Keysight Technologies is hosting a virtual SONiC Open Source Network Operating System Community Plugfest taking place May – June 2021. The goal is to enable members of the Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) community to validate SONiC across multiple vendors.
SONiC is an open-source network operating system based on Linux that runs on switches from multiple vendors and ASICs.
The Open Community Test Event will include three types of participants:
Customers: Customer Advisory Board (CAB)
Vendors: original design manufacturers (ODMs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and network equipment manufacturers (NEMs)
Test partners: Keysight Technologies and AVIZ Networks
The Plugfest CAB will determine the maturity of SONiC on different hardware platforms from a user perspective. It consists of companies including CTC, LINE, Yahoo! JAPAN, World Wide Technology, Apresia Systems, DMM.com, Zhejiang Lab, Ucloud, Internet Initiative Japan, Macnica, Nissho Electronics, and LinkedIn.
The virtual plugfest will feature three categories of tests to validate each level of system integration: an essential test suite will validate key features listed by the SONiC community; a scale test suite will characterize control and data plane scaling and capacity; and an operation test suite will test performance, failover/failback and deployment in leaf/spine topology. Results of the plugfest will be announced after the conclusion of the event.
“As an early adopter of SONiC, we have been excited to see the community contribute to SONiC’s success,” said Shawn Zandi, Head of Network Engineering at LinkedIn. “This plugfest is an opportunity to validate SONiC readiness and to see how others plan to use SONiC in their environments.”
“The plugfest provides vendors and end users a platform to showcase the maturity of SONiC through a common test framework,” said Dean Lee, senior director, cloud solutions at Keysight Technologies. “While community tests have taken place, this is the first time that each of these groups have the opportunity to understand the maturity of each level of SONiC system integration from an end user’s point of view.”
“The SONiC community welcomes more focus and effort on test,” said Lihua Yuan, Partner Dev Manager Microsoft. “While SONiC has gained wide industry support, this effort offers the end-user community the opportunity to test the key elements of SONiC under diverse conditions including multiple vendors.”
Keysight and Aviz Networks will provide the common test platform used in the plugfest. This platform offers a data center fabric test environment to stress SONiC performance and scale. The test environment can scale in multiple dimensions including the number of hosts/servers, top of rack (TOR) switches, leaf switches and spine switches to simulate a hyperscale data center environment.
