Data center networking is the process of establishing and interconnecting the entire physical and network-based devices and equipment within a data center facility. It enables a digital connection between data center infrastructure nodes and equipment to ensure that they can communicate and transfer data between each other and on an external network or Internet.

NVS is used to deploy Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to create cloud-based applications with a combination of virtualization software and industry standard hardware.
Global operators are increasingly looking at using NFV software and industry-standard hardware to deploy enterprise applications rather than using integrated, proprietary hardware and software systems. Enterprise applications that can be deployed with NFV software include virtual firewalls, IP–VPNs, load balancing, application acceleration, Wide Area Network (WAN) connectivity and optimization services, and network services using virtual customer premises equipment (CPE).

NFV also is flexible, cost-effective, scalable, and secure. With these benefits, NFV addresses several trends shaping service provider networks.

• Flexibility: Operators looking to quickly deploy new services require a much more flexible and adaptable network -- one that can be easily and quickly installed and provisioned.
• Cost: Cost is a top consideration for any operator or service provider these days, even more so now that they see Google and others deploying massive data centers using off-the-shelf merchant silicon (commoditized hardware) as a way to drive down cost. Cost is also reflected in opex -- how easy it is to deploy and maintain services in the network.
• Scalability: To adapt quickly to users' changing needs and provide new services, operators must be able to scale their network architecture across multiple servers, rather than being limited by what a single box can do.
• Security: Security has been, and continues to be, a major challenge in networking. Operators want to be able to provision and manage the network while allowing their customers to run their own virtual space and firewall securely within the network.

The networking demands of big data analytics, flash-based and scale out storage, and hyper-converged compute solutions are driving a migration from legacy fiber channel to next generation IP-based storage networks. These next generation storage applications require an open, programmable, lossless and highly available IP storage networking solution in order to support their unique traffic patterns.

Arista's key benefits for Big Data acquisition and analysis include:

-Familiar GUI-based network administration tools for storage admins
-Return on Investment - Low power consumption, compact form factors
-Seamless migration to 25GbE and 50GbE for next generation IP Storage 

Juniper Networks Contrail Networking is a simple, open, and agile cloud network automation product that leverages SDN technology to orchestrate the creation of highly scalable virtual networks. Combining a scale out architecture featuring open interoperability with physical routers and switches, Contrail can elastically scale infrastructures beyond data center or cloud boundaries to facilitate dynamic workload mobility in a hybrid environment. Service providers can use Contrail Networking to accelerate the deployment of innovative new services, while enterprises can use it to increase business agility by enabling the migration of applications and IT resources to more flexible private or hybrid cloud environments.

For enterprises, Contrail Networking interoperates with OpenStack cloud orchestration platform to enable system-level automation and orchestration. It reduces the friction of migrating to cloud architectures by providing a virtualized networking layer that seamlessly delivers switching, routing, and networking services (security, load balancing, VPNs, etc.) over an existing physical network. It also provides API compatibility with public clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS) for seamless workload provisioning in hybrid environments.

For service providers, Contrail Networking automates network resource provisioning and orchestration to dynamically create highly scalable virtual networks and to chain a rich set of Juniper or third-party virtualized network functions (VNFs) and physical network functions (PNFs) to form differentiated service chains on demand. Integrated with a cloud management platform such as OpenStack, Contrail Networking enables the agile creation and dynamic scaling of service instances with high availability and reliability. Contrail Networking also makes it really simple to onboard network functions onto the platform without requiring any API integration or modifications to third-party service software.

Key Features

Switching and Routing: Hypervisor forwarding plane provides line-rate routing and switching in a multitenant virtualized environment that is completely decoupled from the underlying physical fabric switches.

Load Balancing: Load balancing is built right into the hypervisor’s forwarding plane for balancing traffic across application tiers or network services.

Security and Multitenancy: The use of L3VPN to create virtual networks inherently provides a secure multitenant environment, where virtual networks cannot talk to each other without policies. The Contrail Networking vRouter has built-in distributed firewall capabilities that allow users to define security policies between virtual networks. The security policies can specify additional virtualized network services such as the Juniper Networks Firefly Perimeter application-aware firewall; and distributed threat prevention using Juniper Networks WebApp Secure, which can be spun up between virtual networks.

