eBook

CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

What you will learn

Networking and communications standards and
methodologies are undergoing their greatest
transition since the migration from analogue
to digital. The shift is from function-specific,
proprietary devices to software-enabled
commodity hardware.
In the context of the modern transition, this eBook
explains the three most popular terminologies
today SDN, NFV, and VNF. It addresses why the
transition is happening and why its important
for any individual or organisation that has
responsibility for a network to understand
and embrace this emerging opportunity.
The potential benefits, and some deployment
and management solutions for software-enabled
networking, are addressed throughout the eBook.

Tweet this

Canonical is involved in networking

and data communications
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, works
closely with its networking and telecoms
partners on all aspects of emerging networking
technologies and modern data communications.
We provide infrastructure and partner solutions
to support SDN and NFV infrastructures We also
offer unique performance and interoperability
testing for clouds and VNFs.

CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

About the author

Bill Bauman, Strategy and Content, Canonical,
began his technology career in processor
development and has worked in systems
engineering, sales, business development, and
marketing roles. He holds patents on memory
virtualisation technologies and is published
in the field of processor performance. Bill
has a passion for emerging technologies and
explaining how things work. He loves helping
others benefit from modern technology.

Bill Bauman
Strategy and Content, Canonical

Tweet this

CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Contents
Executive overview

05

General purpose network hardware

15

Economic benefits of software based

networking

06

Generic switch hardware and

SDN on servers

16

Why now?

07

Do I need a cloud for SDN and NFVi?

17

The many meanings of SDN

08

Ubuntu for hyperscale

18

Server virtualisation introduces SDN

09

Deploying and managing SDN and VNFs

19

Continuing to evolve SDN

11

Performance and Interoperability

20

SDN infrastructure layers

13

Canonical, SDN and NFVi leadership

21

Network functions virtualisation NFV

14

Conclusion

22

About Canonical

23

Tweet this

5
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Executive overview
Network infrastructure is following the path of
server hardware, which migrated from applicationspecific servers to virtual machines. Were now
migrating from function-specific network
hardware to software-based virtual functions.
For organisations that already have virtual
machines deployed, youre already using SDN
today. If you have a firewall or load balancing
service running as a virtual machine, youve
begun using NFV infrastructure, as well.
The premise of SDN and NFV technologies isnt
new, but within your organisation, their rapidly
expanding use cases may be.
Operational expenditure can be dramatically
reduced by the flexibility of software-based
network infrastructure.

Tweet this

Software Defined Networking SDN

Software on commodity hardware that coexists
with or replaces traditional, proprietary
network hardware, like switches and routers.
Network Functions Virtualisation NFV
Generally refers to virtualising higher level
network functions, as software, on commodity
hardware. NFV infrastructure can run on top
of traditional network hardware, SDN-based
networks, or a combination of both.

Virtualised Network Functions VNF

The specific network function that is now
a software service deployed on commodity
hardware, for example firewalls, IP services
DHCP/DNS/load balancing, VoIP, IMS
message services, RANs, EPCs, and more.

6
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Economic benefits of
software-based networking
Scaling and operating

Decoupling

Beyond upgrades

SDN and NFV offer nearly infinite economies as

of scale. Most of the issues with oversubscribing
ports not having enough, or undersubscribing
ports buying more than you need, are eliminated
when software is introduced to replace physical,
single-function devices. Time is money, and in a
software-driven infrastructure, updates, upgrades
and changes are all faster and much simpler.

Moving network control out of proprietary

hardware devices and into a software
infrastructure, and migrating network
functions from single purpose hardware
to VNFs on commodity hardware, are both
examples of decoupling the desired function
from the hardware. Decoupling provides
an agility that has never before been available
to network operators.

New features and new network requirements

are increasingly being made. In a traditional
network approach, these capabilities either
arent made available or require new hardware
procurement, physical installation, and physical
connection. With SDN and NFV infrastructures,
new features and capabilities are deployed
as software.

The cost of commodity hardware is typically much

lower than that of function specific network
equipment. Support costs also decrease, from
hardware maintenance cost to operational and
vendor support.

Tweet this

For example, when you decouple system

performance data plane, from system
configuration control plane, a network
upgrade from 4G to 5G can be done without
system configuration migration or redefinition.
You just change the VNFs that control the
antennae. Similarly, an entirely new network
infrastructure could be overlayed
on an existing topology with SDN.

The same care must be taken when implementing

new software features as with new hardware,
so interoperability testing and architectural design
are still critical. The time to implementation
is dramatically reduced, though. Further in
this eBook interoperability and performance
testing are addressed as you read about
OIL and V-PIL.

