By Cecelia Taylor on January 13, 2014
Authored by: Amir
Sheffer, Sr. Product Manager
This week we reinforced our
commitment to Open Ethernet, open source and Software Defined Networking (SDN).
With the latest software package for our Ethernet switches. Mellanox has added
support for two widely used tools—OpenFlow and Puppet, among other important
features.
The introduction of the new
functionality allows users to move towards using more SDN and automation in
their data centers. Compared to custom CLI scripts, OpenFlow and Puppet enable customers to control and
monitor switches in a unified, centralized manner, thus simplifying the overall
network management effort, with less time and cost. Forwarding rules, policies
and configurations can be set once then applied to many switches across the
network, automatically.
Flexible OpenFlow Support
Mellanox Ethernet switches can now operate in OpenFlow
hybrid switch mode, and expose both an OpenFlow forwarding pipeline and a
locally-managed switching and routing pipeline. The OpenFlow forwarding
pipeline utilizes thousands of processing rules (or flows), the highest number
in the industry.
Switches interface with an OpenFlow
controller using an integrated OpenFlow agent that allows direct access to the
SwitchX®-2-based switch forwarding and routing planes. The hybrid switch
model provides the most robust, easy-to-use and efficient implementation, as it
can forward a packet according to the OpenFlow configuration, when such a match
is found, or can handle it by its forwarding/routing pipeline, according to the
locally-managed switch control applications.
This allows customers to implement
OpenFlow rules where they provide the most benefit without needing to move
every switch completely to OpenFlow-only management. By processing non-OpenFlow
data through its local management plane and leveraging the local forwarding
pipeline, the hybrid switch increases network performance and efficiency,
through faster processing of new flows as well as lower load on the
controllers.
This is much more flexible than
another OpenFlow switch mode called OpenFlow-only. This mode does not allow the
switch to have a local control plane, so each and every flow must be configured
by the OpenFlow controller, which in turn creates high load on the controllers,
resulting in high latency and low efficiency.
Open-Source Automation via Puppet
Further enhancing the openness of
our switches and the standardization of configuration, Mellanox switches now
integrate the Puppet™ automation software agent. Puppet provides an
open-source-based standard interface for device configuration and management.
Tasks, such as software downloads, port configurations, and VLAN management can
be managed automatically according to defined policies. Mellanox’s implementation
of the Puppet agent is Netdev, which is a vendor-neutral network
abstraction framework. Mellanox Netdev has been submitted to the DevOps
community and can be downloaded for free.
Customers have the choice to manage
our switches using a CLI, Web GUI, SNMP, XML, and now Puppet and OpenFlow. This
allows the flexibility to design the easiest and most scalable management
solution for each environment, and expands Mellanox’s commitment to open
source.
Mellanox is involved and contributes
to other open source projects, such as OpenStack, ONIE,
Quagga and others, and already contributed certain adaptor applications to the
open source community. Mellanox is also a leading member and contributor of
the Open Compute Project, where it provides NICs,
switches and software.
RESOURCES
- MLNX-OS Switch Software: http://www.mellanox.com/page/mlnx_os
- Mellanox SDN Solution: https://www.mellanox.com/sdn/
- Puppet Application Note (PDF): Puppet Automation for Mellanox Switch Systems
- See more at:
http://www.mellanox.com/blog/#sthash.iWlFB3Ly.dpuf
