And it just gets better, SDN-wise, I say with considerable irony. Cisco did a virtual-data-center network deal yesterday (vCider) and of course everyone is out there saying that it’s going to help Cisco with its SDN approach, perhaps to be integrated in Cisco switches! Even for a market that’s been more nonsense than substance, this is a new low.
First, vCider, like Nicira, isn’t an SDN strategy. It’s an overlay virtual network designed to partition LANs to eliminate first the limitation on VLAN/VXLAN size (which most people won’t hit) and second to unite the management of network virtualization more easily with the cloud given that many data centers are multi-vendor.
Second, Cisco doesn’t want to do an SDN, it wants to achieve software union with legacy networks via APIs. Thus, while it’s wrong to say that vCider is an SDN play, that’s good because Cisco wants an anti-SDN play.
Third, where the heck does fitting this into Nexus switches come from? First, it’s overlay virtual networking so it runs over and not on the network. Second, it’s written to be an adjunct to the cloud stack software that runs (you guessed it) in the cloud. And third, Cisco says that its going to be integrated into Cisco’s implementation of the OpenStack Quantum interface, which is part of OpenStack and the cloud. Is that enough proof? Cisco is going to use vCider to link a cloud-model of data center virtualization with legacy LAN technology to avoid doing more.
When is this industry (particularly the media) going to accept the fact that everything that’s colored yellow isn’t a banana? SDN is more than a claim. And what’s truly sad is that I just spent three days listening to real SDN stuff, things that were insightful, useful, sensible, and even revolutionary. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to be able to share all of it, but for now let me say that there is in fact a mission for SDN, there’s a real model for cloud-based services that really works, and there’s a real unity of cloud and SDN that magnifies both. Given that we’re reduced to washing announcements with both cloud and SDN, wouldn’t it be nice to actually have something to cover that’s substantive.
The test for our friends in the media will now. Substance, after all, isn’t easy.