (VM) awareness will be aware of the communication needs of applications and enable applications to be aware of the capabilities and state of the network.
Ovum view
Content providers, communication service providers, and enterprises increasingly rely on cloudenabled data centers for internal business functions and to deliver applications to customers. The wide area network (WAN) is a key component of cloud services, and network bandwidth constraints and latency can have a major impact on application performance in the cloud. As data centers take on more cloud services functions, server-to-server (East-West) traffic connectivity comes to dominate client-server (North-South) traffic. This interdata center traffic is bursty, supporting sporadic high-capacity data transfers, with traffic patterns that follow virtual machines
Page 1
(VMs) as they migrate geographically between data centers. Current DCI solutions based on traditional product architectures are relatively static and cannot readily adjust traffic flows to accommodate application needs or VM migration. Ovum is seeing some equipment vendors extend SDN concepts into a programmable, converged optical layer in order to provide end-to-end services over a multi-layer network. These converged optical products typically integrate optical transmission, label switch routing (LSR), and network applications with management and control software to deliver a flatter network architecture capable of delivering scalability, low latency, and deterministic performance between network endpoints. An API abstracts network resources and provides programmable control, allowing network configuration to be automated. These products can work with SDN controllers to provide a network that can be dynamically configured, scaling up or down to match application needs.
Key messages
The old networking paradigm is no longer working. With cloud- and video-centric applications driving continuing IP traffic growth and competition from over-the-top (OTT) service providers, carriers are seeing continued pressure on revenues. For many carriers, a larger role in delivering cloud services presents the best opportunity to develop new revenue streams. Fortunately, they are evolving into IT services companies as they leverage their understanding of enterprise IT requirements along with their network, security, and professional services expertise. New products and services target data center interconnect. Ovum is seeing vendors and carriers begin to develop products and services targeted directly at supporting this emerging market for DCI, including new converged optical solutions that extend SDN concepts to the optical layer. The growth of inter data center traffic leads to new network requirements for low latency, security, virtualization, and automation. 2012 marked the start of SDN commercial deployment. Ovum expects SDN to develop in phases around domain-specialized solutions. Google and NTT deployed the first SDN commercial networks in 2012 to support DCI services. The growing need to interconnect geographically dispersed data centers over the WAN will continue to evolve as a market for SDN-based solutions. Analytics and policy engines will support the automation of network operations. Analytics and policy engines will work with control plane and application layer intelligence to better optimize network resources and automate the changes required to match the operation of the network to the needs of applications. With SDN and more capable network platforms, near-real-time analytics will effectively close a feedback loop between how the network is handling data flows and what the policy engine wants to happen.
Page 2
Carrier networks evolve to link the data center and central office
The days when the central office (CO) is the sole locus of control in service provider networks may be ending. The IT world and the communications world are coming together as carrier networks evolve to be more software-centric and network intelligence migrates to the data center. Today, carrier data centers largely support managed services for enterprise customers, and they are beginning to provide public and private cloud services. Tomorrow, data centers will play a key role in controlling the operation of carrier networks and in serving applications. The data center is becoming the strategic hub for the global carrier, as the wire center was for legacy local telecoms carriers. Software-centric SDN networks will take advantage of the compute power in general-purpose server blades, and advances in operating and managing virtual machines, to provide virtually centralized intelligence in networks. This intelligence will enable networks to be easily configured and controlled, respond quickly to changes, and rapidly deliver new services and applications. This massive addition of new computing requirements leads to a significant need for additional server capacity throughout the carriers footprint. With facilities spread throughout a service ar ea, carriers can add IT infrastructure to distributed COs and bring the cloud much closer to customers, reducing latency and bandwidth costs. With control of the data center and the network, carriers can guarantee service quality and performance from the data center to the customer premises. The new role of data
Page 3
centers in carrier networks also leads to additional requirements for inter data center connectivity that can be met by more flexible converged optical platforms.
centers are changing network traffic patte rns see Ovums September 2012 report Data Centers: Defying Gravity.
Page 5
Network infrastructure APIs are being introduced into many equipment platforms to allow customers, partners, and third parties to build network applications that extend network functionality or modify the behavior of a network dynamically. Ciscos onePK API and the Junos XML API, for example, provide a representation of the configuration statements and operation mode commands that control their switches and routers to enable a programmable interface to networks. With SDN, controller software will have access to these APIs in addition to other interface protocols to access equipment resources. The controllers will provide their own Northbound API to higher-layer functions.
Page 6
These converged optical layer solutions provide an abstraction layer between the transport network resources and SDN controllers. With a global network view, and working in conjunction with analytics and policy engines, the controllers can provide end-to-end service management and automate the setup of network paths based on the needs of applications. Through integration with SDN controllers, applications will interact with the network to adapt network paths, capacity, latency, and other performance parameters to application needs.
Page 7
Page 8
integrated solution. Ironically, the strongest threat to the development of such ecosystems is likely to come from rapid development of converged solutions from a few of the larger vendors.
APPENDIX
Methodology
The information in this report comes from both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources include briefings, email exchanges, and phone conversations with vendors and service providers covered in this report. Secondary sources include industry news articles, operator and vendor press and financial releases, and existing Ovum databases.
Further reading
Software-Defined Networking: Vendors and Product Landscape (October 2012) Data Centers: Defying Gravity (September 2012)
Author
David Krozier, Principal Analyst, Network Infrastructure david.krozier@ovum.com
Ovum Consulting
We hope that this analysis will help you make informed and imaginative business decisions. If you have further requirements, Ovums consulti ng team may be able to help you. For more information about Ovums consulting capabilities, please contact us directly at consulting@ovum.com.
Disclaimer
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Ovum (an Informa business). The facts of this report are believed to be correct at the time of publication but cannot be guaranteed. Please note that the findings, conclusions, and recommendations that Ovum delivers will be based on information gathered in good faith from both primary and secondary sources, whose accuracy we are not always in a position to guarantee. As such Ovum can accept no liability whatever for actions taken based on any information that may subsequently prove to be incorrect.
Page 9