Cisco Insieme - Nexus 9000 - Nexus 9K - N9K

I happened to read this post about CISCO Nexus 9K product a high speed high density switch at 40G http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cisco-nexus-9000-aimed-40g

The best part i liked is the comment section, scroll all the way down to the page and enjoy.

"Interesting considering the paint isnt even dry on the 7700. Given the 7700 launch, one might think they could have waited another year for the custom asics to be ready. I guess we will know for sure soon enough"

NFV (Network Function Virtualization)

I came across few commercial solutions to justify the buzz word NFV, where a merchant silicon function of FPGA,ASICs are moved on to the software and a very good example is in below video where Mobile Core Packet Network (EPC - Evolved Packet Core) is virtualized as software

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/corporate/mobile-world-congress-2013/mwc-evolved-packet-core.html


http://www.sdncentral.com/companies/6wind-nfv-interview-2013/2013/08/

Some other network function virtualization i can recognize are

• Any critical data plane traffic could be a good candidate for NFV
• DPI ( Deep Packet Inspection) 
• Switching (OVS is now part of linux)
• See 6WINDGate ; Maximizing the switching performance of the virtual switch to provide high-bandwidth to the VNF running in VMs thereby increasing the aggregated bandwidth delivered to the VMs. Second, it accelerates the data plane performance of each VNF
• A good use case is : In any traditional network each hardware does a separate function in a network, in the newer NFV based network multi-tenant solutions solved CAPEX and OPEX 

Another good example of open source project NFV-IMS (i.e)Virtualize the IP Multimedia subsystem network components see http://www.projectclearwater.org/

http://www.sdncentral.com/news/nfv-comes-life-sdn-openflow-world-congress/2013/10/

Point of sale - Solutions

Came across http://www.lightspeedretail.com/compare/

Looks cool

List of OpenFlow Software Projects

(I am trying to keep a running list of all OpenFlow-related software projects where either the bits or the source are available online. If you know of one that I'm missing, please e-mail me and I'll include it)
Switch Software and Stand-Alone OpenFlow Stacks

Open vSwitch: (C/Python) Open vSwitch is a an OpenFlow stack that is used both as a vswitch in virtualized environments and has been ported to multiple hardware platforms. It is now part of the Linux kernel (as of 3.3).
OpenFlow Reference: (C) The OpenFlow reference implementation is a minimal OpenFlow stack that tracks the spec.
Pica8: (C) An open switch software platform for hardware switching chips that includes an L2/L3 stack and support for OpenFlow.
Indigo: (C) Indigo is a for-hardware-switching OpenFlow implementation based on the Stanford reference implementation.
Pantou: (C) Pontou is an OpenFlow port to the OpenWRT wireless environment.
OpenFaucet: (Python) OpenFaucet is a pure Python implementation of the OpenFlow 1.0.0 protocol, based on Twisted. OpenFaucet can be used to implement both switches and controllers in Python.
OpenFlowJ: (Java) OpenFlow stack written in Java.
Oflib-node: (Javascript) Oflib-node is an OpenFlow protocol library for Node. It converts between OpenFlow wire protocol messages and Javascript objects.
Nettle: (Haskell) OpenFlow library written in Haskell.
Controller Platforms

POX: (Python) Pox as a general SDN controller that supports OpenFlow. It has a high-level SDN API including a queriable topology graph and support for virtualization.
MUL: (C) MūL, is an openflow (SDN) controller. It has a C based muli-threaded infrastructure at its core. It supports a multi-level north bound interface for hooking up applications. It is designed for performance and reliability which is the need of the hour for deployment in mission-critical networks.
NOX: (C++/Python) NOX was the first OpenFlow controller.
Jaxon: (Java) Jaxon is a NOX-dependent Java-based OpenFlow Controller.
Trema: (C/Ruby) Trema is a full-stack framework for developing OpenFlow controllers in Ruby and C.
Beacon: (Java) Beacon is a Java-based controller that supports both event-based and threaded operation.
Floodlight: (Java) The Floodlight controller is Java-based OpenFlow Controller. It was forked from the Beacon controller, originally developed by David Erickson at Stanford.
Maestro: (Java) Maestro is an OpenFlow "operating system" for orchestrating network control applications.
NDDI - OESS: OESS is an application to configure and control OpenFlow Enabled switches through a very simple and user friendly User Interface.
Ryu: (Python) Ryu is an open-sourced Network Operating System (NOS) that supports OpenFlow.
NodeFlow (JavaScript) NodeFlow is an OpenFlow controller written in pure JavaScript for Node.JS.
ovs-controller (C) Trivial reference controller packaged with Open vSwitch.
Special Purpose Controllers

RouteFlow RouteFlow, is an open source project to provide virtualized IP routing services over OpenFlow enabled hardware. RouteFlow is composed by an OpenFlow Controller application, an independent RouteFlow Server, and a virtual network environment that reproduces the connectivity of a physical infrastructure and runs IP routing engines (e.g. Quagga).
Flowvisor (Java) FlowVisor is a special purpose OpenFlow controller that acts as a transparent proxy between OpenFlow switches and multiple OpenFlow controllers.
SNAC (C++) SNAC is an OpenFlow controller builton NOX, which uses a web-based policy manager to manage the network.
Resonance Resonance is a Network Access Control application built using NOX and OpenFlow.
Oflops (C) OFlops (OpenFLow Operations Per Second) is a standalone controller that benchmarks various aspects of an OpenFlow switch.
Misc

