Dell, Brocade and Intel collaborate on new open-standard NFV solutions

Today we announced that Dell, Brocade and Intel have collaborated to deliver new NFV solutions for telecommunications service providers. These solutions add the Brocade Vyatta vRouter software to Dell’s newly introduced NFV platform, powered by Intel’s Data Plane Developers Kit (DPDK) and the new world-record-breaking Xeon E5-2600v3 processor. Now NFV developers can easily use the latest technologies to evaluate and develop commercial solutions.

Our goal is to help telecommunications service providers around the world virtualize their customer edge and provider edge functions in order to improve the capital and operational costs of their service delivery.

We know that open collaboration is one of the best ways to ensure interoperability and manageability, as well as to protect your infrastructure investment. So we’ve made open-source technologies and open standards the cornerstone of our new NFV solutions. We’re committed to ensuring our NFV platform is a completely flexible and accessible innovation engine to help developers and end customers create and implement new services much more easily.

Of course, the infrastructure itself represents a collaboration among three leaders in NFV technology, each contributing a complementary set of capabilities.

Dell—NFV Platform

We’ve incorporated software from open ecosystem partners into our latest server, storage, networking, and software technologies to form a fully converged, virtualized infrastructure. Our NFV platform includes open networking and open interfaces for maximum interoperability, manageability and investment protection. Organizations can scale their IT easily from a small, unstaffed point of presence all the way to a hyperscale data center. They’ll also have the option to implement modular/containerized solutions and specialized infrastructure such as Network Equipment-Building System (NEBS) platforms or Fresh Air systems.

Brocade—Virtualized routing and IP services with Vyatta software

The Brocade Vyatta 5600 vRouter is the first high-performance virtual router capable of providing advanced routing in software without sacrificing the reliability and performance of hardware networking solutions. Built to address the needs of telecommunication provider market, the Vyatta 5600 vRouter uses the Intel DPDK to achieve 10Gbps per core, with the ability to scale linearly as additional cores are added. More than a router, the Brocade Vyatta 5600 vRouter also features stateful firewall and VPN functionality.

Brocade’s latest vRouter (v5600) is the first 10Gbps+ virtual router capable of providing advanced routing in software without sacrificing the reliability and performance of hardware networking solutions. It leverages the Intel DPDK to outperform the previous generation (v5400) and features high-performance virtual routing, stateful firewall, VPN functions and Layer4-7 application delivery service.

Intel—Foundational technologies and reference architecture

Intel provides the open-standards server reference architecture and stable technology foundation for developers working with our new NFV solutions. The Intel® Open Network Platform (ONP) server reference architecture uses Intel DPDK and QuickAssist technologies to optimize NFV performance at all three layers of software-defined networking: orchestration (OpenStack), control (OpenDaylight), and node (Open vSwitch). In addition, Intel facilitates an open community of solutions through the Intel Network Builders program in order to offer a broad range of NFV implementation choices.

The Dell NFV platform and associated starter kits will be globally available in Q4 2014 and can be ordered via Dell.com or through local partners. For more information, visit dell.com/nfv and our Dell Open Networking wiki, follow us on Twitter, or talk to us this week at Dell World.

About the Author: Arpit Joshipura