SDN Getting Started GuideEarly Access February 2015 Release

9034842

Published April 2015

Copyright © 2015 All rights reserved.

Legal NoticeExtreme Networks, Inc., on behalf of or through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Enterasys Networks,Inc., reserves the right to make changes in specifications and other information contained in thisdocument and its website without prior notice. The reader should in all cases consultrepresentatives of Extreme Networks to determine whether any such changes have been made.The hardware, firmware, software or any specifications described or referred to in this documentare subject to change without notice.

TrademarksExtreme Networks and the Extreme Networks logo are trademarks or registered trademarks ofExtreme Networks, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.All other names (including any product names) mentioned in this document are the property oftheir respective owners and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respectivecompanies/owners.For additional information on Extreme Networks trademarks, please see: www.extremenetworks.com/company/legal/trademarks/

SupportFor product support, including documentation, visit: www.extremenetworks.com/documentation/

For information, contact:Extreme Networks, Inc.145 Rio RoblesSan Jose, California 95134USA

Table of ContentsExtreme Networks Publications.............................................................................................................................................4

Preface.........................................................................................................................................5Conventions.............................................................................................................................................................................5Providing Feedback to Us................................................................................................................................................ 6Getting Help............................................................................................................................................................................ 6Related Publications............................................................................................................................................................ 7

Chapter 1: SDN Overview..........................................................................................................8Why SDN?................................................................................................................................................................................ 8What is SDN?.......................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Chapter 2: Extreme Networks SDN Offering....................................................................... 10SDN Ecosystem................................................................................................................................................................... 10SDN Platform.......................................................................................................................................................................... 11OneController........................................................................................................................................................................ 13Other Extreme Networks SDN Products.................................................................................................................14

Chapter 3: Solving Problems with SDN.................................................................................16Traffic Engineering............................................................................................................................................................. 16Service Function Chaining.............................................................................................................................................. 17Network Virtualization...................................................................................................................................................... 17

SDN Getting Started Guide 3

Extreme Networks Publications

GeneralDocumentation for BlackDiamond Series, E4G, ExtremeXOS, Summit Series, and Ridgeline is availableat: www.extremenetworks.com/documentation

Documentation for IdentiFi, NetSight, S/K/7100-Series, SecureStack, Purview, and IPS/SIEM is availableat: https://extranet.extremenetworks.com/downloads/

Open Source DeclarationSome ExtremeXOS software files have been licensed under certain open source licenses. Information isavailable at: www.extremenetworks.com/services/osl-exos.aspx

SDN Getting Started Guide 4

Preface

ConventionsThis section discusses the conventions used in this guide.

Text ConventionsThe following tables list text conventions that are used throughout this guide.

Table 1: Notice IconsIcon Notice Type Alerts you to...

Note Important features or instructions.

Caution Risk of personal injury, system damage, or loss of data.

Warning Risk of severe personal injury.

New This command or section is new for this release.

Table 2: Text ConventionsConvention Description

Screen displaysThis typeface indicates command syntax, or represents information as it appears onthe screen.

The words enter andtype

When you see the word “enter” in this guide, you must type something, and then pressthe Return or Enter key. Do not press the Return or Enter key when an instructionsimply says “type.”

[Key] names Key names are written with brackets, such as [Return] or [Esc]. If you must press twoor more keys simultaneously, the key names are linked with a plus sign (+). Example:Press [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del]

Words in italicized type Italics emphasize a point or denote new terms at the place where they are defined inthe text. Italics are also used when referring to publication titles.

Platform-Dependent ConventionsUnless otherwise noted, all information applies to all platforms supported by ExtremeXOS software,which are the following:

• BlackDiamond® X series switch

• BlackDiamond 8800 series switches

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• Cell Site Routers (E4G-200 and E4G-400)

• Summit® family switches

• SummitStack™

When a feature or feature implementation applies to specific platforms, the specific platform is noted inthe heading for the section describing that implementation in the ExtremeXOS commanddocumentation. In many cases, although the command is available on all platforms, each platform usesspecific keywords. These keywords specific to each platform are shown in the Syntax Description anddiscussed in the Usage Guidelines.

