10 Software-Defined Networking Architectures
, September 27, 2013 Software-defined networking is a hot topic for debate in the industry. Experts argue about the best way to implement it, the ways it might affect network engineers and administrators, and how it might disrupt the traditional power structure in the networking industry. While there are a lot of opinions about this emerging technology, there's one inescapable fact: SDN has brought new attention and innovation to the network. To get a view into the various approaches to SDN, we asked 10 vendors to supply images and short descriptions of their SDN technology. While there's some marketing fluff in some of the write-ups, the images provide a window into the wide range of technical approaches to SDN.
VMware NSX
The VMware NSX network virtualization platform provides a programmatic and mobile virtual network, deployed on top of any general purpose IP network hardware. The VMware NSX platform combines Nicira NVP and VMware vCloud Network and Security (vCNS) into one platform. VMware NSX exposes a suite of simplified virtual networking elements and services including virtual switches, routers, firewalls, load balancers, VPN, QoS, monitoring, and security; arranged in any topology with isolation and multi-tenancy through programmable APIs -- deployed on top of any physical IP network fabric, resident with any compute hypervisor, connecting to any external network, and consumed by any cloud management platform (e.g. vCloud, OpenStack, CloudStack). NSX is scheduled to become available in the fourth quarter of this year.
