Virtualisation began changing the way we deploy servers more than a decade ago, but the connections between them remained as Ethernet and IP for the most part. Fibre channel is still around, but has declined in prominence and is now solidly niche. Storage has changed, too. Where once it was all about fibre channel and special networking, now we use NFS, SMB, and iSCSI to talk to storage devices over a network, all using Ethernet.
Ethernet and IP have won, but the way we use packets is changing rapidly. Throughout all this change, the core network principles of routing and switching have stayed remarkably similar and the skills and technology required to use them have also stayed much the same.
Today, that’s changing dramatically. We’re in the midst of the largest shift in networking technologies in decades. What will the networking integrator of the future look like? We spoke to vendors, resellers, and analysts to try to figure out where the packets are flowing.
The art of abstraction
Two of the most significant recent developments in networking are the separation of hardware from software, and the advent of ‘software-defined’ networking. Dominant switching provider Cisco has invested substantially in custom-designed chips and its own proprietary software to run them, but the way hardware is managed hasn’t really changed in almost 20 years.
This dominance is under a substantial challenge from so-called merchant silicon, which follows the x86 server approach by producing commodity hardware that can run your choice of software.
“If you look at innovation in the networking industry over the past 10 years, it’s not come from the traditional vendors,” says Mario Vecchio, managing director APAC for network software vendor BigSwitch. “The hyperscale vendors looked at what was available and said ‘A, it’s too expensive for us to use, B, it’s not automated enough and C, it’s too complex.’ ”
A collection of large-scale providers such as Google, Microsoft, Intel, Facebook among others formed the Open Compute Project (OCP) to change the market to commodity hardware. The Open Networking Install Environment (ONIE) sub-project created a standard for the switching silicon (often provided by ONIE contributor Broadcom) to be abstracted from the network software, just as the x86 standard helped usher in commodity server hardware.
In this environment, selection of the network software happens first, followed by hardware, just as businesses choose a virtualisation approach then buy server hardware to run it based on their non-functional requirements.
“Typically the network integrators came from a hardware background,” Vecchio says. “Now those skills are required less and software skills are required more. They’re more IT skills than they are networking skills, because your networking infrastructure is now software sitting in servers.”
An integrator will need to understand multiple network operating systems and how they link together. Backing a single vendor will become more risky as Cisco continues to lose share to other vendors and the market becomes fragmented.
APIs and automation
The combined pressures of scale and pace have forced server and storage vendors to create new systems that can respond rapidly to change. VMware vCenter admins can alter virtual machine, server, and storage configurations from the one central console and with NSX, VMware is hoping to bring the same central control to the network.
Making changes at scale requires standardisation and automation. If a human being needs to make a decision about every line of configuration, or to approve ACL changes, everything slows down. That’s becoming unacceptable to businesses that have become used to getting what they want from cloud providers very quickly.
Mike Zutenis, area partner director A/NZ at Juniper Networks, says customers are expecting their networks to interconnect with cloud networks. “Customers expect WAN integration with cloud stacks and their automation methods. They require that end-to-end capability to run their modern apps.”
Integrators of the future will use modern software tools to drive hardware with techniques that mirror those of DevOps-style software development. The software-defined network will become more tightly integrated into the overall application development process.
“Automation is key,” Vecchio says .“You get to scale, you get to grow quickly, you get to do all your adds, moves and changes. You don’t have to have an army of highly skilled people to do that, because you’re doing it in a highly automated fashion.”
Automation means fewer operations staff are required to hand-craft ACLs for firewalls or to light up switch ports. While cost savings are nice, what is an integrator to do with all the staff they have now, who are essentially those highly skilled people that are no longer needed?
Next: Skill up or get out
Forward-thinking network integrators are solving the staffing issue by keeping highly skilled staff, but changing the skills they have and maintain. The future is software, plus a broader knowledge of tools and techniques borrowed from more generalist IT backgrounds.
Robert Perin, CEO at Melbourne-based network integrator Newgen Systems, says he’s investing in his existing staff as well as hiring for new kinds of skills. “Our people are traditionally focused on routing and switching, IP configuration, that sort of thing. I’m skilling up all our people to understand the various flavours of Linux, and understanding all the different tools in the DevOps space as well.”