TerminologyWhen features, functionality, or operation is specific to a switch family, the family name is used.Explanations about features and operations that are the same across all product families simply refer tothe product as the "switch."

Providing Feedback to UsWe are always striving to improve our documentation and help you work better, so we want to hearfrom you! We welcome all feedback but especially want to know about:

• Content errors or confusing or conflicting information.

• Ideas for improvements to our documentation so you can find the information you need faster.

• Broken links or usability issues.

If you would like to provide feedback to the Extreme Networks Information Development team aboutthis document, please contact us using our short online feedback form. You can also email us directly at InternalInfoDev@extremenetworks.com.

Getting HelpIf you require assistance, contact Extreme Networks Global Technical Assistance Center using one ofthe following methods:

Web www.extremenetworks.com/support

Phone 1-800-872-8440 (toll-free in U.S. and Canada) or 1-603-952-5000For the Extreme Networks support phone number in your country: www.extremenetworks.com/support/contact

Email support@extremenetworks.comTo expedite your message, enter the product name or model number in the subject line.

Before contacting Extreme Networks for technical support, have the following information ready:

• Your Extreme Networks service contract number

• A description of the failure

• A description of any action(s) already taken to resolve the problem (for example, changing modeswitches or rebooting the unit)

• The serial and revision numbers of all involved Extreme Networks products in the network

Preface

SDN Getting Started Guide 6

• A description of your network environment (such as layout, cable type, other relevantenvironmental information)

• Network load and frame size at the time of trouble (if known)

• The device history (for example, if you have returned the device before, or if this is a recurringproblem)

• Any previous Return Material Authorization (RMA) numbers

Related Publications

Extreme SDN Documentation

• OneC-A-600 Quick Reference

• OneController Install and User Guide

• OneController Release Notes

• SDN Getting Started Guide

Preface

SDN Getting Started Guide 7

1 SDN Overview

Why SDN?What is SDN?

Why SDN?

The desire to move to the SDN model is being driven by several factors that are currently limitingconventional networking solutions from meeting today's needs:

• Complexity—Currently, to add or move devices, IT must touch multiple switches, routers, firewalls,Web authentication portals, etc. and update ACLs, VLANs, Quality of Services (QoS), and otherprotocol-based mechanisms using device-level management tools. Due to this complexity, today'snetworks are relatively static as IT seeks to minimize the risk of service disruption.

• Lack of centralized orchestration—Current networks rely on device-level management tools andmanual processes. To implement a network-wide policy, IT may have to configure thousands ofdevices and mechanisms.

• Inability to scale—Conventional networks deal with increased demand by increasing physicalinfrastructure. As long as the increased demand is static, this solution works. However, increasingly,traffic patterns are incredibly dynamic and therefore unpredictable due to an increased mobility ofusers, more types of devices (smartphones, tablets), more online content, more cloud-basedcomputing, and more users in a globally connected world.

SDN is purporting to address these issues by being dynamic, manageable, cost-effective, andadaptable, seeking to be suitable for the high-bandwidth, dynamic nature of today's applications. SDNarchitectures decouple network control and forwarding functions, enabling network control to becomedirectly programmable and the underlying infrastructure to be abstracted from applications andnetwork services.

What is SDN?

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a new architectural approach that delivers network-wideobjectives and capabilities through automation. SDN is an approach to computer networking that seeksto manage network services by decoupling the system that makes decisions about where traffic is sent(control plane) from the underlying systems that forward traffic to the selected destination (dataplane).

Key features include:

• Network abstraction—underlying infrastructure is abstracted from applications and networkservices.

• Separation of control and data planes—decoupling the system that makes decisions about wheretraffic is sent (control plane) from the underlying systems that forward traffic to the destination(data plane).

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• Programmable data plane—ideally, virtual networks should forward packets at rates that arecomparable to native, hardware-based approaches.

