Open Network Featured Article

PLUMgrid is a company which has been around since 2011 with its name coming from its primary focus of solving the problem of plumbing computer in the data center, which deals with packets. The company’s goal is to make cloud infrastructure simple and secure.

When it comes to building and managing a company’s cloud, the company that provides software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) solutions for OpenStack cloud implementations is there to help with its Open Networking Suite for OpenStack (ONS).

At the end of March, PLUMgrid announced the release of ONS 5.0, the latest version of its Open Networking Suite for OpenStack, which supports OpenStack releases Kilo and Liberty. The main focus of the new release is enterprises and service providers. Designed to simplify deployments and increase operational efficiency, ONS 5.0 is poised to deliver a rich set of new features and tools.

Whether a company is building private, public, or hybrid OpenStack clouds, one of the main requirements is a virtual network infrastructure that is agile, intelligent and resilient. Globally, enterprises and service providers are deploying virtualized compute and storage resources; however there are still network challenges when it comes to enabling fully secure, scalable and automated cloud environments.

Cliff Grossner Ph.D., senior research director of data center, cloud and SDN at HIS, made the following comments: "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. 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."

We have seen that lately container deployments are on the rise and PLUMgrid ONS 5.0 now offers an SDN plugin for Docker containers. This feature is designed to provide productive networking functions, secure multi-tenancy, multi-host networking, high availability, and distributed scale-out performance for Docker clouds.

In a company statement, PLUMgrid founder and CTO Pere Monclus said, "Cloud networking is adding virtualized network functions and applications at an accelerated rate and ONS is keeping pace with an aggressive iteration cycle. 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."

Some of the other enhancements in the latest release include:

• Expanded integration with gateways, with support for Arista Networks, Cumulus Networks and Cisco (News - Alert) Nexus 9000 Series products;
• Concurrent IPv4 and IPv6 capability, so the emerging IPv6 protocol can be configured in and between tenant clouds to provide flexible addressing while the depleting IPv4 protocol is running concurrently;
• Smart wizards for functionality such as security policy connections, system resources and database configuration.