Picking the Right Spots for SDN

Businesses with a traditional data center may think software-defined networking a bad fit.
Certain SDN products, though, can augment an incumbent network to boost efficiency.

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WHERE DO SDN
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Making SDN Work for You

Its easy for an IT admin to be stubborn

when it comes to embracing a technology like
software-defined networking. Perhaps it seems
like installing SDN would be disruptive and not
worth the time, effort and money, or maybe the
benefits to your network seem minimal.
In this guide, data center and networking
expert Keith Townsend writes about some of
the misconceptions that plague the technology
and offers up a look at examples of SDN that
improve service but dont add hassles. First,
he examines two SDN technologies: softwaredefined WAN (SD-WAN) and network function
virtualization (NFV). SD-WAN products bring
together the power of big data analytics and
traditional networking, and are helpful in making real-time decisions on traffic management.
With NFV, Townsend notes the benefits of virtualization, including eliminating technician
visits and decreasing the time needed to provision new services.

PICKING THE RIGHT SPOTS FOR SDN

Next, TechTargets Stephen J. Bigelow writes

that software-defined applicationswhich
work in a software-defined networking environmentcan help businesses take advantage
of horizontal scaling. Bigelow reminds users
that a software-defined app cannot operate
without control over the data center or cloudbased infrastructure.
Microsoft will be entering the SDN enterprise market in the third quarter of 2016,
TechTargets Antone Gonsalves writes. With
the companys Azure Stack product, released
in conjunction with Windows Server 2016,
Microsoft is aiming to become a player in SDN,
although analysts tell Gonsalves it may take
time for the company to hit its stride. n
Dan Cagen
Associate Features Editor
Data Center and Virtualization Media Group
TechTarget

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Where Do SDN Products Fit In?

If you look around your data center and

see a traditional core, aggregation and access
layer design, it might seem that softwaredefined networking wouldnt fit. Theres also
a notion that SDN is driven by new initiatives, such as private cloud. These are common
misconceptions.
SDN is a broad term that encompasses a wide
selection of technologies. Two use cases for
SDN that should interest many network managers are software-defined WAN (SD-WAN)
and network function virtualization (NFV).

SD-WAN BRINGS OPTIONS

SD-WAN improves service while reducing

costs. Dynamically sending network traffic over
the appropriate link has vexed network engineers for years. The first thought is to compare SD-WAN to policy-based routing (PBR).
In PBR, engineers take an artisanal approach

PICKING THE RIGHT SPOTS FOR SDN

to traffic management; its not uncommon

for organizations to abandon the effort out of
frustration.
SD-WAN products combine the power of
big data analytics and traditional networking.
They monitor traffic flows and network latency
and jitter making real-time decisions on traffic management. A common comparison to
SD-WAN is voice traffic management. A PBR
approach may dictate leveraging a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) connection for all
voice traffic and a lower-quality Internet VPN
for non-latency sensitive traffic. This isnt a
hard-and-fast rule; if an MPLS connection is
congested on the far side, the Internet VPN is
the more viable option.
Trying to create a routing policy for this type
of dynamic traffic routing wasnt feasibleat
least not until SD-WAN vendors combined the
power of general compute with inexpensive
network links. Using real-time traffic analysis,

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middleboxes direct traffic over the best available link.

The list of SD-WAN vendors is long. The
Packet Pushers track a list of about 20 vendors in this market. Some vendors provide the
traffic analysis and flow control rules as part
of a software as a service (SaaS) offering. SaaS
offerings are quick to deploy, as theres no need
to rely on customer-side server infrastructure
for analysis. Other options offer some sort of
central controller that maintains link state and
the routing tree. Almost every SD-WAN provider advertises simple deployment, with traditional interior routing protocols replaced by
proprietary algorithms calculated in a controller node.

DEPLOYING NFV

Network function virtualization (NFV) is

another area that network managers should
investigate. By virtualizing edge devices, carriers reduce the overall cost of managing
infrastructure and provide better service to
customers. The savings come from deploying
new middleboxes to edge locations.

