News

Dell Technologies Unveils Open Source Enterprise SONiC Offerings

• By David Ramel
• 05/13/2020

Dell Technologies announced a new Enterprise SONiC Distribution based on the Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) open source project.

SONiC is a Linux-based open source network OS that can run on switches from multiple vendors and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Originally founded by Microsoft (the Azure cloud is based on SONiC), it's now under the direction of the Open Compute Project (OCP), which this week is holding on online conference at which the news was announced.

Dell Technologies has been active in contributing to the project in several ways, including development and contributions around the Linux kernel. Yesterday the firm announced Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies, a set of solutions that it claims to be the first commercial SONiC version that provides enterprise-ready features along with global company support for large-scale environments.

SONiC tech -- based on a disaggregated, containerized, micro-services architecture that provides network functionality such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and remote direct memory access (RDMA) -- is now integrated into Dell EMC PowerSwitch Open Networking hardware.

"Dell Technologies has introduced a commercially-supported version of SONiC, offering tight integration to other Dell solutions and a clear roadmap designed, to not only support the hyperscalers of the world but also larger enterprises," the firm quoted Bob Laliberte, an ESG analyst, as saying. "As Dell continues to help customers with its open networking portfolio, its SONiC solution provides those organizations that have lacked the resources to adopt open source solutions the ability to take advantage of flexible, open source architectures."