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The emerging trends in networking at Branch and Retail Edge is impacting the architectural decisions of service providers, enterprise users, and edge users. The increasing shift to localized customer-focused operations with LOB-demand-driven customer-analytics sees an exponential increase in Edge Data generation and an inherent fear of returning to a disparate, regionalized technology sprawl. Dell Technologies Enterprise SONiC addresses all these trends in the data centers.
Network Edge is a distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage as close as possible to the sources of data. It is expected to improve response times and save bandwidth to reduce the strain on data centers. This paradigm is an architecture rather than a specific technology. It is a topology and location-sensitive form of distributed computing.
As can be seen in the following figure, the data center or the cloud in the middle represents the core network. Everything outside of that core network is considered edge.
Some trends that are coming at the edge are cybersecurity, quantum computing, robotic process automation, 5G, IoT, virtual reality, blockchain, and AI and ML capabilities. Each of these trends requires networking, computing, and storage to be as close to the user or device as possible to function as a network edge.
Each of these trends share challenges such as latency and bandwidth. For example, a Blockchain transaction requires local processing to hash algorithms as quickly as possible before sharing those hash keys across the core network for transactions. It is not feasible or scalable to have to traverse the entire network back to the data center to process the transaction.
For connectivity, devices must be able to communicate successfully with each other and be able to share their data. This requirement can lead to complex network architectures. These architectures must be configurable with near zero errors, which means that they must be able to be automated to maintain that level of connectivity.
Management and security are a challenge because these devices are not necessarily stored as they are in data centers where-in they can typically be found in wiring closets at the site. Connectivity cables going into kiosks or directly into the phones can be manipulated easily or unplugged. You must ensure that only valid devices are connected to the network.
There are business verticals that fall under the edge categories like oil and gas, finances, manufacturing, and healthcare. There are as many different edge cases as there are users.
Gartner projects that in the next four years, there will be 27 percent growth reaching $80 billion in this networking space, and networking edge’s total addressable market will grow at about 16 percent compound annual rate to about $7.8 billion. Network switching alone will grow to about $1.2 billion by 2025.
The following figure shows the focus of Dell Technologies regarding Edge:
The far edge is where the network is closest to end devices. It is typically seen at retail edges like self-checkout machines, voice-over-IP phone systems, and security systems at grocery stores or at a retail outlet. After self-checkout, the data is stored locally and later sent to the main data center at the end of the business day for reconciliation and inventory management.
The network edge is outside of the cloud and the data center as shown in the preceding figure. The end points are typically remote offices with a smaller data center and some edge devices like virtual desktop infrastructure, WIFI controllers, voice-over-IP phone systems, badge readers, security systems, and facial recognition cameras.
SONiC is based on Linux and a version of the open-source version of SONiC. It can be found in many data centers such as at Microsoft, Alibaba, and LinkedIn.
Because SONiC is based on Linux, you can use existing Linux tools to manage and operate the system and program the network. SONiC uses OpenConfig models, REST/JSON, and Google RPC and containers to run network functions. Routing functions that are built into the switch that are typically handled by services running through the operating system now run through their own standard containers. They are monitored and managed like containers in a data center. This containerization allows customers to add their own containers to the system in case they want to run their proprietary software package to extend the capability of the switch.
Another innovation is that SONiC is cloud ready and has been widely deployed, for example, in Azure and Microsoft web services, Alibaba, LinkedIn, and customers inside Dell Technologies.
Silicon vendors drive innovation. When new capabilities and new features come out in the networking stacks, hardware vendors program them into their chipsets using switch abstraction interface (SAI). These enhancements allow them to adopt SONiC at a more rapid pace than in a traditional network operating system where feature velocity is blocked by NOS constraints.
The following figure shows how Enterprise SONiC can be used across the entire spectrum of networking fabric:
SONiC is already used in data centers in the cloud. The features and capabilities that allow SONiC to thrive there, such as automation, telemetry, and the open-source compatibility with rest APIs gNMI and OpenConfig Yang models, make it successful for the data center. These features and capabilities can be used at the Near edge and can use the automation tools that are already deployed, understood, and are familiar for managing and operating the network.
Also, automation technologies that are built with our other partners such as Apstra, Augtera, and Dorado can be used for monitoring and management. You can achieve a repeatable style of deployment. When deployment must scale, the automated process can easily build up the network, by building out the edge, remote offices, and new branch offices.
When deploying at the far edge like retail sites, remote oil rigs, and infrastructures with IoT devices, there is the need to be connected to process control hardware. For example, if the doors of a refrigeration unit are left open, the chillers that monitor its temperature send alerts. This infrastructure is smaller and requires smaller footprint switches. Dell Technologies switch platforms that are available for enterprise SONiC can run on those smaller footprint switches and program, deploy, and manage those networks like in the data center and using the same network operating system platform.
Enterprise SONiC edge from Dell Technologies is a software bundle that is designed primarily for edge use cases. It is a customized version of Dell enterprise SONiC that is lighter in weight and designed to run on edge-class Dell networking switches. A typical edge deployment topology is shown below in figure 4.
Edge bundle capabilities include L3 capabilities such as BGP, voice VLANs, MLAG for redundancy, multicast capabilities, ACL, PoE/PoE+, port security, 802.1 X, AAA with radius and Tacacs, and user containers.
With Enterprise SONiC edge, customers can extend the data center fabric to remote locations using the same network operating system and tools used in their data centers such as Ansible and Telegraph. They can also use VxLAN to stretch the fabrics and the EVPN control plane for L3 routing, providing the required bandwidth and low latency that their edge devices require without having to back off all the way back to the cloud or to the data center.
POE/PoE+ capabilities provide power for voice-over-IP phones, IP cameras, medical, and security devices. Port security is needed to verify and validate only those devices that are required to be physically connected to the network and get network access.
Automation and management tools that customers use in the Enterprise SONiC in the data center can be used for the edge switches now. User container support for third-party applications on edge switches allows customers to extend the functionality of this switch and get more capabilities and use out of them.