News
Midokura Open Sources Software-Defined Networking Product
MidoNet is used chiefly for SDN on the OpenStack cloud platform.
Midokura knows that it's taking a risk by open sourcing code it has spent much time and money developing. But the company believes it's the best move for everyone, and as of this week, its software-defined networking SDN product, MidoNet, is free for anyone to download, use and modify.
MidoNet is described by Midokura in a press release as a "highly distributed, de-centralized, multi-layer software-defined virtual network solution and the industry's first truly open vendor-agnostic network virtualization solution available today for the OpenStack Community." The MidoNet stack includes logical switching, logical routing, logical firewall protection and a logical load balancer. It also comes with its own RESTful API for integrating into other cloud platforms. OpenStack is a rapidly-growing, open source platform mainly in use for building private clouds.
Midokura says that the impetus for open sourcing its intellectual property is concern over vendors building out their own versions of Neutron (the SDN project within the OpenStack platform). "The OpenStack Neutron community is quite fractured because multiple vendors are trying to sell proprietary solutions and thus have little incentive to invest in the default, which remains unfit for production," Dan Mihai Dumitriu, co-founder and CEO of Midokura, stated in the release. "We decided to resolve the cognitive dissonance by open sourcing MidoNet, and making it a truly community driven project."
Of course, Midokura also has interest beyond just helping the OpenStack community, Dumitriu admitted; giving away source code also encourages others to use it, broadening the potential customer base. If they like MidoNet, Midokura hopes those users will consider upgrading to higher levels of service through a subscription model that costs $1,899 per year, per host, for the Enterprise version.
A "Quickstart Bundle" is also being offered at $10,000. That gets five hosts installed with the Enterprise version, and six months of software and support.
MidoNet was open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license. Midokura said it will govern the project initially, but it is open to handing over management of MidoNet to another organization in time, including OpenStack, OpenDaylight or a newly-created body.
The MidoNet source code is now available on the GitHub repository.
About the Author
Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.