Avaya Announces Software-Defined Data Center Framework

Avaya announced its Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) framework, which is designed to deliver productivity, agility and time-to-service enhancements to businesses operating highly virtualised data centers. The framework aims to break down traditional data center silos that require weeks or months to turn up an application and replace it with a simple five-step process that takes minutes.

The Avaya SDDC framework includes an orchestration process that combines, customises and commissions compute, storage and network components. Use of the OpenStack cloud computing platform will allow data center administrations to deploy virtual machines, assign storage and configure networks through a single graphical user interface. Avaya Fabric Connect further enhances the OpenStack environment by removing restrictions in traditional Ethernet VLAN / Spanning Tree-based networks to enable a more dynamic, flexible and scalable network services model than exists today.

“In many ways this is a logical evolution of Avaya’s Data Center networking portfolio," said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure, IDC. “Having executed on its vision of using Fabric Connect (based on enhanced Shortest Path Bridging) as an end-to-end architecture, it only makes sense to wrap it with an orchestration and automation enabler like OpenStack. This is a natural and powerful extension for Avaya, and their present and future customers will surely embrace it.”

The Avaya SDDC framework is based on the following components:

Avaya Fabric Connect technology as the virtual backbone to interconnect resource pools within and between data centers with increased flexibility and scale.

An Avaya OpenStack Horizon-based Management Platform, delivering orchestration for compute (Nova), storage (Cinder/Swift) and network via Avaya Fabric Connect (Neutron).

Open APIs into the Avaya Fabric Connect architecture for ease of integration, customisation and interoperability with other Software-Defined Networking architectures.

“This is has the potential to be a game-changer for Fiducia. Complex and rigid networking are at odds with the advances that are commonplace in compute and storage,” said Wolfgang Boschert, Head of Security & LAN Infrastructure, Fiducia IT AG. “Fabric Connect’s real-time provisioning capability is a key differentiator and creates an opportunity to extend into innovative areas such as end-to-end orchestration and provisioning, which we believe are cornerstones of tomorrow’s automated data center.”

The Avaya SDDC framework can ultimately provide the following benefits to businesses:

Reduced Time-to-Service: cloud services enabled in minutes through a five-step process.

Simplified Virtual Machine Mobility: simple end-point provisioning enabling virtual machine mobility within and between geographically dispersed data centers.

Multi-Vendor Orchestration: coordinated allocation of data center resources via a single interface to streamline the deployment of applications.

Scale-out Connectivity: services scale to more than 16 million unique services, up from the limitation of 4000 in traditional Ethernet networks.

Secure Multi-Tenancy: leveraging network, compute and storage layer abstraction and isolation.

Improved Network Flexibility: overcomes current VLAN challenges to deliver a load-balanced, loop-free network where any logical topology can be built, independent of the physical layout.

Avaya’s Software-Defined Data Center framework is the first phase of Avaya’s Software-Defined Networking roadmap. Avaya Fabric Connect is available today on a wide range of networking platforms including Virtual Service Platform 9000, Ethernet Routing Switch 8800, Virtual Services Platform 7000 and Virtual Services Platform 4000.

“Avaya continues to innovate the way that networks are designed, built and operated, leveraging the unique capabilities of our Fabric Connect technology,” said Marc Randall, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Avaya Networking. “This announcement demonstrates that enterprises can immediately realise the operational benefits of real-time orchestration and automation. While some remain hung-up on definitions of SDN and what it might to deliver in the future, Avaya is delivering tangible business benefits today.”

The Avaya Horizon-based Management Platform and open APIs will be generally available next year. Future initiatives include the extension of Fabric Connect and Orchestration to deliver end-to-end service creation and delivery from data center to desktop.