Handbook

SECURITY

DISASTER RECOVERY/COMPLIANCE

BI/APPLICATIONS

DATA CENTER MANAGEMENT

STORAGE ARCHITECTURE

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HEALTH IT

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

CLOUD

VIRTUALIZATION

Handbook

Why You Should

Evaluate Software-Defined
Networking Now
The benefits of software-defined networking may be a few years
in the making, but the time to start planning for SDN is already here.

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2

EDITORS NOTE

FOR SDN BENEFITS, SORT

THROUGH THE HYPE

SDN CAN IMPROVE NETWORK

MANAGEMENT

THE NEXT STEP: SOFTWAREDEFINED EVERYTHING?

EDITORS NOTE

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Editors Note
For SDN Benefits,
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SDN Can
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The Next Step:
Software-Defined
Everything?

Youre Ready for SDN, but Is SDN Ready for You?

Experts agree that although vendors
software-defined networking plans are great in
theory, the execution might need some time to
develop. However, the future looks like it will
be at least partially software-defined, so its
smart to understand how SDN could benefit
your organization over the long term.
In this handbooks feature article, Alan Earls
discusses the maturity of the SDN market,
with advice on how to prepare for SDN without
jumping in too fast. He advises IT pros to consider this new option, but avoid a big commitment until things shake out in the industry.
Pete Sclafani also pushes past the hype to explore the actual benefits of SDN and how they

may lead to hybrid networks in the data center

in the near future. He suggests that better APIs
may make SDN integration more feasible.
The term software-defined has also been
affixed to other areas, including the data center
as a whole. In her rundown of software-defined
everything, Alex Barrett drives home the point
that its wise to gain an understanding of this
trend now, to avoid being left behind as vendors and products mature. n

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Laura Aberle
Associate Features Editor
Data Center and Virtualization Group,
TechTarget

SDN BENEFITS

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SDN Can
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The Next Step:
Software-Defined
Everything?

For SDN Benefits, Sort Through the Hype

To many, software-defined networking seems like the next big thing. Certainly, its
generated enough commentary and conjecture
to warrant an elevated status in the firmament
of buzzwords. However, data center administratorswho are interested less in speculation
and more in making the most practical decisions for their organizationswonder about
the real value of software-defined networking
(SDN), as well as its drawbacks.
Software-defined networking aims to manage
network functionality by abstracting or replacing lower-level controls. It offers the potential
for greater flexibility, higher asset usage and
lower costs, particularly in terms of labor, by
putting control of switches and other functions
on a higher, virtual plane. For enthusiasts, it
seems like a natural progression, taking virtualization up another level. Still, data center administrators must clearly identify the uses and
benefits of SDN and the potential downsides.

THE SDN VISION REMAINS UNDEFINED

Bob Laliberte, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass., said he believes
SDN is still early in its development. While
most vendors have created a vision and outlined a strategy, he said that many are only

Software-defined networking aims

to manage network functionality
by abstracting lower-level controls.
beginning to execute against that strategy.
Products are only now becoming generally
available, and customers are working with vendors to test these new technologies mostly in
proof-of-concept and pilot programs.
Laliberte said he expects to see more proof
and pilot experimentation as 2014 goes on.
This is pretty amazing progress, he said.
As recently as 18 months ago, I spoke with a

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SDN BENEFITS

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SDN Can
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The Next Step:
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Everything?

number of enterprise organizations and at that

time, no network vendor had talked to them
about SDN or even OpenFlow. Now, he said,
the majority of respondents to an Enterprise
Strategy Group survey indicated that they
are committed to SDN as a strategy and are in
various stages of research and planning for it.
Others also see the excitement but share
Lalibertes sense that SDN is not yet ready for
widespread adoption. Andre Kindness, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.,
said that SDN maturity is several years in the
future.
Kindness said its important to be mindful of
specific SDN definitions, since there are many
differences, subtle and large, among different vendors. If you dont know what it is, you
dont know what to ask for or what to implement, he said.
Brad Casemore, director of research for data
center networks at IDC in Framingham, Mass.,
also expressed caution. Hyperscale organizations like Facebook and Amazon are likely to be
early adopters, he said, but others have less immediate incentives.
When people talk about SDN, they need to

discuss more of the nuancesit is not happening in the same way across all organizations
because they have differing abilities to operationalize, he said.