PICKING THE RIGHT SPOTS FOR SDN

Without using NFV, provisioning new customers may require configuring and deploying new equipment to edge devices. It can be
expensive to deploy new equipment; the equipment itself and a technicians installation visit
both add expenses. NFV eliminates the technicians visit while decreasing provisioning
time for new services. To start a new service or
increase capacity, a carrier spins up a new VM
running a particular NFV instance.
Similar advantages exist for business customers as well. Configuring non-switching
devices is time-consuming for network managers. From load balancers to firewalls, a lot of
time is spent deploying and managing hardware
that could benefit from abstraction.
Using firewalls as an example, its common to
go into an environment and see a design with
two VMs residing on the same physical host
communicating via an external firewall. Its
just as common to see that the license of port
on the physical firewall is 100Mbps. Theres
no technical reason for maintaining a physical
firewalla virtualized firewall is just as secure,
more efficient and easier to maintain.
Assuming licensing is the same, network

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performance would improve as you flatten the

network without making changes to the physical route and switching underlay. In addition,
customers realize all the advantages of virtualization. Prior to an upgrade, an engineer can
clone the firewall, place it in an isolated virtual
network and test new configurations. During
the change window, a snapshot of the NFVbased firewall is taken. If the upgrade fails,
recovery is as simple as reverting the snapshot.
Recreating this capability in a physical network
is daunting and expensive.
A common question is the segregation of
security controls between the server group and

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the network organization. Modern virtualization platforms allow for segregated control of
VMs between groups. For example, VMware
vSphere allows organizations to create vCenter
security groups that allow only the network
group to delete, rename or edit NFV devices.
The controls are granular.
Dont let the label of SDN prevent you from
adopting technologies that both reduce cost
and make managing your network easier. Both
SD-WAN and NFV are examples of technologies that arent particularly difficult to
implement or disruptive to current operating
models. Keith Townsend

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Using Software-Defined Applications

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Software-defined applications are

designed to perform a task in a softwaredefined networking environment. SDN apps
and infrastructure promise data centers more
flexibility, efficiency and resiliency than virtualization and monolithic app designs.
Moving beyond virtualization, which
includes a largely manual provisioning process that can be time-consuming and rife
with errors, containers offer a more modular
approach to application development. Developers assemble a software-defined application
from a series of independent modules, or components, called microservices. Each microservice runs in a container and communicates via
APIs. Those APIs make microservices work,
giving containerized components a route to
pass data and commands between the functional modules that create the working application. IT teams automate deployment, monitor
performance and scale components by spinning

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up additional containers and load-balancing

API traffic between apps. Unused containers can be shut down, which saves computing
resources.
While there are benefits, a software-defined
application cannot function without some
degree of control over the data center or cloudbased infrastructure.

THE RESOURCES BEHIND THE APPS

Infrastructure monitoring and automation

software define and manage VMs, containers, storage instances, network segments and
other elements needed to deploy and scale
application components in line with established benchmarks and policies. For example, if
an applications queuing system performance
drops below acceptable speeds, the softwaredefined infrastructure automatically spins up
additional, temporary queuing components on

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any available server. While any app may grow

or shrink over time, this level of self-service,
orchestrated scaling is important for erratic or
unpredictable workloads.
In this way, APIs arent just a staple of
software-defined applications; they also form
a foundation for software-defined infrastructures. Without API behaviors to determine
when additional performance is needed and
then initiate action to remediate the situation, IT professionals would need to constantly
monitor and adjust resources assigned to an
application.
Software-defined applications and infrastructure increasingly embrace the notion of
horizontal versus vertical scaling. Traditional
applications rely on vertical scaling, which
increases resources allocated to a principal
software instance. Horizontal scaling, on the
other hand, duplicates application component
instancesusually built as microservicesas
demand for that functionality increases.
Horizontal scaling is the more attractive approach because it better enables monitoring
and automation. For example, when monitoring
reveals that a components time-to-service API

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calls are too low, a software-defined infrastructure automatically duplicates one or more componentsand load-balances API trafficso
those additional components work together to
handle the increased application work.
Conversely, if monitoring reveals that API
calls are easily handled with resources to spare,
the software-defined infrastructure can automatically remove, or scale down, additional
components to release the resources for other
jobs.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SOFTWAREDEFINED ARCHITECTURE

The term software defined is attached to a

slew of technologies: storage, networks, applications, power, infrastructures and even entire
data centers. The concept of using software
to provision and optimize elements of the IT
environment is exciting, but adding the software-defined tag to anything creates confusion
and can be misleading for IT teams navigating
the realms of software-defined applications and
infrastructure.
Take software-defined architecture (SDA),

