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.
The Agilio server-based networking solutions include:
- Production-ready Agilio Software currently supports OVS v2.3 and v2.4, with support for OVS v2.5, Linux Firewall, and the Juniper Networks Contrail vRouter expected during the first half of 2016. The Agilio host software package is open sourced, has been up-streamed to relevant Linux repositories and is available at https://github.com/Netronome/nfp-drv-kmods
- The Agilio CX family of intelligent server adapters includes standard PCIe Gen3 low-profile adapter cards for customer deployments. 10 and 40GbE configurations of the intelligent server adapters are in production now, with additional 25, 40 and 50GbE configurations expected to sample during the middle of 2016
“While server-based networking is providing higher efficiency and scale for the world’s largest data centers, the need for SDN and network functions virtualization (NFV) is accelerating the demand for increased performance across the broad spectrum of cloud-based data centers,” said Niel Viljoen, co-founder and CEO of Netronome. “The purpose-built Agilio platform uniquely addresses a critical inflection point in the industry caused by rapid software innovations in server-based networking on one side, and the burgeoning cost of compute on the other, resulting in the rise of heterogeneous computing.”