• Virtualization of the network—virtualization can occur in two ways: (1) Use of virtual compute (VMs),virtual switches, and virtual storage to produce elastic, adaptable resource allocation. (2)Abstracting the network such that you provide each user with a virtualized network as anindependent network container with its own features and characteristics, independent of the viewof other users.

• Automation and orchestration—network control is directly programmable, allowing the ability toimplement network-wide policies, etc., rather than implementing individually and manually, at thedevice level.

Key benefits include:

• Greater flexibility, agility—flexibility and agility are improved due to dynamic scaling and centralizedcontrol. Setting up networks in SDN can be as easy as creating VM instances. Flexibility and agilityare also increased by the availability of APIs (application program interface), which allow you to addnew features to the network.

• Lower operating expenses and optimized capital expenditure—upfront and ongoing expenses arereduced by not having to over provision a static network with excess capacity to deal with variableusage.

• Better and more granular security—VMs can make network security problematic. SDN can providefine-grained security for application, endpoints, and BYOD devices situations that a conventional,hard-wired network cannot.

Figure 1: SDN Infrastructure

SDN Overview

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2 Extreme Networks SDN Offering

SDN EcosystemSDN PlatformOneControllerOther Extreme Networks SDN Products

Extreme Networks SDN heritage started in the mid 1990s as a industry leader in flow-basednetworking, and providing such products as ExtremeXOS, a Linux-based operating system that iscommon across the whole product line for consistent provisioning, programmability, and heterogeneityacross platforms. SDN development continued with other products, such as the award-winning,revolutionary OneFabric Connect, providing centralized management and control of both network andthird-party systems; also, NetSight and Policy Manager with their APIs, for programmatic archestrationof network-wide policy.

The Extreme Networks SDN evolution continues to this day and consists of a multi-level solutionoffering that includes:

• SDN Ecosystem—complete environment for developing and acquiring SDN applications (see SDNEcosystem on page 10).

• SDN Platform—aggregation of supported APIs from various components that is hardened, proven,and supported by Extreme Networks (see SDN Platform on page 11).

• OneController—OpenDaylight-based controller available as a virtual or physical appliance (see OneController on page 13).

• Additional Extreme Networks SDN products— see Other Extreme Networks SDN Products on page14.

• Third-party/open source products and tools—integration with third-party and open source SDNresources (see Integration Partners on page 12).

SDN Ecosystem

For users, the SDN ecosystem provides an App Store for acquiring and deploying SDN applicationscreated by both Extreme Networks, and a select community of third-party developers.

Access the App Store at https://marketplace.extremenetworks.com.

For developers, the Extreme Networks SDN ecosystem provides what you need to create a rich set ofapplications: software developer kits (SDKs), developer forums, support, online training, testbedenvironment, and documentation. For more information, see the Developers Resources Guide.

Access the SDN Developer Portal at https://developer.extremenetworks.com.

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SDN Platform

The Extreme Networks SDN platform provides an aggregation of supported APIs from variouscomponents that is hardened, proven, and serviced by Extreme Networks (see the following figure).

Figure 2: Extreme Networks SDN Platform

The Extreme Networks SDN platform includes:

• Management and policy—using OneFabric Connect, NetSight, or other network managementsystems.

• Analytics—using Purview.

• Orchestration—using Citrix, VMWare, OpenStack, Microsoft, and others.

• OneController—Extreme Networks SDN controller (see OneController on page 13).

• APIs—various APIs allow a broad portfolio of seamless integrations points at any level of thenetwork: OneController platform API, NetSight API, and switch-level APIs that provide the ability toprogram ExtremeXOS using SOAP/XML, C/C++, and Python.

For more information about Extreme Networks SDN Platform, go to www.extremenetworks.com/product/sdn.

SDN Platform Open Source Elements

Extreme Networks is committed to open source solutions and the advantages that they provide forcustomers: enabling you to leverage your existing investments, minimizing cost, and maximizingflexibility.