Elastic, Resilient VPN: L3VPN, E-VPN, and site-to-site IPsec are all delivered in software.

Gateway Services: Contrail interoperates with most routing equipment that supports L3VPN or E-VPN with the appropriate data encapsulation standards, including Juniper Networks MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers to seamlessly connect to legacy workloads and non-virtualized physical services.

High Availability: All Contrail Networking components are made highly available and offer active/active redundancy. Each Contrail Networking VRouter is connected to a set of control planes and gets the same routing table and access control lists (ACLs).

Analytics Services: Rich visualization and diagnostics of virtualized and physical networks enable real-time and historical infrastructure analytics that can be consumed through RESTful APIs. Users can also view live packet capture of traffic between virtual networks.

API Services: RESTful API for configuration, operation, and analytics provides seamless integration with OpenStack or service provider OSS/BSS systems. This includes Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) API compatibility for seamless deployment of applications in a hybrid environment (e.g., private cloud and public cloud/AWS).

The attributes of Cloud Networking : Scalable, Low Latency, Open APIs, Programmable Management, Self-Healing Resiliency. software-defined networking (SDN) Software-defined networking (SDN) is an umbrella term encompassing several kinds of network technology aimed at making the network as agile and flexible as the virtualized server and storage infrastructure of the modern data center. The goal of SDN is to allow network engineers and administrators to respond quickly to changing business requirements.


SDN Benefits:

1.Centralized network provisioning
Software defined networks provide a centralized view of the entire network, making it easier to centralize enterprise management and provisioning. For example, more VLANs are becoming part of physical LANs, creating a Gordian knot of links and dependencies. By abstracting the control and data planes, SDN can accelerate service delivery and provide more agility in provisioning both virtual and physical network devices from a central location.

2.Holistic enterprise management
Enterprise networks have to set up new applications and virtual machines on demand to accommodate new processing requests such as those for big data. SDN allows IT managers to experiment with network configuration without impacting the network. SDN also supports management of both physical and virtual switches and network devices from a central controller; something you can’t do with SNMP. SDN provides a single set of APIs to create a single management console for physical and virtual devices.

3.More granular security
One of the advantages of security defined networking that appeals most to IT managers is centralized security. Virtualization has made network management more challenging. With virtual machines coming and going as part of physical systems, it’s more difficult to consistently apply firewall and content filtering polices. When you add in complexities such as securing BYOD devices, the security problem is compounded.
The SDN Controller provides a central point of control to distribute security and policy information consistently throughout the enterprise. Centralizing security control into one entity, like the SDN Controller, has the disadvantage of creating a central point of attack, but SDN can effectively be used to manage security throughout the enterprise if it is implemented securely and properly.

4.Lower operating costs
Administrative efficiency, improvements in server utilization, better control of virtualization, and other benefits should result in operational savings. Although it is still early to show real proof of savings, SDN should lower overall operating costs and result in administrative savings since many of the routine network administration issues can be centralized and automated.

5.Hardware savings and reduced capital expenditures
Adopting SDN also gives new life to existing network devices. SDN makes it easier to optimize commoditized hardware. Existing hardware can be repurposed using instructions from the SDN controller and less expensive hardware can be deployed to greater effect since new devices essentially become “white box” switches with all the intelligence centered at the SDN controller.

6.Cloud abstraction
Cloud computing is here to stay and it is evolving into a unified infrastructure. By abstracting cloud resources using software defined networking, it’s easier to unify cloud resources. The networking components that make up massive data center platforms can all be managed from the SDN controller.

7.Guaranteed content delivery
The ability to shape and control data traffic is one of the primary advantages of software defined networking. Being able to direct and automate data traffic makes it easier to implement quality of services (QoS) for voice over IP and multimedia transmissions. Streaming high quality video is easier because SDN improves network responsiveness to ensure a flawless user experience.
The specific advantages of software defined networking will vary from network to network, but there are benefits from network abstraction and the agility it offers for network administration and automation. The best way to get the most out of SDN is to assess the network components and infrastructure to determine if SDN can help address issues such as resource availability, virtualization, and network security. Software defined networking isn’t the right approach for every network environment, but when there are clear benefits, SDN could be just the solution you need to optimize your data center.