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Nicira is accelerating the transformation to cloud infrastructure by delivering software that virtualizes the network. The company was founded by networking research leaders from Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley, and is led by proven entrepreneurs in networking, virtualization and security.

Network virtualization decouples and isolates virtual networks from the underlying network hardware, like server virtualization decouples and isolates virtual machines from the underlying server hardware. Once virtualized, the physical network is used only for packet forwarding and treated as an IP backplane. Virtual networks are then programmatically created and operate completely decoupled from the underlying hardware, offering the same features and guarantees of a physical network; yet with the operational benefits and hardware independence of virtual machines.

Nicira Network Virtualization Platform (NVP)

A software solution, NVP creates an intelligent abstraction layer between end hosts and your existing network. Managed by a distributed controller system this intelligent edge transforms your physical network into a pool of network capacity and enables the programmatic creation of tens of thousands of isolated virtual networks to connect workloads in your cloud.

NVP can be deployed non-disruptively on existing networks without changing hardware, or it can be used with next generation network fabric architectures from any vendor. In fact, many of our customers are moving to simple, low cost, high performance L3 fabrics built with on low cost / high performance network hardware.

NVP allows the programmatic creation of isolated virtual networks, each of which maintains its own address space, statistics counters, QoS, security configurations, and other higher-level network services.

Open vSwitch (OVS)

Open vSwitch (OVS), switch software designed for remote control, operates in server hypervisors to form a software abstraction layer between servers and the physical network.

OVS can be deployed in two ways at the edge of a Nicira virtualized network. First, a complete software solution that works with your existing XenServer, Xen, KVM or ESX hypervisors. Second, as a NVP Gateway - OVS in a virtual or physical appliance. An NVP Gateway is primarily deployed to integrate with physical servers and legacy VLANs or for connecting virtual networks to the Internet.

The Controller Cluster

The NVP Controller Cluster is a highly available distributed system that manages all the virtualized network components and connections. The Controller Cluster exposes a RESTful web services API and defines virtual networks. Capable of controlling and managing thousands of OVS edge devices, the controller does not sit in the data path.

DVNI Architecture

Like computing, networking must evolve a virtualization layer that decouples workloads from the physical network. Until this happens, the full potential of compute virtualization will remain unrealized. Traditional networking approaches are not well suited for this task.

The Nicira Distributed Virtual Network Infrastructure (DVNI) provides a network virtualization architecture that addresses the shortcomings of traditional network approaches, providing a host of virtualization benefits, such as isolation, mobility, scalability, dynamic provisioning without restriction, and hardware independence. As a result, DVNI is taking hold in the world’s largest virtualized data centers.

Resources:

• For more information on Nicira white papers and data sheets, please contact Liz Losi at liz.losi@carahsoft.com.