7
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Why now?
Ecosystem

Hardware

The ecosystem of available SDN and NFV

based solutions has grown and matured.
New software and hardware technologies
make commodity servers offer the same
capabilities, performance, and sometimes
even increased reliability.

Advancements in commodity server hardware

IO and chipsets bring performance levels
to that of ASIC-based hardware proprietary
systems. Hardware features like DPDK and
SR-IOV enable programmable data planes
within servers that match the speeds of legacy
function specific networking hardware.

Economics
As clouds and modern IT infrastructure continue
their explosion of growth, the economics of
traditional datacentre networking become
less desirable and completely unaffordable
for some organisations. SDN and NFV based
infrastructure solutions offer both OPEX
and CAPEX relief for organisations of all sizes.

Tweet this

Software
SDN and NFV both require an open, general
purpose operating system, Linux, running
on the commodity hardware that supports
them. Ubuntu (and the Ubuntu kernel) are
the platform that provides the reliability and
scalability, both from technical and a financial
perspective, that enables SDN and NFV
infrastructure today.

The operating system is where technologies like

DPDK and SR-IOV are enabled and managed.
IO Visor is another example of open source
software that enables the Linux kernel
and associated network software to have
programmable and user-defined functions
in realtime, without restarting systems.
These, and others, are technologies that a
decision maker will consider when designing
SDN and NFV based infrastructures.

8
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

The many meanings of SDN

The SDN concept

Overlay SDN

Hardware / underlay SDN

Its best to think of SDN as an umbrella term, not

as a strictly defined idtea. It largely encompasses
two main categories. There is overlay SDN, which is
defined by software, and there is hardware based
SDN, which focuses on separating the control
of network hardware from the hardware itself.

An overlay SDN allows any consumer of IT to

create your own entire datacentre network
on top of the existing infrastructure without
modifying any underlying hardware. This is
especially valuable in clouds where multiple
tenants, be them individuals or business units,
need network independence, isolation, and
autonomy. Overlay SDN lets the underlying
network or cloud operator offer network
independence to its consumer.

Hardware-based SDN solutions alleviate many

of the issues and constraints with traditional
networking hardware. The management
control plane, of the hardware is separated
from the physical hardware itself the data
plane. This means a generic network switch
can have features and functions dynamically
loaded in real time to change how it operates
and what its capabilities are.

The different implementations of SDN

are not necessarily exclusive. In most cases,
organisations will benefit from both overlay
SDN technologies as well as hardware-based,
underlay SDN solutions.
Other SDN approaches also exist, but the
defining aspect of SDN is the change in focus
away from the network hardware itself to
the software that manages and operates it.

Tweet this

A single physical device can replace several,

legacy network devices. This can reduce
the need for port undersubscription and
by programmatically adding functions
to devices with open ports, reduces port
oversubscription, as well, allowing better
balance of traffic universally across generic
network ports.

9
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Server virtualisation introduces SDN

Traditional datacentre networking
Before server virtualisation was commonplace,
every server had a single operating system,
typically a single application, and connected
to one or many legacy switch ports.
Network control and data flow are all managed
at an individual switch level. Further, every
network component throughout the network
infrastructure, from routers to advanced
network services like load balancers,
is locally and individually managed.

legacy switch

legacy switch

Two major issues are revealed:

1. The control of the network
equipment is tied to each device
2. Network equipment capability
is fairly inflexible

Tweet this

server

10
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Virtual switches provide SDN

to virtual machines VMs
The advent of server virtualisation, for most
organisations, was the initial introduction to
software defined networking SDN. As the
diagram illustrates, multiple operating systems
are running as virtual machines on a single server.
Each of these virtual machines has software
defined network adapters that connect to a
software defined, virtualised network switch.
The control and data planes for these virtual
machines are now managed at the server level
on commodity hardware, but the rest of the
network remains running traditional hardware.

Tweet this

virtual machine

server

virtual switch software

11
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Continuing to evolve SDN

Server virtualisation
datacentre networking
Since server virtualisation only provides SDN
capabilities for the VMs contained on each
individual server, the 2 major issues with
traditional networking remain:

load banalcer
server
virtual machine

virtual switch software

1. The control of the network equipment

is still tied to each device

legacy router

2. Network device capability remains

fairly inflexible

server
virtual machine

legacy switch
virtual switch software

Tweet this

12
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

SDN for datacenter network

infrastructure

server
virtual machine

D
 ecrease capital and operational
expenditure
D
 ecouple the management control plane,
from the device itself data plane, whereby
centralising network control

VNF servers
1 to Many

VPN

firewall

router
virtual switch software
load balancer

Tremendous increase in flexibility and

deployment of programmable network
infrastructure and network functions

server
virtual machine

generic SDN switch

virtual switch software

Tweet this

13
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

SDN infrastructure layers

Commodity server SDN
Since commodity servers can now serve as
part of the network infrastructure, their SDN
functionality is leveraged in different ways.
As illustrated on the page Server virtualisation
introduces SDN, virtualisation of servers has
made local, virtual switching a popular SDN
implementation. Some virtual switches have
control software that allows them to be managed
centrally and decouple the control plan from
the local host itself.