STS SDN Troubleshooting Simulator
FlowScale FlowScale is a project to divide and distribute traffic over multiple physical switch ports. FlowScale replicates the functionality in load balancing appliances but using a Top of Rack (ToR) switch to distribute traffic.
NICE-OF NICE is a tool to test OpenFlow controller application for the NOX controller platform.
OFTest OFTest is a Python based OpenFlow switch test framework and collection of test cases. It is based on unittest which is included in the standard Python distribution.
Mirage Mirage is an exokernel for constructing secure, high-performance network applications across a variety of cloud computing and mobile platforms. Apparently, it supports OpenFlow.
Wakame VDC (Ruby) IaaS platform that uses OpenFlow for the networking portion.
ENVI ENVI is a GUI framework that was designed as an extensible platform which can provide the foundation of many interesting OpenFlow-related networking visualizations.
NS3 (C++/Python) NS3 is a network simulator. It has openflow support built in to emulate an openflow environment and also it can be used for real-time simulations.

Network Visibility Controller

Virtualized network traffic Visibility

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzSU7feB-I4

• ·         Traffic on the physical host can be tapped from a physical port on the host or by spanning

• ·         Netoptics phanthom vTap: monitoring at kernel level instead of SPAN or port mirror traffic from the port.

FPGA vs Network Processor

http://www.nallatech.com/
http://www.aliathon.com/

vFabric VMWare

VMWare have a vFabric appinsignt product for network monitoring used for performance management

• A probeVM  has to be installed into each host (ESXi) where the application component is installed
• These probes send DPI information on network traffic and sends the information to AppInsight server
• Login into app insight as admin and install probe into the host
• Choose the proper switch and switch to monitor traffic

SOAP vs REST

My take on REST vs SOAP

REST

• REST can be consumed by any client, web browser with ajax and javascript
• REST is lightweight
• No XML parsing required
• Has less bandwidth, SOAP headers are heavy payload

• HTTP GET operations are safe in REST
• REST are mostly stateless 
• Good for web services, light weight no xml parsing systems
• Exposes data over internet

 SOAP

• SOAP is more like a RPC, where REST is not
• SOAP / WSDL  can be used to generate client side code unlike REST where HTTP code has to be developed
• SOAP can be asynchronous in nature, REST are http based and need asynchronous implementation
• HTTP/HTTPS layer  need not be developed like REST
• REST have no contract - prone to go wrong in integration of systems
• SOAP have contract - can be discovered easily
• Good for enterprise services - system integrations
• Asynchronous processing
• Stateful with contract to systems

SOA - An Architect View

SOA [ Service Oriented Architecture ]
"SOA = Loose Coupling"

Trying to pen down my important markings of SOA and how to approach.

1. Architects  mostly uses an existing product(s) to build solution to address an specific problem
2. Said that, mostly uses existing products(s) , at times have to fill in the requirements from BA (business analyst ) and provide an overall high level needs for building newer products - which goes to the product engineering teams
3. Data Layer is the most important of below - always insisted to use standardized data format for communication
4. Technology Layers  SOAP/HTTP with JSON/XML brings values to standardize
5. LOOSE COUPLING of systems and components are key here as i had quoted right above in the first
6. Note : Key SOA solutions are not just ESBs

Read  carefully below diagram two layers of solution design, before that always remember

Technology Layer Break down of components

1. Service Container : where data is translated (if needed) to meaningful relational information an example is to translate multi-system information into standardized representation for services, Adapters are used for this translation of data
2. Broker : is an adapter to ship data from one system to another
3. Process coordinator : processing or warehousing of data and flow are handled here

Costly Mistake

1. Many a times the processing of data like business logic are done by broker instead of service container
2. Also at times broker used in place of process co-ordinator

Loose Coupling

1. Data in one system means different in another system, always represent the data and the meta data for specific system
2. Map domain data to message data
3. Eliminate unnecessary dependencies

Following Arista

I have following arista for last year and jotting down their product scope and my understanding for future references.

• Arista a spun out from cisco-Ex, have good presence in the market and heard quite a bit times often
• Arista EOS is equivalent or better than Cisco IOS / Nx-OS
• I have personally not any experienced the usage difference, but i am a Nx-OS guy
• Will evaluate and report - when i get a chance
• Artista moved from switch to relevant areas in market space similar and aligning to their business
• Network TAP/ SPAN or Network Packet Brokering market aka network visibility
• Tie up with big data companies to produce data feeds to analytic software (http://www.aristanetworks.com/en/products/eos/network-tracers)
• Arista Introduces Next Generation 7050X Products,Provides Telemetry and Cloud Network Leaf
• http://www.aristanetworks.com/en/news/pressrelease/630-pr-20131002-01

Bigdata Market share

"Every dog has it day", said that , here is the piece of pie for each big data , official report.

Splunk                 $186 million        Turns machine data into valuable insights

Opera Solutions $118                     Data-Science-as-a-Service

Mu Sigma            $114                       Data-Science-as-a-Service

Palantir                 $78                         Big data software

Cloudera              $61                         Apache Hadoop-based software, services and training

Actian                   $46                         Big data applications, analytics engine, and Ingres database

1010data              $37                         Cloud-based analytics

10gen                    $36                         MongoDB (open-source, document database)

Alteryx                 $36                         Big data analytics platform

Guavus                 $35                         Big data analytics solutions