Virtualization Review | September 17, 2018
The ninth release of the OpenDaylight software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) platform is out, adding new functionality and marking adoption gains. The platform provides an open source SDN controller for enterprise networking implementations. The platform release -- named Fluorine -- was made by the OpenDaylight Project, part of open source champion The Linux Foundation. The project evolved from the young and growing SDN movement, emphasizing network programmability and positioning itself as a foundational platform for commercial solutions. According to the project, adoption of the platform in those commercial solutions is picking up pace. Citing "ongoing industry momentum," the project noted OpenDaylight is the primary controller platform used by Globo.com, a Brazilian Internet-related services and platform. The project also noted inclusion in other implementations, including Red Hat OpenStack Platform (OSP) version 13. With Fluorine, such implementations are reportedly easier, the project said, simplified by easier packaging to quicken the development of solutions. "Fluorine is one of the most streamlined releases to date for OpenDaylight, delivering a core set of mature components needed for most major use cases in a 'managed release' for easy consumption by commercial and in-house solution providers, as well as by downstream projects such as ONAP and OpenStack,” said Phil Robb, vice president, Operations, Networking, and Orchestration, The Linux Foundation, in a statement last week.
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Virtualization Review | August 29, 2018
Announcements at this week's VMworld conference in Las Vegas can be seen as a microcosm snapshot of the general industry trend away from hardware-centric solutions to the software-defined, a sweet spot for VMware's virtualization offerings. The show serves to sharpen VMware's focus on the extension of software-defined networking (SDN) to cover local-area networks (SD-LAN) and even datacenter infrastructure (SDDC). Nowhere is that focus more apparent than in the company's NSX offering, officially characterized as the company's network virtualization and security platform. "VMware NSX Data Center is the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), delivering networking and security entirely in software, abstracted from the underlying physical infrastructure." During Monday's keynote address, NSX was interwoven throughout a series of announcements by CEO Pat Gelsinger, who at one point said, "we have over 7,500 customers running on NSX, and maybe the stat that I'm most proud of is 82 percent of the Fortune 100 has now adopted NSX. You have made NSX the standard for software-defined networking. At the conference, the company highlighted the new VMware NSX-T Data Center 2.3 edition, which it said extends advanced multi-cloud networking and security capabilities to the AWS and Microsoft Azure clouds along with on-premises environments.
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Virtualization Review | August 27, 2018
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger hit all the high points of cutting-edge virtualization and networking technology during today's opening keynote address at the company's VMworld conference in Las Vegas. With an emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), Gelsinger discussed innovations in networking and security, framing new announcements in the context of four "technology superpowers," which he categorized into the areas of cloud, mobile, AI/ML and Edge/AI. AI and ML were interwoven throughout the presentation, with Gelsinger declaring, "I really love the topic of AI," and hearkening back to a prior role where he worked on an AI chip in 1986, demonstrating the technology's age. "AI is today a 30-year overnight success," he said. One area in which AI is being put to use, an area that Gelsinger said was "most important to me personally," is security. VMware, he said, is totally rethinking the approach to security. "It's broken today," Gelsinger said, "the industry got it wrong." The industry, he said, has been trying to bolt on security products, in effect "chasing bad." The industry needs "much less security products" and "much more security." With that goal in mind, the company is providing "intrinsic security" to "ensure good" by building security into every core product, to lock the product down and ensure it behaves as it intended. "We're not chasing threats or adding on but rather dramatically reducing the attack surface," Gelsinger said. Continuing that theme, he made two major announcements concerning security, including Adaptive Micro-segmentation. He said micro-segmentation wasn't new but wasn't made practical until the advent of NSX, the VMware software-defined networking (SDN) network virtualization and security platform.
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