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Pluribus Leads SDN-Based Converged Infrastructure Effort
Pluribus Networks Inc., on a mission to advance software-defined networking (SDN), has teamed up with Red Hat Inc. and Super Micro Computer Inc. to demonstrate a converged infrastructure package.
That package features Pluribus' flagship open source-based distributed network hypervisor OS, Netvisor -- specifically Pluribus Open Netvisor Linux (ONVL) -- running on Supermicro MicroBlade servers atop the Red Hat OpenStack platform used for building cloud-based projects.
This converged "best-of-breed" solution can help public and private cloud providers spin up Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) implementations to challenge established vendors, the company said.
"With the Pluribus Open Netvisor Linux operating system, the entire network underlay can be exported as one logical fabric via Neutron plugin and RESTful APIs," exec Sunay Tripathi said in a statement. "Netvisor's [virtual network] VNET-based segmentation allows the fabric to be freely virtualized, with each VNET managed by its own Neutron plugin allowing multiple OpenStack and other cloud management systems to share the same network without impacting each other."
Through OpenStack Horizon dashboard extensions, users can leverage the fabric-wide visibility and analytics functionality of Netvisor, said the company co-founder and current chief technology officer.
"This deep interoperability with OpenStack enables a level of computing and networking convergence only dreamed about several years ago," Tripathi said. "Both NetOps and DevOps teams can take full advantage of our solution without the typical re-learning and forklift-upgrade approaches seen elsewhere."
In the Netvisor approach, a peer-to-peer, high-availability, cluster-based architecture provides the foundation for the Pluribus Software-Defined Fabric. That system makes a fabric-cluster -- the encapsulation of the network to make it look like a single logical switch to other system components such as applications and services.
[Click on image for larger view.] The Pluribus "Network as a Single Logical Switch" Approach (source: Pluribus Networks Inc.)
This approach differs from other vendors in some aspects of SDN, a young technology still evolving with several different components, interpretations and philosophies. While adhering to common SDN tenets such as the separation of network data and control planes, the use of inexpensive, bare-metal (or white box) commodity hardware, and network intelligence moving from hardware devices to the control plane, Pluribus favors a distributed SDN controller over a centralized controller, followed by some other vendors and organizations.
The converged infrastructure project -- which the company said "enables the industry's most granular multi-tenancy support with comprehensive data flow-level visibility to address the need for highly secure transactions across the entire infrastructure" -- is being demonstrated at the Red Hat Summit 2015 conference ending today in Boston. The company is also showing off a project with partner Dell.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.