The following lists some of the key Extreme Networks SDN Platform-compatible third-party and opensource solutions:

• Open vSwitch—production quality, multilayer virtual switch licensed under the open source Apache2.0 license. It enables large-scale network automation through programmatic extension, while stillsupporting standard management interfaces and protocols (for example, NetFlow, sFlow, SPAN,RSPAN, CLI, LACP, 802.1ag).

• OpenFlow—OpenFlow is a communications protocol that gives access to the forwarding plane of anetwork switch or router over the network. OpenFlow enables remote controllers (such as OneController) to determine the path of network packets through the network. This separation ofthe control plane from the forwarding plane allows for more sophisticated traffic management than

Extreme Networks SDN Offering

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is feasible using access control lists (ACLs) and routing protocols. Also, OpenFlow allowsOpenFlow-capable switches from different vendors, despite having their own proprietary interfacesand scripting languages, to be managed collectively and remotely using a single, open protocol.

• OpenStack—free and open-source cloud computing software platform. Used primarily as aninfrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution, it offers to customers computers—physical, or more often,virtual machines—and other resources according to the customers’ varying requirements, providingthe ability to scale services up and down. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projectsthat control pools of processing, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center, whichusers manage through a web-based dashboard, command-line tools, or a RESTful API.

• HyperGlance—by Real Status, provides a GUI-based, 3-D cloud visibility solution to simplifymanaging networks by aggregating and dynamically synchronizing data for real-time,multidimensional visualization, navigation, analysis, and control at scale.

Integration Partners

Extreme Networks is partnering with leading technology providers to provide expanded solutions. TheExtreme Networks Integration Partners, based on Extreme Networks SDN Platform (see SDN Platformon page 11), provide an open and multi-vendor led, standards-based Ecosystem making it easier tointroduce new capabilities with technology providers.

Figure 3: Technical Solutions Partners

Extreme Networks SDN Offering

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OneControllerOneController v1.0 leverages the OpenDaylight Helium SR1.1 version SDN Controller to provide an open,fully pluggable and scalable platform to enable SDN and NFV for networks at any size and scale. Futurereleases of OneController will use OpenDaylight releases as they become available and validated.

Applications can use OneController to gather network intelligence, run algorithms to perform analytics,and then use OneController to orchestrate the new rules, if any, throughout the network. Additionally,OneController is based on the modular OpenDaylight platform that allows multiple Java modules to runconcurrently within the Karaf framework, and lets the modules access Java APIs exposed by othermodules using the OpenDaylight Service Layer Abstraction (SAL) framework.

The OneController framework contains a collection of dynamically pluggable modules to providenetwork services such as:

• Host and node service

• Flow service

• Physical and overlay (flow-based) topology service

• Path service to setup and manage a path based on specified constraints such as bandwidthbetween a given source and destination

• Multi-tenant network virtualization service

• Network statistics service

OneController also provides the following features:

• Web-based GUI for configuring the OneController appliance

• OpenFlow modules for Lync® integration (configuring only the access switches)

Extreme Networks SDN Offering

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Figure 4: Extreme Networks OneController

For more information, go to https://extranet.extremenetworks.com/downloads/Pages/OneController.aspx.

Other Extreme Networks SDN Products

Extreme Networks provides several products that are key building blocks of the SDN Platform (see SDN Platform on page 11).

• NetSight—Extreme Networks network management system (NMS) that provides wired/wireless,centralized visibility and automated control of your network with inventory, policy, identity, andsecurity management.

• ExtremeXOS—Extreme Networks switch operating system with a robust set of Layer 2 and Layer 3control protocols, flexible architecture, high availability for carrier-grade voice and video servicesover IP and for supporting mission-critical business applications. Extreme Network switches that runExtremeXOS with the Extreme OpenFlow solution can operate in OpenFlow mode (see "OpenFlow"below).

