PLUMgrid Delivers SDN Services to Connect Docker and OpenStack Clouds

March 29, 2016 Off By David
Object Storage
Grazed from PLUMgrid

PLUMgrid, a leader of secure and scalable SDN and NFV solutions for OpenStack clouds, today announced the latest version of its Open Networking Suite (ONS) 5.0 supporting OpenStack releases, Kilo and Liberty, for enterprises and service providers. Designed to deliver advanced SDN services that meet the production requirements of OpenStack clouds, ONS 5.0 delivers a rich set of new features and tools to simplify deployments and increase operational efficiency.

ONS 5.0 enables data centers with virtual machines, containers, and bare metal architectures to leverage SDN overlays to provide secure micro-segmentation for multi-tenancy, traffic isolation, and policy enforcement. It features SDN support for Docker containers, expanded gateway integration with Cisco Nexus 9000, IPv6, PLUMgrid SmartLogs and many new enhancements. ONS 5.0 further simplifies OpenStack operations with updated drag-and-drop configuration, rich automation, analytics, troubleshooting tools, and breakthrough SDN visualization and monitoring platform, CloudApex.

"The adoption of OpenStack orchestrated SDN is increasing and key requirements include automation, security and multi-tenancy. This is coupled with the increased use of containers for micro-segmented application architectures," said Cliff Grossner Ph.D., senior research director data center, cloud and SDN at IHS. "PLUMgrid, with its unique packaging of applications and virtual networks in a single object for rapid application deployment, is well positioned to meet the requirements of this high-growth market."

As the most integrated SDN solution for OpenStack distributions, PLUMgrid ONS enables clients to leverage existing physical infrastructure to build and automate secure multi-tenant virtual networks with micro-segmentation and reduce network provisioning from weeks to seconds. With fully distributed data planes running IO Visor in-kernel, ONS enables dynamic virtual networking functions, service function chaining, scale-out forwarding, and real-time analytics.

"Cloud networking is adding virtualized network functions and applications at an accelerated rate and ONS is keeping pace with an aggressive iteration cycle," said Pere Monclus, founder and CTO at PLUMgrid. "Adding support for Docker containers provides SDN services that are essential to secure multi-tenant networking. In this complex environment it is critical for data center operations to have a tool such as CloudApex that provides a simplified view of both physical and virtual resources in OpenStack clouds."

SDN for Containers
As container deployments rise, users are seeking advanced virtual networking services that are beyond connectivity. PLUMgrid now offers a SDN plugin for Docker containers at https://github.com/plumgrid/libnetwork-plugin to enable rich networking functions, secure multi-tenancy, multi-host networking, high availability, and distributed scale-out performance for Docker clouds. Furthermore, PLUMgrid ONS has added support for Project Kuryr, an OpenStack initiative that provides container network abstraction for Neutron API. Together, ONS and Project Kuryr enable OpenStack cloud builders to deploy containers, virtual machines, and bare metal architectures in virtual domains.

Expanded Integration with Gateways
As an overlay SDN software suite, PLUMgrid ONS is hardware agnostic with support for any L2 and L3 data center fabric, enabling enterprises to add micro-segmentation on-demand for multi-tenancy. In addition to supporting gateways from Arista Networks and Cumulus Networks, ONS 5.0 introduces gateway support for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series. Through VXLAN Tunnel End Point (VTEP) integration, PLUMgrid delivers unified physical and virtual network infrastructure with simple drag and drop configuration.

Concurrent IPv4 and IPv6
With global depletion of IPv4 addresses, businesses are increasingly mandating support for IPv6. From traditional to virtual networking, IPv6 has become a key requirement for many enterprises and service providers to meet industry compliance. With PLUMgrid ONS, IPv6 can be configured within and between tenant clouds for flexible addressing while IPv4 is running concurrently. With IPv4 and IPv6 support, PLUMgrid ONS helps businesses overcome addressing challenges, meet compliance, expand into new regions, support new applications, and pave the path for new markets such as IoT.

SmartLogs and Toolbox Wizards
PLUMgrid ONS 5.0 introduces a number of smart wizards that check system and connectivity status to ensure workloads and applications have unhindered reachability and access to resources. Examples include Security Policy Connection wizard, the System Resource wizard, Configuration Database wizard, and more. In addition to the new wizards, PLUMgrid introduces SmartLogs, an open source Riemann-based plugin, which distills machine data to actionable log messages for operators to easily correlate, troubleshoot, and resolve cloud-wide issues.

CloudApex Visualization and Monitoring
With ONS 5.0, enterprises can leverage CloudApex, PLUMgrid’s real-time SDN visualization and monitoring platform featuring affinity-based GUI, cloud-wide search, and real-time heat map. CloudApex simplifies monitoring of virtual and physical resources for enterprises by providing an intuitive dashboard view through a single pane of glass.

PLUMgrid at OpenStack Austin Summit
PLUMgrid is a sponsor of the upcoming OpenStack Austin Summit, April 25-26, 2016. Join PLUMgrid’s sessions and visit PLUMgrid’s booth C21 for demos and whiteboard sessions.