A new OpenDaylight Projectbacked by leading network technology providers aims to ensure an open source framework for Software-Defined Networking (SDN).
Founding members include Big Switch Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, IBM, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Red Hat and VMware. The project is organized by The Linux Foundation.
The OpenDaylight Project said it is committed to furthering adoption of SDN as well as accelerating innovation on top of the platform in new and differentiated ways in a vendor-neutral and open environment where anyone can participate based on the merit of their contributions.
“This is a rare gathering of leaders in the technology ecosystem who have decided to combine efforts in a common platform in order to innovate faster and build better products for their customers,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “The world has learned that collaborative development can quickly drive software innovation, especially in fast moving markets. We are excited to be working with OpenDaylight and expect truly amazing things to come.”
The expansion of data centers and rise of cloud computing in the enterprise coupled with rapidly changing demands on service provider networks is driving companies to look to software-defined solutions to help improve network performance and management, lower costs and increase efficiencies. SDN can enable organizations to achieve these goals through speedy delivery of new cloud, big data, social business and mobile services. OpenDaylight will work to provide an open source platform for products and technologies that expand the intelligence of underlying network infrastructure to make it more responsive to overall IT and service provider demands.
The group will support open standards such as OpenFlow. The first code from the OpenDaylight Project is expected to be released in 3Q13 and expected donations and projects include anopen controller, a virtual overlay network, protocol plug-ins and switch device enhancements. A variety of companies and organizations are already proposing contributions or considering open sourcing key technologies that will be reviewed by theOpenDaylight Technical Steering Committee (TSC) for possible inclusion in the project:
Arista Networks will contribute software and architectural expertise in building large-scale cloud environments to the OpenDaylight Project.
Big Switch Networks is planning to contribute open source elements of its Open SDN Suite to the OpenDaylight Project, including controller code, advanced data store with high availability, distributed virtual routing service applications, network virtualization, network overlays, and other applications.
Brocade has submitted proposals and is working with the community to contribute technologies to provide elastic, on demand services that span the data center and range from storage networking, Ethernet fabric, virtual routing and Layer 4-7 services.
Cisco has contributed controller technology to the Project including an Application Framework and Service Abstraction Layer (SAL). This provides basic controller functionality with support for southbound plug-ins to communicate with network devices using various protocols including OpenFlow, the ability to integrate controller applications as modules, and a set of REST APIs that expose the controller capabilities.
Citrix will contribute an application controller that integrates Layer 4-7 network services for enabling application awareness and comprehensive control into the OpenDaylight Project. This will help simplify network administration by enabling a prescriptive, app-driven approach for defining networking policy and topology and automating network configuration. Citrix has also committed to contributing a plug-in for OpenDaylight into the Apache CloudStack project.
IBM intends to submit an open source version of its Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) technology as its initial contribution. DOVE is designed to work on top of existing network infrastructures to help simplify the process of setting up, managing and scaling virtual networks for faster and more flexible delivery of cloud, analytics, mobile and social business services.
Juniper Networks has proposed to contribute a number of technical elements including XMPP client and server protocol code and a flexible data model to extend and enhance the OpenDaylight Project. Juniper sees OpenDaylight as a valuable means for its customers to get access to a wide range of high-quality SDN functionality.
NEC intends to propose its Virtual Tenant Networking (VTN) model and application in Q2 of 2013, which enables users to create and manage multi-tenant virtual networks.
PLUMgrid will contribute in the area of Virtual Network Infrastructure, including technology and innovative ideas on creating a more flexible framework for network application and services development.
Red Hat is excited to participate in the OpenDaylight Project community to openly build and deliver an SDN solution integrated with OpenStack, Linux and KVM.
