Networking Industry’s de Facto Standard Open Source SDN Platform Enables Network Services Across a Spectrum of Hardware in Multivendor Environments
The OpenDaylight Project’s fourth open SDN platform release OpenDaylight Beryllium (ODL Be) is now available to service providers and enterprises seeking to solve key network challenges related to Automated Service Delivery, Network Resource Optimization, Cloud and NFV, and others.
“Dozens of vendors and end users have already chosen to build and deploy solutions leveraging the OpenDaylight platform,” said Neela Jacques, Executive Director, OpenDaylight. “ODL Be delivers important performance and scalability improvements and adds significant new network services and abstractions to serve the ever-growing set of use cases being tackled by end-users. ODL Be brings us one step closer to unifying the industry around a single, common platform.”
Those who have already deployed ODL will see significant improvements in performance, scalability and functionality with ODL Be. New network services offer clustering and high availability, improved data handling, messaging for transport, greater abstraction of network models, broad management of network elements, and a new GUI. ODL Be is the ideal platform to get a full range of options for configuring policy and intent, and there are several new applications built on ODL that make the transition to SDN even easier.
New Features in OpenDaylight Beryllium
- Performance and Scalability: Stronger analysis and testing of clustering (where multiple instances of ODL act as one logical controller) appear in ODL Be. Applications that want to be cluster-aware can choose how to put data across the cluster. For the first time in OpenDaylight, the Be release includes all the components necessary to fully support OpenStack High Availability and Clustering with improved support for Neutron APIs and features. As of the Be release, OpenDaylight enables workload placement on hosts with DPDK-accelerated virtual switches.
- Ease of Adoption: ODL Be continues to integrate features to improve interoperability for multivendor environments with updates to its microservices architecture and new projects like NetIDE for intent-based network modeling. The NeXt UI feature allows you to better understand OpenDaylight’s functionality through user-friendly visual displays. Updated documentation is available to aid in installation and deployment.
- Abstracting Network Models: ODL Be includes the widest range of configurations for policy and intent of any controller or platform. Four methods are supported — NEMO, Application Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO), Group Based Policy (GBP) and Network Intent Composition (NIC) — providing unparalleled flexibility for intent-based management and direction of network services and resources.
- Broad Set of Use Cases: ODL Be provides the broadest set of SDN use cases, both traditional and greenfield, for service provider and enterprise networks. New services and architectural improvements in Beryllium will enable new use cases in the areas of Cloud and NFV as well as adding scale and flexibility to the traditional use cases in the areas of network resource optimization and automated service delivery.
“Thousands of end users around the globe use, test and deploy OpenDaylight as an SDN platform, with many having contributed code and ideas to the ODL Be release,” said Chris Luke, chair of the OpenDaylight Advisory Group and senior principal engineer, Comcast. “Community participation and contributions continue to grow, which is reflected in the Beryllium release. The platform is being enhanced and refined consistent with how open SDN is being utilized throughout the ecosystem.”
