Introduction: Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) applies to compute, storage and the network within a data center and in the cloud. This market segment is experiencing tremendous growth and innovation. It is facilitating increased agility, flexibility and operational cost savings for enterprises and service providers. The first step in SDI was compute server virtualization and that’s now mainstream. Network and Storage virtualization are the current target areas. While Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the new hot topic, that term is being used as an umbrella by networking vendors and service providers. The only “standardized” version of SDN is coming out of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF is NOT a standards body). It is based on centralized control and management, with a strict separation of Control and Data planes using the Open Flow protocol (“Southbound API”) to communicate between them. Network equipment vendors and Service Providers claiming they are ‘SDN Compatible’ have some level of programmable interfaces on their network equipment, but are usually NOT compliant with ONF architecture and Open Flow protocol (the Southbound API”). HP products are an exception- they do seem to be compatible with ONF architecture and Open Flow specification (see AM Keynote below). This article summarizes the [...]
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