PREPARE FOR THE SDN WAVE

Even if your company isnt at a decision point

yet, it is wise to be SDN-ready. To start, evaluate how SDN might change staffing and training needs, check SDNs compatibility with
existing hardware and processes, and consider
how cloud will fit in with plans.
Laliberte warns that a software-defined network brings up an immediate personnel issue;
who on the IT side is going to own and run
the network virtualization technologythe
network team or the virtualization team? If the
latter, there needs to be tight coordination between the two teams. Consider that the more
well-known network virtualization [technologies], VMwares NSX and Microsofts Network
Virtualization, are coming from the server virtualization vendors, he said. Other independent providers or network vendors may take a
network-centric approach.

4 W H Y YO U S H O U L D E VA LUAT E S O F T WA R E - D E F I N E D N E T W O R K I N G N O W

SDN BENEFITS

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Editors Note
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SDN Can
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The Next Step:
Software-Defined
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From an infrastructure perspective, most

network virtualization technologies should
work with existing network hardware. The one
gotcha, is that there is generally limited insight between the physical network and the
virtual one; this could potentially diminish
performance if the virtual network links are
over-provisioned on physical network links,
he said.

One of the potential

advantages of SDN is faster
network provisioning, which
should help to drive faster
application deployments.
Laliberte said vendors are aware of this and
are working to build ecosystems to drive visibility between the virtual and physical network
as well as connect to the physical network.
VMwares NSX ecosystem is an example. We
have seen this movie before with server virtualization and distributed resource scheduler
(DRS). Now we need network DRS, he said.
One of the potential advantages of SDN is

faster network provisioning, which should help

to drive faster application deployments; that, in
turn, should accelerate revenue from those applications, Laliberte said. Most importantly, it
should eliminate much of the time-consuming
activities that are so often a challenge for network operations teams. For example, Laliberte
said his companys research shows that organizations are focusing on a number of network
challenges that SDN can help address. Specifically, survey respondents complained about
the length of time needed to provision network
services. That challenge was followed by concerns over the ability to scale rapidly, network
latency, lack of flexibility to support virtual
environments, inadequate capacity and poor
security for multi-tenancy.
So, is SDN the right move? Laliberte said
organizations should understand and evaluate current processes to determine how long
each one takes relative to potential improvements under SDN. Keep in mind that SDN is
more that just network provisioning, it is also
about network services provisioning, Laliberte
said. That includes services like security (IDS/
IPS, firewall), WAN optimization, application

5 W H Y YO U S H O U L D E VA LUAT E S O F T WA R E - D E F I N E D N E T W O R K I N G N O W

SDN BENEFITS

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delivery controllers, etc., that need to stay with

an application or virtual machineeven if it
moves from server to server or even from data
center to data center.
Kindness said a shift to SDN may require
the full focus of a networking team. Typically
these are people that are rewarded for putting
out fires; they will need to have their rewards
based more on efficiency and speed so they can
get some of the rewards of moving to SDN, he
said.
He then recommends developing guidelines
and guardrails regarding who will program the
network, setting criteria for moving applications, setting bandwidth policy issues and so
on. And it isnt just a simple matter of suddenly switching over to SDN. He said the benefits may be elusive without proper planning.
Furthermore, IT shops need to consider future
moves to hosted services in a redesign, so they
can facilitate evolution beyond SDN.
Casemore said companies typically start
moving to the cloud at the same time that they
focus more on IT as a servicewith robust
internal chargeback mechanisms. Somewhere
in the process, you need to also think about

network infrastructure, and that is where an

SDN discussion might fit.
Casemore also said OpenFlow, a lower-layer
protocol often mentioned in connection with
SDN, needs to be put into perspective. Network virtualization can be done in other ways
and OpenFlow plays a relatively small role, he
said. It makes a lot of sense for deployment on
physical switches but its deployment is really
keyed to hardware lifecycles and the deployment decisions of vendors.
Organizations will approach SDN differently
depending on their maturity and cloud orientation. If you are a cloud-type organization that
has moved or is moving toward cloud orchestration and open stack, you will probably move
in that direction first, Casemore said.
By contrast enterprises that arent actively
moving in that direction are probably still
siloed and, thus, less ready to take on the challenges that network virtualization involves.
Many organizations will try to push off
these decisions because they arent feeling the
pain acutely enough, because of political reasons or lack of the right skill sets, Casemore
said. Alan Earls

6 W H Y YO U S H O U L D E VA LUAT E S O F T WA R E - D E F I N E D N E T W O R K I N G N O W

SDN MATURITY

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Editors Note
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SDN Can
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The Next Step:
Software-Defined
Everything?

