Netronome introduced a P4 and C compliant Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for dynamically programming new networking capabilities on its Agilio CX and LX family of intelligent server adapters (ISAs).
The news is significant because bringing SDN capabilities into a server NIC could help identify and resolve tenant application performance bottlenecks rapidly, enabling cloud service providers to maintain high levels of user experience.
For telco NFV deployments, Netronome said its solution enables a significantly higher degree of dynamic data center traffic observability, helping telco operators to pinpoint issues related to call drops or poor call and video quality in 4G and 5G networks. AT&T and Netronome are presenting and demonstrating this use case at the P4 Language Consortium workshop this week at Stanford University.
The P4 Language Consortium, of which Netronome is an active member, is currently developing specifications for the P4 programming language and associated compilers.The Netronome IDE leverages the Consortium’s open source P4 compiler to deliver 10 Gbps to 100 Gbps performance for popular data center networking functions using the Agilio server networking platform. Extensions developed by Netronome also enable integration with optional C-based programming for sophisticated functions such as stateful processing.
“Server-based networking has evolved as the most widely deployed form of SDN; its fundamental tenets are feature velocity and control – important requirements for data center operators,” said Sujal Das, senior vice president and general manager, marketing and corporate strategy. “As a pioneer in hardware-accelerated, server-based networking solutions, we take great pride in being the first in the industry with shipping products that can truly help customers realize the value of integrated P4 and C programming for their data center applications.”
A beta release of the Netronome IDE with Programmer Studio v6.0 featuring P4 and C programming on Agilio CX and LX ISAs is available.
Netronome Brings Hardware-Acceleration to OpenStack Networking
Netronome has tuned its Agilio Server Networking Platform for delivering hardware-acceleration for OpenStack networking, allowing data centers to accelerate applications such as network virtualization, security, load balancing and telemetry using different data plane options suitable for use cases spanning traditional IT to IaaS and Telco NFV workloads. Netronome’s own testing has found a 5X boost in VM performance when network functions are offloaded to its Agilio interface cards.
At this week’s OpenStack Summit in Austin, Netronome, in collaboration with Ericsson and Mirantis, is showcasing acceleration of open source datapath implementations, specifically, Open vSwitch (OVS), Stateful Firewall (Connection Tracking) and OpenContrail vRouter using Agilio CX intelligent server adapters. The company said this approach will be incorporated as an enhanced OpenStack networking plug-in architecture specification. As a result, critical networking functions that would otherwise hamper performance of the OpenStack implementation are offloaded to the Agilio platform, accommodating significantly more virtual machines per server leading to up to 6X lower TCO and higher services revenue per server compared to traditional NICs.
http://www.netronome.com
Netronome’s Agilio Server Networking Accelerates Cloud Data Centers
Netronome introduced its Agilio Server Networking Platform for transparently offloading server-based networking data paths, such as open virtual switch (OVS), Juniper Networks Contrail vRouter, and Linux firewall.
The company said its hardware and software-based Agilio platform delivers up to 5X higher throughput while reducing CPU requirements by up to 80 percent compared to traditional NICs and server-based networking implemented in software.
Server-based networking is being widely deployed in cloud data centers to handle virtualization, firewalls, load balancing, telemetry, zero-trust security using micro-segmentation, virtual network functions (VNFs) and application-based analytics. The big cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google) are using server-based networking in their mega data centers. Netronome’s Agilio solution accelerates such server-based networking functions by offloading compute-intensive flow and tunnel processing from the CPUs.
The Agilio CX intelligent server adapters (ISAs) are based on Netronome’s own flow processing silicon (NFP-4000) and software architecture (Agilio Software). The Agilio ISAs use onboard memory to support up to two million security policies, and deliver 28Mpps of throughput using hardware-based acceleration.