• OpenFlow—the ExtremeXOS OpenFlow implementation enables OneController (see OneControlleron page 13) to manipulate data flows within an Extreme switch using a standard protocol to

Extreme Networks SDN Offering

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dynamically configure a flow table abstraction. Flow table entries consist of a set of packetmatching criteria (L2, L3, and L4 packet headers), a set of actions associated with a flow (flood,modify, forward, divert to controller, etc.), and a set of per flow packet and byte counters. Flowtable entries are implemented using hardware ACLs and FDB entries.

• OneFabric Connect—through NetSight (see previous), OneFabric Connect provides centralizedmanagement and control of both network and third-party systems, through programmability ofvirtualization and application integration via an XML/SOAP-based API. With the OneFabric ConnectAPI, you can integrate a variety of systems and applications. Extreme Networks provides severalpredefined integrations that allow programmatic control of VM, MDM, web filtering, and firewallsystems. You can also develop your own integrations through the XML/SOAP-based API.

• Purview—Extreme Networks application analytics and optimization solution that captures networkdata and aggregates, analyzes, correlates, and reports on it to enable better decision-making andimproved business performance. Purview provides a centralized command control center thatcombines network management with business analytics that permits you to optimize the networkfor applications, enhance security for those applications, and provide data for business analytics.

Extreme Networks SDN Offering

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3 Solving Problems with SDN

Traffic EngineeringService Function ChainingNetwork Virtualization

Traffic Engineering

SDN-based traffic engineering involves identifying and altering the behavior or pattern of specific typesof traffic on-demand. This requires the ability to, in real time, distinguish certain types of traffic, andthen dynamically classify it based on host, OS, application, or end-user. Two common methods forengineering traffic are QoS modifications and traffic steering.

Figure 5: Traffic Engineering Microsoft Lync

Use cases:

• Optimize traffic path (choose non-shortest path, load distribute) for various applications, such as:

• Microsoft® Lync

• Mice/elephant flows

• Custom traffic management applications

• Collaboration solutions

• Backup and recovery

• Conditional traffic engineering

Benefits:

• Maximize network resource utilization

• Optimize application performance

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• Provision new services efficiently on the network

Service Function Chaining

Service function chaining consists of “stitching” together an ordered list of network services (forexample, firewalls or load balancers) in the network to create a service chain. This requires the ability toregister the services and chain provisioning.

Figure 6: Service Function Chaining

Use cases:

• Firewall upgrades

• Consolidation of workloads into a single cloud from traditional non-virtualized data centers

• IaaS (Infrastructure As a Service)

• Chain services, such as ADC, DPI, IDS, VPN in the data center

• Mechanism to register services and chain provisioning

• Policy-driven service chaining

Benefits:

• Cost optimization for services virtualized on x86

• More agile insertion of new services possible

• Automated traffic steering and chaining reduces deployment complexity and cost

Requirements:

• Ability to define an ordered list of a network services (for example, firewalls, load balancers, etc.)

• A mechanism to register services and chain provisioning

Network Virtualization

Network virtualization creates logical segments in an existing physical network by logically dividing thenetwork at the flow level similar to an overlay or a tunnel. Many choices are available, each with its ownstrengths and weaknesses. OpenFlow-based network virtualization allows for the most flexibility, as it

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can work in conjunction with existing mature network virtualization techniques like VLANs, IP, andMPLS. The other notable network virtualization technology is VXLAN.

Use cases:

• Multi-tenant data centers (see Multi-tenant Data Centers Solution with OpenStack/OneController onpage 18)

• DDoS mitigation

• VM migration

Multi-tenant Data Centers Solution with OpenStack/OneController

The following solution implements a multi-tenant data center using OpenStack and Extreme NetworksOneController:

• OpenStack orchestrator that manages and orchestrates the data center compute, storage andnetworking infrastructure.

• OpenStack offloads all network configuration, management, and orchestration to OneController.

• OneController specifically uses the Virtual Tenant Network (VTN) application to provide multi-tenancy and to stretch the tenant network across geographically dispersed data centers.

Figure 7: Multi-tenant Data Centers: Orchestration with OpenStack

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