Managing Tomorrow’s Networks: The Impacts of SDN and Network Virtualization on Network Management

Shamus McGillicuddy

Senior Analyst, Network Management

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

@ShamusEMA

[email protected]

Managing Tomorrow’s Networks The Impacts of SDN and Network Virtualization

on Network Management

mailto:[email protected]

© 2016 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.

Today’s Presenter

Shamus McGillicuddy, Senior Analyst, EMA

Shamus has ten years of experience in the IT industry, primarily

as a journalist covering the network infrastructure market. At

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), he is the senior

analyst for the network management practice.

Prior to joining EMA, Shamus was the news director for

TechTarget's networking publications. He led the news team's

coverage of all networking topics, from the infrastructure layer to

the management layer. He has published hundreds of articles

about the technology and competitive positioning of networking

products and vendors. He was a founding editor of TechTarget's

website SearchSDN.com, a leading resource for technical

information and news on the software-defined networking industry.

© 2016 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.

Logistics for Today’s Webinar

An archived version of the event recording will be

available at www.enterprisemanagement.com

• Log questions in the Q&A panel located on the

lower right corner of your screen

• Questions will be addressed during the Q&A

session of the event

Questions

Event recording

http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/

Shamus McGillicuddy

Senior Analyst, Network Management

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

@ShamusEMA

[email protected]

Managing Tomorrow’s Networks The Impacts of SDN and Network Virtualization

on Network Management

mailto:[email protected]

Sponsors

Slide 5 © 2016 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.

Agenda

• Research Goals

• Demographics

• Why It Was Time for This Research

• What Is SDN?

• Enterprise Network Management System Readiness

• New Requirements for Managing Enterprise SDN

• Service Provider Network Management System Readiness

• New Requirements for Managing Service Provider SDN

• The Path Forward With Management Systems

• New SDN Skills for Networking Professionals

• Business Goals for SDN Adoption


Research Goals

• Establish a definition of SDN

• Assess the SDN readiness of existing network

management systems

• Identify new network management system

requirements for SDN

• Examine organizational impacts

• Explore use cases, benefits, and business impacts

of SDN adoption

• Technology Impacts Assessed

• Enterprise

Data-center SDN underlay, data-center SDN overlay,

campus SDN, SD-WAN, NFV

• Service Provider

SDN, NFV


Research Demographics

• Surveyed 226 early SDN adopters

• Organizations that have started production SDN

deployments or plan to do so within 12 months

• 150 enterprise IT professionals

51% IT management roles

49% IT staff roles

• 76 service provider network infrastructure professionals

• 46% from North America, 33% Europe, 20% Asia-

Pacific, 1% Middle East-Africa

• Wide distribution of company size

• 24% Small (250-999 global employees)

• 38% Midsized (1,000-4,999)

• 38% Large (5,000 or more)


Why It Was Time for This Research

• Plenty of evidence that SDN’s time has come

• EMA research in 2014 found 18% enterprise adoption rate

• Cisco claims 1,100 customers of ACI

• VMware claims 700 customers of NSX

• AT&T serves millions of mobile subscribers over SDN*

• Google, Microsoft, and many others have shared details of production

SDN use in data centers, WANs

• SDN conversation tends to focus on architecture, use cases

• Limited discussion of operationalizing SDN


*Source: FierceWireless.com, Oct. 2015

What Is SDN?

• Early adopters define SDN by highlighting essential characteristics

of solutions they implement:

① Centralized controller

② Low-cost hardware

③ Fluid network architecture

• Least important elements of SDN :

• Decoupled control plane and data plane

• Intent-based networking

• Enterprises emphasize centralized controller and fluid network

architecture

• Service providers emphasize low-cost hardware and abstraction of

physical & virtual network elements


What Is SDN? (continued)

• A different definition for software-defined WANs

• The three defining characteristics of SD-WAN

Cloud-based network and security services

Centrally programmable network

Hybrid WAN transport

• Network functions virtualization (NFV)

• A use case of SDN or a related technology

• Systematic virtualization of network functions

traditionally delivered in hardware appliances

Requires new management and orchestration framework

Applicable to service providers and enterprises


37% 36%

40%

37%

30% 31%33% 32%

Planning andEngineering Tools

Availability MonitoringTools

PerformanceMonitoring Tools

TroubleshootingTools

Percentage who say existing tools fully support Data-Center SDN

Data Center SDN Underlays Data Center SDN Overlays

Slide 12 © 2016 Enterprise Management Associates Inc.