FAN networking
Another local-to-server SDN solution is Fan
Networking. Fan provides an IP address extension
capability to Linux containers, like LXD, to increase
density of workloads without sacrificing
network performance or network addresses.

Tweet this

SDN core and

OpenStack Neutron

Commodity network
hardware SDN

Commodity servers also serve as SDN

core nodes. These servers are not typical
virtualisation hosts, but rather host specific
software that enable SDN functionality for
datacentre infrastructure. These could be
control nodes, core gateways, routers, etc.
Advanced SDN solutions like PLUMgrid ONS or
Juniper Contrail use redundant and hierarchical
servers to provide advanced networking and
overlay networking capabilities.

There is a growing ecosystem of generic

network hardware. These are devices that
look like traditional switches or routers, but are
software-enabled by a 3rd-party. Ubuntu Core
is a general purpose IoT operating system that
you would install on generic network hardware,
and then potentially make it a layer two or three
switch, or advanced gateway or firewall, by
installing additional network software as Snaps.

OpenStack Neutron is an example of an

SDN control node. Neutron uses plugins
to communicate directly with SDN overlay
solutions like ONS and Contrail to provide
user-serviceable, independent network
infrastructure to respective cloud tenants.

The Open Compute Project has specifications

for networking that help define how generic
network hardware should be designed and
manufactured. Open Compute network hardware
is like commodity servers, except there are more
network ports and more focus on network
throughput than general compute.

14
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Network functions virtualisation NFV

NFV infrastructure NFVi

Virtualised Network Functions VNF

NFV deployment and architecture

The NFV concept is newer than SDN. While SDN

focuses on network hardware and the separation
of the data and control planes, NFV refers more
to application and network specific functions.
NFV infrastructure defines all of the components,
software and hardware, that enable NFV
for a given solution or organisation.

VNF refers to the functions that are being

virtualised in an NFV infrastructure. Like
SDN, this means that functions that used to be
delivered by proprietary, stand-alone devices,
are now being written as software that runs
on Linux (like Ubuntu) on industry standard,
commodity hardware.

NFV infrastructure can be deployed using

traditional network switching infrastructure,
or with SDN, or a combination of the two.
At present, combined SDN/NFV/traditional
infrastructure is most common, although the
components of the network core that support
NFV are most often SDN-based.

virtual switch
software

open compute SDN switch

Ubuntu

Ubuntu

Ubuntu
Core

Ubuntu
Core
virtual switch
software

Tweet this

legacy router
Ubuntu

Ubuntu
open compute SDN switch

15
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

General purpose network hardware

Open Compute Project (OCP)

Ubuntu Core

The OCP provides specifications and design

documents for servers, racks, and, of course,
network switches. The designs naturally create
standards for the industry to follow.

Snappy Ubuntu Core is a general purpose

IoT operating system. It is a lightweight,
transactional-based OS, making it ideal for
running OCP switches. Ubuntu Core is based
on the concept of Snaps. A Snap is an
independently contained, isolated application.

The network hardware from OCP has dedicated

chips for passing data, and more ports than a
typical commodity server, but offers commodity
processors and memory subsystems that run
standard Linux operating systems like Ubuntu
Core. The functionality of the hardware is
enabled by software from industry network
vendors. The management of the software
is not integrated to the hardware at all, and
is generally centralised on control nodes
wherenetwork administrators can centrally
configure, monitor, reconfigure, update,
and even upgrade the infrastructure.

Tweet this

Snaps install from a web store interface, providing

network operators a revenue or organisational
chargeback opportunity. There are Snaps available
that enable layer 2 switching, firewalls, routers,
gateways, and more network functionality.
They provide a software-modular approach
to network hardware. If a device requires
additional or less decommissioned, functionality,
its easily achieved by adding or removing a Snap.

Since both Ubuntu Core and the Snaps it

installs are transactional, automatic roll-back
occurs if theres a problem. The inherently
isolated nature of a Snap also means that
there is the highest level of security.

