At first glance the conflicting purchases of VMware and
Cisco with Nicera and vCider (respectively) seems to be a shot across the
bow. Software Defined Networking (SDN)
is an obvious emerging market that seems to have been waiting for large
corporation support. A quick evaluation
of the OpenStack Quantum (http://wiki.openstack.org/Quantum)
plugins available reveals a list of SDN products that tend to be niche products
in the SDN space, just the right target for acquisition by a major vendor such
as Cisco or VMware.
Soon after VMware purchased the Nicera Platform (July 23rd,
2012), it seemed that every blog was detailing a relationship between the two
companies that hinged more on necessity than interoperability, with the Nicera
acquisition as a wedge intended to drive the two apart.
Recently (Oct. 4th, 2012), Cisco
announced the purchase of vCider, a competing SDN product. Again, the blogosphere was inflamed with
articles about the similarities between the two products, and how this signals
a division of ways for the two companies.
Interestingly, there have not been many articles written about the
technical impact to consumers of either purchase, and rightfully so as the
products will most likely undergo a full facelift before being integrated into
the suite and sold again.
Unfortunately without a history of using Nicera or vCider
and a lack of documentation (the vCider site has been all but removed of
content since the acquisition) one can only speculate on the consumer impact of
the purchases. But in an environment of
articles criticizing the purchase as a relationship strain, could consumers
benefit from the purchases on either side?
I think so.
From what I can tell, the two products vary in market space
and implementation technique so much so that the purchases seem to be more of a
compliment than competition. For
instance, let’s take a look at Nicera.
Nicera, according to their documentation, utilizes a
specialized vSwitch (or modification to existing vSwitch) to route traffic
using SDN rulesets and features. These
virtual switches are controlled and managed via the NVP controller cluster, a
highly available management cluster designed to receive and notify all switches
of changes in the network fabric.
This mechanism is intended to serve as a way of virtualizing
network in the creation of private clouds.
Sounds like a great acquisition by VMware to me. These private clouds allow for the
complexities of networks to be removed during the creation and movement of
virtual environments throughout a private cloud, allowing engineers to focus
less on the provisioning and management of networks, and putting the burden on
software. Again though, we are talking
about Private Clouds here, notice that there was no mention of “the Cloud”,
RackSpace, Amazon, etc… This is by
intention…
Cisco decided that vCider was their SDN vendor of choice for
acquisition, but they don’t seem to be playing in the same space as
VMware. When analyzing the limited
content remaining online, vCider appears to consist of two key elements. These are a Linux network driver, and Cloud
Burst Networking. The Linux Network
driver will present to the operating system within the guest, physical or
virtual, to allow for connectivity to the cloud-based network. In addition, the network traffic intended for
another host within the cloud will be encapsulated by the driver and
transmitted. The Cloud-Burst Networking
will then coordinate the transmission of data between the two remote nodes
utilizing the cloud management for endpoint location. Reference: http://etherealmind.com/cisco-value-in-vcider-is-all-programmable-networking/
Due to the host-based approach, and lack of interoperability
with alternative operating systems (in current form), one must assume that this
strategy is built around the connectivity of disparate nodes to a public cloud
offering rather than private cloud. If
this is the case, then when an organization purchases a Linux-based node on the
Amazon Cloud, this node can be configured with the network drivers, without any
interaction at the hypervisor or lower levels such as network equipment that
are out of the realm of configurability for public cloud consumers.
There are a few areas that there may be overlap though. For instance, Cisco may develop the vCider
connectivity to reside within their Nexus 1000v switch, therefore allowing the
device to connect private-cloud switches to one another emulating the capabilities
of the Nicera product. In addition,
Nicera does have a service offering for “Physical servers and legacy VLANs or
for connecting virtual networks to the Internet” which will allow for the core
functionality of the vCider product to be duplicated by Nicera.
Without more knowledge on the acquisition, or information
about how the products will be used with respect to their new owners’ service
offerings, this article is entirely speculation. But in my opinion, these two products seem to
fit as well together as they do separately to provide end users with a means to
virtualize networks in private and public cloud scenarios.
Labels: cisco, nicera, vCider, Vmware
