2014 Redefining the Data Center: White-Box Networking Jennifer Casella October 9, 2014 #GHC

Agenda  Data Center Background  Open Compute Project  Open Switch Hardware Specifications  Open Switch Software Components  Network Automation

2014 Data Center Background  Several companies, businesses and organizations are looking to data centers as means to store large amounts of data and house networking infrastructure equipment  Recent customer demand for open source in the data center is gaining momentum  “As data centers grow in size and complexity, traditional tools are proving too slow or too cumbersome to handle that expansion.”

2014 OCP  Open Compute Project (OCP) developed by Facebook in 2011 −Aims to redefine the data center with increased efficiency and customizability, at reduced costs −Network, Compute and Storage −Open Rack, HW Management, Data Center Design  Goes hand-in-hand with Software Defined Networking (SDN), but NOT the same thing

2014 Open Switch Requirements  Three requirements need to be met in order to make a white-box network switch feasible in the data center: −Ability to program switching ASIC −Initial installation option (ONIE) −OS support for HW platform

2014 Hardware Specifications  Merchant silicon – “off the shelf” chip components, specifically Application Specific Integrated Chips (ASICs) −Encoding −Forwarding lookups −Queueing −ACLs  Port density (10G server connectivity; 40G uplinks) −SFP+/QSFP+  Management, Power, Cooling  Several switch designs proposed for OCP: −Mellanox −Broadcom −Alpha Networks −Accton −Intel

2014 Broadcom Leaf Switch

2014 Broadcom Spine Switch

2014 Broadcom Switch Components  Trident II Switch (TIIS): mainboard that interfaces with DPP/CAP/IO Modules  Control and Application Processor (CAP) Module: runs Broadcom SDK and network OS to program TIIS  IO Modules: −Quad 10G −Hex 40G  Data Plane Processor (DPP) Module (optional): enables specialized network functions

2014 Broadcom Switch Block Diagram

2014 Software Components  Each switch supplied with a Software Development Kit (SDK) that contains drivers to implement interfaces to control the OCP platform  Software components: −ONIE compatible boot loader −Network OS −Open Ethernet Switch APIs −Platform interfaces

2014 Software Components cont’d

2014 Open Ethernet Switch APIs  Merchant switch silicon devices supplied with a proprietary SDK  Protocol driven SW stacks need to implement a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) to isolate its unified code from the vendor specific logic −Each HW vendor should provide a glue layer between OES and its SDK APIs −The SDK and glue logic will be responsible for implementing HW specific logic

2014 OCP Platform Control

2014 ONIE  Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) −Firmware installed on a management subsystem of white-box switches installed for automated network OS provisioning −Linux/BusyBox foundation −Combination boot loader/small operating system Targets to enable administrators to deploy network OS’s in the same way servers are provisioned When a switch boots for the first time, ONIE will locate and execute network OS installation program ONIE will be bypassed on subsequent boots, and made available only for the purpose of un-install/re-install operations ONIE utilizes the CPU complex of the switch, not the forwarding plane

2014 ONIE First Boot Up Operation

2014 ONIE Subsequent Boots Operation

2014 Network OS Discovery/Installation

2014 Network Automation  ONIE aids in the automation of large scale data center switch provisioning  Several configuration management/network automation tools: −Puppet −Chef −CFEngine −Salt −Ansible

2014 Summary  OCP aims at redefining the data center with increased efficiency and customizability, at reduced costs  White-box switches will enable administrators to select the network operating system they want to run on their switches (making a switch function as a server would)  Certain requirements need to be met for a white-box switch: −Ability to program switching ASIC −Initial installation option (ONIE) −OS support for HW platform  Many options exist for the purpose of controlling network build, deployment and management in parallel with white-box switches

2014 Resources      /Software-Defined-Networking- Solutions/OCP-Open-Switch /Software-Defined-Networking- Solutions/OCP-Open-Switch  (OCP 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet Switch Platform Management Demo)