Ubuntu Core on OCP hardware

Revenue or chargeback opportunity
Highest availability
Isolation and security
Versatile functional
No-touch field upgrades

16
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Generic switch hardware

and SDN on servers
Generic switch hardware

Commodity server hardware

You need both

Generic switching hardware bridges the gap

between SDN and NFV on commodity servers and
traditional switches. Generic switches provide
similar port capacity and ASIC throughput to
that of a traditional switch with the management
and deployment benefits of SDN. They can also
run some VNFs like firewalls and load balancers
to further increase their value.

Servers have physically limited port count,

restricted by total network adapter ports.
But internal connections ports, become
virtual unlimited, and functions are only
bound by physical hardware constraints
CPU, memory, throughput. They offer all
of SDN and can run any VNF available.

Commodity servers provide great flexibility and

performance, but they need a top of rack or
centralised switch to efficiently communicate.
Traditional switching could achieve the goal
but modern, SDN-based switches extend
dynamic network management and configuration
beyond the reach of commodity servers and
traditional switches.

Ubuntu
Core

Ubuntu
Core

open compute SDN switch

Tweet this

open compute SDN switch

SDN
software

SDN
software

Ubuntu

Ubuntu

17
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Do I need a cloud for SDN and NFVi?

Modern infrastructure

Cloud benefits

While the simple answer is no, you dont

absolutely need a cloud to use SDN or NFV
technologies, you probably already have a
cloud or are working on a cloud initiative. In
general, SDN and NFV infrastructure run as
microservices, and those microservices are
best served by clouds, like Ubuntu OpenStack.

A well-designed cloud gives you rapid scaling,

dynamic deployment, and workload bursting
beyond your premises. It can also allow
departmental, development and operational selfservice. All of these capabilities can be employed
by SDN and NFV infrastructure solutions.

Tweet this

Realising the economic and technical benefits of

a cloud requires standardisation and repeatability.
Juju, discussed later in this eBook, helps
an organisation achieve those goals.

18
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Ubuntu for hyperscale

The platform
As the Why Now? page of this eBook suggests,
Ubuntu is the platform of choice for SDN and
NFV infrastructure. Ubuntu is the basis for
Ubuntu OpenStack and for hyperscale cloud
computing.
More than 65% of large OpenStack clouds
run on Ubuntu. Ubuntu hosts more OpenStack
cloud workloads than all other operating
systems combined.
The growing ecosystem of SDN and VNF
software is built for deployment on Ubuntu.

Tweet this

Scalable financial model that eliminates the

cost-prohibitive pain points of starting small
and growing big. Ubuntu Advantage for
OpenStack, which provides premium support
from Canonical, is priced with the economical
understanding of a hyperscale datacentre.
Scalable architecture from the kernel to
the tools used to manage applications on
Ubuntu, when features are implemented,
theyre all done with cloud scalability in mind.
Technologies like the LXD container hypervisor
and FAN networking increase density of
services on physical servers. They also both
have scalable management interfaces, to
support hundreds of server nodes as your
cloud grows.

Scalable services include offerings like

BootStack, a managed, hosted Ubuntu
OpenStack offering. BootStack scales to
hundreds of nodes, and includes OpenStack
training options, and optional SLAs. There
is also the option to completely transfer
management and control of your BootStack
environment to your own qualified,
operations staff.

19
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Deploying and managing

SDN and VNFs
Design and deploy

Modify and update

The migration from single purpose physical

assets to virtualised and software assets
creates the need for a tool to design, deploy
and manage the SDN and VNF infrastructure.

Seldom does a modern SDN or VNF deployment

remain static. Since the bundles that Juju deploys
are built from individually intelligent Charms, it
makes it relatively easy to interchange or update
specific components. It also makes it easy to roll
back to a previous bundle if things dont
go as planned.

Juju is an application modeling and

deployment tool. It uses the concept of
Charms to make the components of an SDN or
VNFs intelligent. By distilling the intelligence
into each individual component, design and
deployment are simplified and standardised.
Instead of relying on teams of consultants to
customise and deploy each component, Juju
can package multiple Charms into bundles
that can be deployed with consistency across
multiple regions and architectures.

Tweet this

Modifications and updates can be accomplished

without the need for expensive consultants,
complex static scripts, or total redeployment
of the solution.

20
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Performance and Interoperability

Compatibility

Performing well

VNF performance V-PIL

SDN offers tremendous benefits in flexible

configuration options and improved methods
of data routing. Its important that applications
work well in various SDN environments.
Canonicals OpenStack Interoperability Lab OIL
is able to run continuous integration testing
against multiple different SDN solutions with
various different workloads utilising their
networking paths. OIL ensures that modern
big data, analytics, and other cloud-based
solutions are compatible with modern
network infrastructure.

