Mellanox Technologies announced ASIC-to-Protocol (A2P) customer support solutions for the SONiC Network Operating System (NOS) on Mellanox Spectrum switches.
SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud) is a fully open-sourced NOS for Ethernet switches, first created by Microsoft to run Microsoft Azure and now a community project under the Open Compute Project (OCP). SONiC is built on the Switch Abstraction Interface API (SAI) and breaks down traditional monolithic switch software into agile, microservices-based containerized components. This model accelerates innovation within the NOS and the data center by breaking vendor lock-in and simplifying switch programmability, allowing network operators to choose the best-of-breed switching platforms. SONiC offers a full suite of network functionality—like BGP, ECMP, VXLAN, IPv6, and RDMA—that has been deployed and production-hardened in some of the largest data centers in the world.
Mellanox has been a major contributor to SONiC. Mellanox is now adding SONiC support for customers running large deployments of the SONiC NOS on Mellanox SN2000 and SN3000 switches.
“SONiC is an amazingly versatile and scalable NOS for the data center, and Open Ethernet is an incredibly powerful concept,” said Amit Katz, Vice President of Ethernet Switches, Mellanox Technologies. “Every week we hear from more customers who want to combine the power of SONiC with the best-in-class switch silicon in Mellanox Spectrum. Our unique support offering and vast SONiC experience make this easy for new and existing SONiC customers.”
Yousef Kahlidi, Corporate Vice President, Azure Networking at Microsoft Corp. said, “SONiC delivers scalable and efficient cloud networking that offers one optimized NOS that runs on a variety of best-of-breed switches. Offering support for SONiC on their switches allows Mellanox to bring the benefits of SONiC to a larger customer segment.”
Michael Kagan, CTO and co-founder of Mellanox Technologies, talks about the next step for SmartNICs and the company’s newly released ConnectX-6 Dx product driven by its own silicon.