SDN Can Improve Network Management

SDN may not be a fit for everyone, but its
definitely going to play a big role in the networks of the future.
Heres what to expect as you start identifying
software-defined networking (SDN) technologies that can reduce headaches caused by network management and provide more options
for scalability.
While there are a few minor issues around
process and SDN maturity, these are quickly
being sorted out since there is so much potential for efficiency gains.

WHY HYBRID NETWORKS MATTER

Your next network will be a hybrid. Physical

hardware isnt disappearing, but the odds of
encountering SDN technologies in production
in the next three years are high. The rollout of
virtualization concepts to both the network
control and data planes is a dramatic shift, but

they also align well with virtualization concepts already in use.

If you run a network, you likely support
multiple vendors in the infrastructure. For every network maintenance or upgrade, you can
end up with downtime, rollbacks and general
unhappinesswhether you are a service
provider supporting enterprise customers or
a medium-sized enterprise with a distributed
workforce across multiple data centers.
SDN acknowledges the reality of networks
today; administrators are dealing with multiple
vendors and technologies with multiple layers.
With the new reality of dynamic virtual workloads and networks that shuttle traffic between
data centers, something must change.
Ten years ago, cloud talk resulted in combining components of the data center, such as
networking, computing and storage. As anyone
who has built these solutions can attest, the
networking component relied on a combination

7 W H Y YO U S H O U L D E VA LUAT E S O F T WA R E - D E F I N E D N E T W O R K I N G N O W

SDN MATURITY

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of hardware and software, along with expertise

and nerves of steel for configuration.
SDN aims to update that in a big way, but
not without problems. The issue is that there
are different visions of SDN, since network
evokes different concepts. The focus of SDN is
on combining concepts of virtualization to the
network stack. In theory, this approach should
simplify network architectures and permit dynamic workloads to behave consistently across
hypervisors, data centers, and the like. Vendors
use different approaches; some use software
plug-ins with existing technologies, some go
with proprietary hardware, but all promise to
ease the pain of network provisioning.

HOW SDN WORKS

There are two functional areas at the core of

SDN: the control plane and the data plane. The
control plane is the control layer on top of the
network elements of hardware and software
running downstream (similar to how a hypervisor interacts with the server environment under its control, while still working alongside a
centralized management layer). The data plane

is everything elsewhat we would imagine as

the tangle of network wires and cross-connects.
It catalogs and assigns relevant metadata so that
the control layer can manage the architecture
and configuration elements without getting in
the way. Of course, since these control elements
can now see the entire picture of the network
and the typical configuration risks are mitigated, new opportunities for efficiency open up.
While the concepts and use cases for SDN
look very promising for a service provider or an
enterprise, network configuration continues to
be a hassle for administrators.
Since networks and backbones are missioncritical in any business, adoption is going to
take time. But in the same way that missioncritical applications were eventually virtualized
on servers, data centers will see new and exciting opportunities in SDN.
One of the significant upsides of SDN is
the improvement of application programming interfaces (APIs). Hardware and software
vendors that have relied on secure shell and
command line interfaces (CLIs), and bolt-on
APIs, are now putting significant effort into
conventional Web service APIs. With a surge

8 W H Y YO U S H O U L D E VA LUAT E S O F T WA R E - D E F I N E D N E T W O R K I N G N O W

SDN MATURITY

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SDN Can
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Software-Defined
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of attention, the integration of SDN technologies is easier, and also provides a reasonable
upgrade path. OpenFlow is a key technology
that is helping to unify SDN technology around
functionality versus vendor agendas.
Another trend is service providers driving
some SDN technologies with their enterprise
customers. Whether it is with the API or a
manifestation of the software-defined data
center, expect to see service providers use SDN
downstream to further differentiate themselves. As enterprises look to selectively move
workloads around, service providers have a
great opportunity to keep the process simple
and to leverage various virtualization platforms.

