Big Switch SDN update aids VMware integration, bare metal monitoring
Big Cloud Fabric is a leaf/spine Clos fabric providing physical and virtual workload connectivity in data centers. Version 2.6 provides fabric automation and analytics for VMware vSphere environments.
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BCF 2.6 provides automated host detection and link aggregation group formation for vSphere environments, as well as automated Layer 2 network creation, VM learning, and network policy migration for VMs. For analytics, BCF 2.6 provides VM-level visibility, VM-to-VM troubleshooting, and insight into logical and physical connectivity routers, segments, leafs and spines, etc.
BCF 2.6 also interoperates with VMware's NSX network virtualization software to provide visibility into and troubleshooting of the physical underlay network on behalf of the NSX software overlay. BCF 2.6 provides insight into VTEP-to-VTEP connectivity and analytics of VXLAN IDs, VM names, logical and virtual switches, etc.
BCF 2.6 also supports OpenStack's Juno release, which debuted last fall.
A new release of Big Switch's Big Tap monitoring fabric seeks to close the gap between Taps and network packet brokers for SDN monitoring. Big Tap 4.5 had been expected.
Among the new features in Big Tap 4.5 are in-line deployment in addition to out-of-band operation; service chaining with in-line mode, which allows multiple security tools to be processed in a chain as specified by user-defined policy; sFlow generation; DNS and DHCP tracking for security; header stripping for MPLS, to support service provider WAN monitoring; and configurable hash settings for granular load balancing of tools.
Big Tap 4.5 is interoperable with security and monitoring tools from Big Switch partners, such as A10, Blue Coat, Cyphort, ExtraHop and Inmon. The 4.5 release also supports Dell's S4048-ON switch in addition to the Dell S6000 already supported. It also supports ODM whitebox switches from Accton.
Big Tap 4.5 and BCF 2.6 are available now. BCF 2.6 software is licensed on a per-switch subscription basis, and Big Switch offers $39,000 and $99,000 starter kits which include switches, software, support and cables/optics, for interconnecting up to 80 compute nodes.
Pricing for Big Tap 4.5 was not disclosed.