Inside tomorrow’s network integration providers, staff will require knowledge of far more than how to configure VLANs or BGP routes. They’ll need to understand how continuous-integration software build and deployment systems work so that they can plug automated network configuration steps into the overall system. Application developers will expect that they can simply make an API call to the network to reconfigure itself to allow a new kind of data flow. Manual configuration in response to a helpdesk ticket won’t be good enough in this environment.
Network integrators will split into two kinds: niche specialists in highly focused technologies and techniques that are rarely needed but highly valued; and generalist providers of overall solutions.
Think of building out core plumbing at scale for a new data centre, where it is vital a provider understands how to connect physical gear together to support multiple variants of software overlay networks simultaneously. There are fewer deployments – but the costs of getting it wrong are substantial, so there’s a premium to be earned if you know your stuff.
“Customers want to be able to deploy multiple network architectures on the same hardware,” says Ashley Halford, director A/NZ of systems engineering at Juniper Networks. “Customers are using Clos networks for physical connectivity and adding software techniques such as VXLAN over the top.”
Ilan Rubin, managing director at networking distributor Wavelink, sees a macro trend of both consolidation and new niche players popping up. “Integrators who get acquired will need to learn new skills. The larger players tend to be more generalist, but that also creates gaps for new niche players with specialised, hard-to-find skills.”
Wavelink’s specialty of wireless network is a prime example, where knowing the nuances of the rapidly improving wireless standards is vital for getting physical deployments right. The best software still needs good hardware to function well, and just because a network is software-defined doesn’t mean there’s no hardware at all.
Yet reconfiguring a wireless network to adapt to new uses still relies heavily on software and automation, with some solutions, such as Cisco’s Meraki line, using centralised, cloud-based management instead of traditional box-by-box administration.“You’d better learn how to do APIs and run scripts and do all that sort of stuff, or you’ll be out of a job in five years,” warns Vecchio.
Case study: Jumping on the bandwidth
Whether hardware-based or software-defined, one thing remains true of most of Australia’s corporate networks: bandwidth is a scarce commodity that can easily be overloaded.
Seeking to solve this issue is a Melbourne-based network technology vendor which has launched a cloud-based monitoring tool that provides traffic visibility without the need to install costly equipment.
Brisbane company Cloud Plus has been named as the first service provider to use Sinefa for Aggregation Points (Sinefa AP). Jules Rumsey, managing director of Cloud Plus – which has twice been in the top 10 of the CRN Fast50 – said the tool offered clients “granular visibility of network utilisation without having to deploy equipment at their premises”.
Sinefa AP surfaces data on traffic flowing to and from aggregation points such as network cores, hosting points and data centres. Company founder Chris Siakos said: “Sinefa AP is a critically important new product, because we are finding most network performance issues are caused by users flooding networks with traffic.
“This traffic is often related to cloud migration or data synchronisation issues, or it is recreational – all of which compromises mission-critical applications,” Siakos added. “With Sinefa AP, network providers can now show their customers how they are using bandwidth, enabling them to address issues impacting network performance. Service providers equipped with Sinefa AP will be able to enhance service levels and reduce customer service costs.”
The cloud-based, multi-tenanted solution needs a KVM or VMware hypervisor or can be deployed as a hardware probe. Despite being launched at Microsoft APC, it is currently not compatible with Hyper-V because of functionality requirements, but “we are constantly watching for any developments by Microsoft”, Sinefa says.
Sinefa recommends that in environments greater than 10Gbps, Sinefa’s AP run on a dedicated appliance. The company was founded in 2011 and its products are distributed by Rhipe.
Fast file: Top trends
Here are the top trends to be aware of as a network integrator:
- Software is the future Hardware is becoming more generic, with multiple network software options running on the same hardware, just like PCs.
- Networks will go virtual They’re becoming even more divorced from traditional hardware. Networks will become hybrid-multi-cloud, spanning sites, clouds and apps.
- Automation and APIs Administration at scale requires automation and programming interfaces. Hand-configured interfaces will become rare.
- Overlays and underlays Underlay networks will provide basic services – the plumbing – that overlay networks run on.
- Micro-segmentation Applications and devices will be segmented in software with increasing granularity, increasing the scale and scope of the configuration to be managed.
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