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for example. The term, which Gartner coined

to mean an extension of software-defined
networking and software-oriented architecture, is easily confused with software-defined
infrastructure. However, software-defined
architecture attempts to encapsulate the data
centers internal hardware and services and
insulate those resources from the applications,
services and devices that might be exposed to
userseffectively segregating the producers
or providers from the consumers. Creating this
boundary hides or abstracts the inner workings of the business (the servers, storage arrays
and networking schema) and allows IT teams to
change, update or replace them without affecting end-user-facing applications, services or
devices.
To create such a logical boundary, typically
called a software gateway, between data center
resources and outside users, SDA relies on two

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sets of APIs. The inner APIs organize and drive

the internal systems, optimized for data center-side performance. Outer APIs, which are
optimized for long-distance network operation,
can securely access internal APIs.
A software gateway is built from a combination of software components, including integration brokers, API managers, API gateways
and a SOA interface. When properly implemented, the software gateway can translate
APIs and handle security, orchestration and
routing.
This approach abstracts applications, services and devices from the underlying data
center that provides them. This abstraction
helps to protect the data center and its data.
When combined with APIs, the abstraction
also decouples end users from providers, meaning changes to one will not affect the other.
Stephen J. Bigelow

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Microsoft Joining the SDN Party

Microsofts Azure Stack, in combination with Windows Server 2016, stands to

make the software company a major player in
the SDN enterprise market, alongside Cisco
and VMware.
In February 2016, Microsoft introduced a
technical preview of the Azure Stack, which is
expected to ship along with Windows Server
2016. The SDN stack has the technology necessary to make Microsoft a strong competitor
in the SDN enterprise market, particularly as
a provider of interoperability between a users
private cloud and Microsofts public cloud,
Azure.
I do expect Microsoft to become a major
SDN player, said John E. Burke, an analyst at
Nemertes Research. As with [Microsofts]
Hyper-V and Azure, it will take a little time for
the momentum to build and enterprise comfort
levels to rise.
Microsoft built several components into the

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Azure Stack that are expected to make SDN

attractive to its business customers. The technologies Microsoft plans to provide include
a network controller, load balancing and support for Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN), an
encapsulation protocol for running an overlay
over a traditional hardware-based Layer 2 and
Layer 3 network, said Mark Scholman, an Azure
consultant at Inovativ, a Microsoft technology
specialist.
A VXLAN takes control of the network out of
the hardware and places it instead in software
running on a server. In Microsofts case, its the
Azure Stack running on Windows Server 2016
or Linux.
The technologies in Azure Stack are a big
game changer, Scholman said. Thats because
they provide a consistent application development and deployment platform between Azure
and a private cloud built with Azure Stack in
the data center.

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At a high level, Microsofts SDN stack starts

with the Azure Resource Manager, a framework that lets administrators deploy, manage,
and monitor Azure and private cloud resources
built with Microsoft technology, Scholman
said. Underneath is a network resource provider that talks to the controller, which provides applications with network services, such
as load balancing or a virtual private network.
Developers would be able to build applications for Azure or the Azure Stack using
Microsofts Visual Studio suite and the Azure

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software development kit.

Microsoft is betting that many organizations
will want to use an SDN stack for running
some workloads in Azure and others in-house.
For example, the customer-facing front end of
an application could run in Azure, while the
collected data is processed and stored in a companys data center.
Such a scenario might be necessary to comply with a countrys privacy laws. Also, splitting workloads between a private and public
cloud can reduce a companys IT expenses.
Antone Gonsalves

ABOUT
THE
AUTHORS

KEITH TOWNSEND, the principal of The CTO Advisor and

founder of TheCTOAdvisor.com, has more than 15 years

of related experience designing, implementing and managing data center technologies. His areas of expertise include virtualization, networking and storage systems for
Fortune 500 organizations.

Picking the Right Spots for SDN is a SearchDataCenter.com

publication.

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STEPHEN J. BIGELOW, the

senior technology editor in the

Data Center and Virtualization Media Group at TechTarget, has more than 20 years of technical writing experience in the PC/technology industry.

Margie Semilof | Editorial Director

Phil Sweeney | Senior Managing Editor
Dan Cagen | Associate Features Editor

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ANTONE GONSALVES is

news director for the Networking

Media Group at TechTarget.

Linda Koury | Director of Online Design

Rebecca Kitchens | Publisher
rkitchens@techtarget.com

TechTarget
275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466
www.techtarget.com

2016 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group.

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