Shaun Walsh digs into some key differences between industry acronyms that is causing confusion in the industry – aka ‘acronym soup.’ Everything from network fabric virtualization (NFV), to software defined networking (SDN), to overlay networking (OVN) to virtual network functions (VNF). He breaks through the confusion, explains the differences and the similarities between some of these industry terms, as well as how Emulex fits into the mix.

1. Acronym Soup

2. Network Function Virtualization (NFV)
Network Function Virtualization (NFV) – an alternative design
approach for building complex telecom or service provider
solutions that virtualizes entire classes of functions into
building blocks that may be connected, or chained, together to
create services and deployed on industry standard hardware.
Examples include border gateways and routers, session
controllers and voice services, security appliances and
application delivery systems.
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© 2013 Emulex Corporation

3. Building NFV Solutions
Industry Call to Action for Telecom Networking
Source: AT&T, BT, CentryLink, China Mobile, Colt, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI, NTT, Orange, Telefonica,
Telecom Italia, Telstra, Verizon
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© 2013 Emulex Corporation

4. High Performance Packet Processing for
Network Function Virtualization
…
…
Services on Demand
–
Next Gen Services 1
–
Commercial off-the-shelf IT platforms can host
a variety of network applications
New virtualization technologies allows
abstraction and automation
Software Defined Networking benefits NFV
Data Plane Appliance n
–
Data Plane Appliance 1
Industry trends towards NFV
Control Plane Appliance
New paradigm for carrier networks
New products for
Hypervisor
Mobile network nodes
Virtualized home environments
Tunneling
Traffic analysis
Converged network-wide functions
Application-level optimization
Security functions
x86 Servers
or MicroServers
Emulex NVeX
Reduced network costs, increased time to
market, platform for innovation
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SURF
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
© 2013 Emulex Corporation
Hyper-V

5. Network Function Virtualization (NFV)
Software defined networking (SDN) – an emerging software
architecture for networking infrastructure that separates the
data plane, control plane and application plane and centralizes
their management for greater flexibility, lower cost, improved
process efficiency and simplified management.
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© 2013 Emulex Corporation

6. Software Defined Network (OpenFlow)
The controller acts as an interface between the physical network and the SDN layer
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© 2013 Emulex Corporation

7. SDN versus/with OVN
Software Defined
Networking
Virtual Network Functions
Overlay Networks
• Affects the Network
infrastructure and how
traffic is forwarded
• Affects the Hypervisor and
how VMs communicate with
each other
• Switch Vendors already
invested a lot
• Users need specialized
Hardware and a SDN
Controller
• VXLAN = VMware
• NVGRE = Windows
• No special Hardware
needed but
Emulex/Skyhawk boosts
performance
• Admins can easily
manage traffic flows from
a single GUI
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• Emulex is lead Vendor for
HW offload for both
Microsoft and VMware
© 2013 Emulex Corporation

8. Flow
Database
VNF API
OpenFlow
Quantum
OpenStack Player n
Network
Objects
Network
Hypervisor
Layer
Ecosystem Overview – SDN
Virtual Networks Vs. OpenFlow
Servers, vSwitches, VEB, NICs
Standard Network Objects
SDN is the network hypervisor layer
SDN manages two classes of devices
– Standard network object (forwarding tables in switches, routers, etc.)
– New VNF objects such as servers, vSwitches, and VNF NICs
– Emulex provides VNF NICs
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© 2013 Emulex Corporation

9. Virtual Network Functions
VNF=OVN
Virtual Network Functions (VFN) or Overlay Networks (OVN) – a
layered networking protocol that virtualizes a network on top of
one or more other networks typically using encapsulation and
tunneling techniques to increase scalability, portability of
devices or offer features/services not available in the original
network. Examples include SST, NV-GRE, VxLAN and the
internet protocol (IP)
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© 2013 Emulex Corporation

10. Virtual Network Functions/Overlay Networks
Current Networks
192.168.3.25
192.168.3.24
Overlay Networks
192.168.3.23
192.168.3.23
192.168.3.23
Hypervisor
192.168.3.24
192.168.3.25
Overlay Network 192.168.3.X
Subnet A
Subnet B
10.10.10.X
Problem: VM Identifier = Location
10.10.11.X
Solution: VXLAN, NVGRE, and/or…
Having the VM Identifier equal to the identifier makes it
difficult to have a true virtual environment
No complex network reconfigurations or vendor
lock-in
Currently VMs can be easily moved inside a network
segment
Scales to millions of unique identifiers
As virtual environments grow, limiting VM mobility to a
single segment creates inefficiencies
Preserves all investment in networking
engineering & design
Hardware offload in the server is required for lower
cost overlay network designs
Need to scale beyond the 4,096 VLAN limitation
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© 2013 Emulex Corporation

11. Where the OCe14000 “Fits In”
Outer
MAC DA
Outer
MAC SA
Outer
801.1Q Tag
Outer IP
DA
Outer IP
SA
Outer
UDP
VNI VXLAN ID
(24 bits)
Inner
MAC DA
Inner
MAC SA
Optional Inner
802.1Q Tag
Emulex OCe14000 Encapsulates
VXLAN & NVGRE Packets
Outer
MAC
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Outer IP
Header (DA)
GRE Header
(Includes 24 Bit TNI)
Inner
MAC
Inner IP
Header (CA)
© 2013 Emulex Corporation
TCP Header
TCP User Data
Optional
Ethernet L2
Frame

12. SDN and Overlay Network Collateral
White papers:
– Overlay Networks – VMware VXLAN
– Overlay Networks – Microsoft NVGRE
Tech Brief:
– VMware VXLAN compatible hardware offload and integrated API
technology— scalable, secure and L3 support
Click Here To
Open
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Click Here To
Open
Click Here To
Open
© 2013 Emulex Corporation