Big Switch Are Bringing The Cloud To Your DC

Disclaimer: I recently attended Dell Technologies World 2019.  My flights, accommodation and conference pass were paid for by Dell Technologies via the Media, Analysts and Influencers program. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated in any way for my time at the event.  Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.

As part of my attendance at Dell Technologies World 2019 I had the opportunity to attend Tech Field Day Extra sessions. You can view the videos from the Big Switch Networks session here, and download my rough notes from here.

 

The Network Is The Cloud

Cloud isn’t a location, it’s a design principle. And networking needs to evolve with the times. The enterprise is hamstrung by:

  • Complex and slow operations
  • Inadequate visibility
  • Lack of operational consistency

It’s time that on-premises needs is built the same way as the service providers do it.

  • Software-defined;
  • Automated with APIs;
  • Open Hardware; and
  • Integrated Analytics.

APIs are not an afterthought for Big Switch.

A Better DC Network

  • Cloud-first infrastructure – design, build and operate your on-premises network with the same techniques used internally by public cloud operators
  • Cloud-first experience – give your application teams the same “as-a-service” network experience on-premises that they get with the cloud
  • Cloud-first consistency – uses the same tool chain to manage both on-premises and in-cloud networks

 

Thoughts and Further Reading

There are a number of reasons why enterprise IT folks are looking wistfully at service providers and the public cloud infrastructure setups and wishing they could do IT that way too. If you’re a bit old fashioned, you might think that loose and fast isn’t really how you should be doing enterprise IT – something that’s notorious for being slow, expensive, and reliable. But that would be selling the SPs short (and I don’t just say that because I work for a service provider in my day job). What service providers and public cloud folks are very good at is getting maximum value from the infrastructure they have available to them. We don’t necessarily adopt cloud-like approaches to infrastructure to save money, but rather to solve the same problems in the enterprise that are being solved in the public clouds. Gone are the days when the average business will put up with vast sums of cash being poured into enterprise IT shops with little to no apparent value being extracted from said investment. It seems to be no longer enough to say “Company X costs this much money, so that’s what we pay”. For better or worse, the business is both more and less savvy about what IT costs, and what you can do with IT. Sure, you’ll still laugh at the executive challenging the cost of core switches by comparing them to what can be had at the local white goods slinger. But you better be sure you can justify the cost of that badge on the box that runs your network, because there are plenty of folks ready to do it for cheaper. And they’ll mostly do it reliably too.

This is the kind of thing that lends itself perfectly to the likes of Big Switch Networks. You no longer necessarily need to buy badged hardware to run your applications in the fashion that suits you. You can put yourself in a position to get control over how your spend is distributed and not feel like you’re feeling to some mega company’s profit margins without getting return on your investment. It doesn’t always work like that, but the possibility is there. Big Switch have been talking about this kind of choice for some time now, and have been delivering products that make that possibility a reality. They recently announced an OEM agreement with Dell EMC. It mightn’t seem like a big deal, as Dell like to cosy up to all kinds of companies to fill apparent gaps in the portfolio. But they also don’t enter into these types of agreements without having seriously evaluated the other company. If you have a chance to watch the customer testimonial at Tech Field Day Extra, you’ll get a good feel for just what can be accomplished with an on-premises environment that has service provider like scalability, management, and performance challenges. There’s a great tale to be told here. Not every enterprise is working at “legacy” pace, and many are working hard to implement modern infrastructure approaches to solve business problems. You can also see one of their customers talk with my friend Keith about the experience of implementing and managing Big Switch on Dell Open Networking.

Big Switch Announces AWS Public Cloud Monitoring

Big Switch Networks recently announced Big Mon for AWS. I had the opportunity to speak with Prashant Gandhi (Chief Product Officer) about the announcement and thought I’d share some thoughts here.

The Announcement

Big Switch describe Big Monitoring Fabric Public Cloud (it’s real product name) as “a seamless deep packet monitoring solution that enables workload monitoring within customer specified Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). All components of the solution are virtual, with elastic scale-out capability based on traffic volumes.”

[image courtesy of Big Switch]

There are some real benefits to be had, including:

  • Complete AWS Visibility;
  • Multi-VPC support;
  • Elastic scaling; and
  • Consistent with the On-Prem offering.

Capabilities

  • Centralised packet and flow-based monitoring of all VPCs of a user account
  • Visibility-related traffic is kept local for security purposes and cost savings
  • Monitoring and security tools are centralised and tagged within the dedicated VPC for ease of configuration
  • Role-based access control enables multiple teams to operate Big Mon 
  • Supports centralised AWS VPC tool farm to reduce monitoring cost
  • Integrated with Big Switch’s Multi-Cloud Director for centralised hybrid cloud management

Thoughts and Further Reading

It might seem a little odd that I’m covering news from a network platform vendor on this blog, given the heavy focus I’ve had over the years on storage and virtualisation technologies. But the world is changing. I work for a Telco now and cloud is dominating every infrastructure and technology conversation I’m having. Whether it’s private or public or hybrid, cloud is everywhere, and networks are a bit part of that cloud conversation (much as it has been in the data centre), as is visibility into those networks. 

Big Switch have been around for under 10 years, but they’ve already made some decent headway with their switching platform and east-west monitoring tools. They understand cloud networking, and particularly the challenges facing organisations leveraging complicated cloud networking topologies. 

I’m the first guy to admit that my network chops aren’t as sharp as they could be (if you watched me setup some Google WiFi devices over the weekend, you’d understand). But I also appreciate that visibility is key to having control over what can sometimes be an overly elastic / dynamic infrastructure. It’s been hard to see traffic between availability zones, between instances, and contained in VPNs. I also like that they’ve focussed on a consistent experience between the on-premises offering and the public cloud offering. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Big Switch Networks, I also recommend checking out their labs.