Enterprise Network Management Readiness:

Data-Center SDN

Majority say existing

network management

systems not ready for

data center SDN

Underlays less disruptive

Enterprise Network Management Readiness:

Campus SDN, SD-WAN, and NFV

25%23%

28%26%

30%29%

33%

37%35%

29%

33%31%

Planning andEngineering

Availability Monitoring PerformanceMonitoring

Troubleshooting

Percentage who say existing tools fully support other SDN technologies

Campus SDN SD-WAN Enterprise NFV


All SDN technologies

present problems to

existing management

tools

Campus SDN biggest

disruptor

New Requirements for Managing Enterprise SDN

• Top SDN requirements for planning & engineering and

availability monitoring

• Planning & Engineering

#1 Network state analytics and simulation

#2 Capacity planning based on SDN flows

#3 Integration of DDI tools with SDN controllers (priority for large enterprises)

• Availability Monitoring

#1 Device metrics from compute resources that host virtual network

elements

#2 Device metrics from virtual network elements

#3 Device metrics from SDN controller


New Requirements for Managing Enterprise SDN

(continued)

• Top SDN requirements for performance monitoring and

troubleshooting

• Performance Monitoring

#1 Understand and adjust monitoring of on-demand capacity changes

#2 Network path visualization

• Troubleshooting

#1 Reports on SDN flow activity

#2 Analysis of connectivity between controllers and SDN switches

#3 Reports on how network conditions affect SDN flows


Service Provider Network Management Readiness

32%

28% 28%

30%

33%32%

33%

26%

ServiceProvisioning

and Activation

ChangeManagement

CapacityManagement

InventoryManagement

PerformanceManagement

FaultManagement

SLA/OLAManagement

End-to-EndService

Management

Network service providers that say their existing tools fully support SDN and NFV


New Requirements for Managing Service Provider SDN

Service provisioning and activation tools

① End-to-end management across physical and virtual network elements

② Policy specification based on modeling of network configuration and

operational state

③ Service activation based on modeling of network configuration and

operational state


New Requirements for Managing Service Provider SDN

(continued)

• Operations support and readiness tools

① Software-based implementation of approved network and service

changes

② Inventory management of virtual network functions and virtual

networks

• Service assurance tools

① End-to-end service quality management across physical and virtual

resources

② Bidirectional integration with SDN controllers

③ Increased automation of network optimization


The Path Forward for Management Systems

• Enterprises and service providers are split on how to address

management system gaps

• No consensus on a path forward

Modify existing tools

Use new tools separately

Use a combination of new and existing tools

• What should you do?

• Assess manageability of SDN solutions

Is your SDN vendor partnering with management system vendors?

• Ask network management vendors about their SDN roadmaps

Is your incumbent vendor addressing the new functional

requirements identified in this research?

Can you complement your management systems

with a new tool?


New SDN Skills for Networking Professionals

• Top 4 priorities for enterprise IT pros

• Cloud management system expertise (OpenStack, CloudStack, etc.)

• New network protocol knowledge

• Programming skills (not scripting)

• Software development skills

• Top 4 priorities for service provider networking pros

• Software development skills

• Programming skills

• Cloud management system expertise

• New network protocol knowledge

• Lowest priorities

• DevOps automation tool expertise (Puppet, Chef, etc.)

• Certifications


Business Goals for SDN Adoption

• Top goals for enterprises

• Improved end-user productivity (28%)

• Revenue growth (21%)

• Improved customer/brand loyalty & retention (13%)

• Top goals for service providers

• Improved end-user productivity (28%)

• Revenue growth (25%)

• Operational trust (17%)

• “Reduced expenses and costs” is the lowest priority for all

organizations


The Impacts of SDN on Network Management

• Early SDN adopters value a centralized controller and low-cost

hardware

• Existing enterprise and service provider network management

systems are not ready for SDN

• Early adopters have identified the management capabilities they need

in their tools

• Networking organizations need to have a manageability discussion with

SDN solution providers and management vendors

• Networking pros are indeed learning programming and software

development skills

• Early adopters say SDN will boost productivity and grow revenue

• Cost reduction is not a business driver


Get the Report:

http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/research


Managing Tomorrow’s Networks: The Impacts of SDN and Network Virtualization on Network Management

Technology

Transcript of Managing Tomorrow’s Networks: The Impacts of SDN and Network Virtualization on Network Management