HOW TO MANAGE SDN IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT

One of the misconceptions about network

provisioning is that infrastructure is included.
If you are still using spreadsheets and CLIs to
manage your IP addresses and DNS zones, then
SDN implementation will be more complex.
Having automation or APIs in place prior to

SDN ensures that even a pilot can be met with

success and show value across the complete resource provisioning process.
Given SDNs roots in virtualization, it would
make sense to look at doing a test deployment
in that arena first to see how it might have a
broader fit in your organization.
SDN is not a replacement for sound business
processes. Identify the issues that you would
like to address with regards to network management and establish how this relates to your
virtualization strategy. This will help align your
technical options with your implementation
goals. There is still no magic button to configure the information, but this gets you pretty
close.
Understand how your current automation
platforms (network, hypervisor, configuration)
are going to work together with SDN. Some
platforms have more robust APIs than others,
which will impact development and integration
requirements. If you have holes in your provisioning process, SDN will make them more obvious. Pete Sclafani

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4
THE NEXT
STEP

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Editors Note
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SDN Can
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Management
The Next Step:
Software-Defined
Everything?

The Next Step: Software-Defined Everything?

Forget virtualization, forget cloud.
These days, its software-defined everything
coming down the pike.
Leading the charge is software-defined networking (SDN), a technology pioneered by
Google and Facebook to abstract network architecture and make network devices programmable. Its goal is to make networks more dynamic.
Beyond that, software-defined networks mean
different things to different people. For some,
SDN is synonymous with theOpenFlow protocol, while others take their cues from VMware Nicira or Big Switch, and countless other
vendors.
The confusion about SDN hasnt prevented
anyone from adopting and co-opting the software-defined moniker for their own purposes.
Lets look at a few examples that have landed
in our inboxes.
Software-defined data center: A marketing

term popularized by VMware that describes

its vision of the future, where data center services such as compute, network, storage, security and availability are pooled, aggregated and
managed by intelligent policy-driven software,
providing self-service, automation and application and business management. This sounds
suspiciously similar to a virtual data center.
Software-defined storage (SDS): This is a
marketing term claimed by storage vendors
from Nexenta and Coraid to NetApp and EMC.
At a high level, SDS usually refers to the disaggregation of storage functionality that was
previously included as part of a storage array.
In practice, it can refer to anything from a simple volume manager to storage virtualization
software that pools and aggregates hard disk
capacity. Others say software-defined storage delivers storage virtualization capabilities
as part of an operating system or hypervisor.

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4
THE NEXT
STEP

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Whatever your definition, it appears that software-defined storage is an attempt by vendors

to put a new face on technologies that have
been here for a long, long time.
Software-defined storage networks: Following close on the heels of software-defined
networks and storage is the software-defined
storage network, as put forth by newcomer Jeda
Networks. With static and expensive storage
networks like Fibre Channel and iSCSI in its
sights, Jeda proposes to virtualize the storage
network by decoupling the storage network
control plane from the actual physical network. It does so by replacing the storage network control plane with its own intelligent

controller, its Fabric Network Controller

software, which converts standard Ethernet
switches into an enterprise storage fabric.
Software-defined hypervisor: This is a bit
of a stretch, but at least one analyst has used
it to describe HotLink SuperVISOR, with its
ability to virtualize the hypervisor layer and
decouple it from the underlying management
console. The HotLink product is a favorite
among longtime VMware shops that are heavily invested in VMware vCenter for virtualization management but also want to selectively
use lower-cost hypervisors such as Hyper-V
or KVM. Whether its qualified as softwaredefined everything is up to you. Alex Barrett

The Next Step:

Software-Defined
Everything?

1 1 W H Y YO U S H O U L D E VA LUAT E S O F T WA R E - D E F I N E D N E T W O R K I N G N O W

ABOUT
THE
AUTHORS

ALAN R. EARLS is a Boston-area freelance writer focused

on business and technology.

PETE SCLAFANI is

chief information officer with 6connect,

a provider of network automation services. Contact him
at pete@6connect.com.
Home
ALEX BARRETT is

Editors Note

editor in chief of Modern Infrastructure magazine. Write to her at abarrett@techtarget.com.

Why You Should Evaluate Software-Defined Networking

Now is a SearchDataCenter.com e-publication.
Margie Semilof | Editorial Director
Phil Sweeney | Managing Editor

For SDN Benefits,

Sort Through
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Eugene Demaitre | Associate Managing Editor

Laura Aberle | Associate Features Editor
Linda Koury | Director of Online Design

SDN Can
Improve Network
Management

Neva Maniscalco | Graphic Designer

Rebecca Kitchens | Publisher
rkitchens@techtarget.com

The Next Step:

Software-Defined
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