Beyond interoperability, Canonical has

benchmarking capabilities that allow you
to understand where your solution, SDN,
NFV, or just a regular application, runs best.
Canonicals Automated Benchmarking Service
CABS is capable of running the exact same
workload across multiple different clouds,
including your own, and reporting back relative
performance. Since SDN and NFV infrastructure
can stretch beyond your datacenter, into a public
or external private cloud, it can be important
to have performance baselines across multiple
locations and solutions.

V-PIL is the VNF Performance and Interoperability

Lab. It is another performance testing solution,
but focused solely on VNFs. Typically, many
VNFs work together in a service chain. Since
many VNFs are latency and throughput sensitive,
the VNF Performance Interoperability Lab is
able to automate test cases of service chained
VNFs and compare the results against a
functionally similar service chain that utilises
different VNFs.

Tweet this

V-PIL takes the guesswork out of deciding

on which VNF to use for a specific function,
from both an interoperability and
a performance perspective.

21
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Canonical, SDN and NFVi leadership

Emerging standards

Juju as a generic VNF manager

Canonical ecosystem

Many networking standards are derived from

the telecommunications industry. Canonical
has been an early adopter and supporter
of emerging telecoms standards, including
OSM and OPNFV.

Juju plays a vital role as a generic VNF manager

for OSM. It enables the use of multiple VNFs
without disparate VNF management solutions.
Since its a generic modeling tool, it can also
model and deploy the OpenStack infrastructure,
as well as additional services on top, like big data
processing, analytics, container management,
and more.

Working with networking leaders, like

Cisco, Juniper, PLUMgrid, Telefonica, and
dozens more, Canonicals rapidly deployable
ecosystem of solutions is unequaled.

OSM
Canonical is a founding member of Open
Source MANO OSM. It is a reference
architecture for management and
orchestration of NFV infrastructure based
on ETSI standards and open source solutions.
Along with Ubuntu and Ubuntu OpenStack,
Canonicals modeling and application deployment
tool, Juju, are all part of the initial OSM
reference architecture.

Tweet this

OPNFV
Canonical also supports OPNFV, the Open
Platform for NFV. The projects goals are
to provide consistency and interoperability
between NFV vendors. As discussed on the
Performance and interoperability page of this
eBook, Canonical is also aligned with
OPNFVs goals.

The unique ability of Juju to quickly model,

deploy, and integrate all the components of
a complex SDN or NFV infrastructure comes
from Jujus use of Charms. Charms give an
application the intelligence to both ask for
the resources it needs, as well as offer the
resources it provides, and automatically
connect it to other Charmed applications.
Using the Juju Charms approach, an entire
OpenStack cloud, SDN overlay solution,
or NFV infrastructure, can be deployed
in less than an hour.

22
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

Conclusion
Natural evolution

Experience

The industry transition from single function,

proprietary devices, to commodity, software
defined infrastructure is a natural one. Economics
have driven it, technological advancements
have enabled it.

Canonical has been the infrastructure for

the modern network of some of the worlds
largest telecommunications providers. The
Ubuntu family of solutions, Ubuntu, Ubuntu
OpenStack, and Ubuntu Core, provide an
economical, stable, and secure platform
for next generation, software defined
networks and network functions. From
Canonicals Charm Partner Program, enabling
the largest SDN/VNF ecosystem available,
to a commitment to standards, like OSM
and OPNFV, the long term, demonstrated
investment is clear.

It will become impossible to remain competitive

without SDN and NFV infrastructure. Every
organisation will have to transition. IT
departments for non-technical organisations,
telecoms operators, and cloud service providers
will all benefit from software based network
infrastructure. Even cloud-based businesses
already use SDN overlays every day.

Customers, Network veterans, and startups,

all choose open systems, standards, and
interoperability. Canonical does, too.

Tweet this

To learn more, visit

Ubuntu OpenStack
Scalable clouds and infrastructure
Ubuntu Core
Contact us

23
CIOs guide to SDN, NFV and VNF

About Canonical
At Canonical, we are passionate about
the potential of open source software to
transform business. For over a decade, we
have supported the development of Ubuntu
and promoted its adoption in the enterprise.

Tweet this

By providing custom engineering, support

contracts and training, we help clients in the
telecoms and IT services industries to cut
costs, improve efficiency and tighten security
with Ubuntu and OpenStack. We work with
hardware manufacturers like HP, Dell and
Intel, to ensure the software we create can be
delivered on the worlds most popular devices.
And we contribute thousands of man-hours
every year to projects like OpenStack, to
ensure that the worlds best open source
software continues to fulfil its potential.