What is Nuage Networks?
Nuage Networks is a Nokia based company that products SDN and SD-WAN products. As per the Nuage Network website,
"We glue together cloud networks that run on any platform, networking hardware, cloud management system, and cloud provider".[1]
What is Nuage VSP?
In a nutshell, VSP (Virtualized Services Platform) is a suite of SDN and SD-WAN products.
The 2 main products are:
- Virtualized Cloud Service (VCS) - DC SDN
- Virtualized Network Service (VNS) - SD-WAN
Each of these products uses the VSD (Management Plane) and VSC (Control Plane) components.
Below shows an overview of the Virtualized Services Platform (VSP):
Figure 1 - VSP Overview.
VSP Components
VSD (Virtualized Services Directory)
The VSD is the Management Plane. This holds the policies and service templates. It provides RESTful and WebUI (VSD Architect) northbound interfaces. Southbound it communicates and pushes down its policies to the controller (VSC) using XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol).
VSC (Virtualized Services Controller)
The VSC receives the policies from the management plane (VSD) and converts them into the required instructions (FIB) for the data plane. In the case, of VCS (SDN) this involves communication down to each of the hypervisor virtual services. Whereas, for VNS (SD-WAN), the controller communicates to each of the SD-WAN CPEs.
VCS (Virtualized Cloud Service)
VCS is Nuages DC SDN solution, which includes features such as micro-segmentation, DCI, and service chaining. An OVS based virtual switch (VRS) is placed on each hypervisor. The controller then pushes down the network policy to each of the VRS's via OpenFlow.
Components
The main component to VCS is the VRS, which stands for Virtualized Routing and Switching. Below details each of the VCS components.
Hypervisor VRS
VRS's are deployed on each hypervisor. There are 2 main options:
- VRS (Virtualized Routing and Switching) - Installed on KVM based hypervisors as an OVS and VRS Agent.
- VRS-V (Virtualized Routing and Switching - VMware) - Installed on VMware hypervisors as a VM.
Gateways
The purpose of VCS gateways is to provide bare metal servers with the ability to participate in the SDN overlays. For example, a gateway can terminate a VXLAN tunnel and translate it to a given DOT1Q VLAN, where a physical server may reside.
- VRS-G - (Virtualized Routing and Switching - Gateway) - Software based appliance (VM).
- VSG 7850 (Virtualized Services Gateway) - Hardware-based appliance, providing 10Gb and 40Gb interfaces.
- WBX210 7950 - Hardware based appliance, providing greater performance over the VSG. Offers 10GbE, 25GbE, 40GbE, 50GbE and 100GbE interfaces.
VNS (Virtualized Network Service)
VNS is Nuage Networks SD-WAN solution. It provides secure activation/bootstrapped, service chaining, along with a range of network functions, such as L2, L3, NAT DHCP, ACL, QoS, and analytics.
Due to it being based on the VSP platform, the same VSD and VSC components are used. VNS replaces legacy branch devices, for example, the CP/CPE with COTS VSP enabled devices. This device is known as the NSG. The NSG (Network Services Gateway) comes in either a hardware (NSG-P) or virtual (NSG-V) form factor.
References
"Nuage Networks Evolves SDN/SD-WAN Platform to Broader Use ...." 28 Oct. 2016, http://www.nuagenetworks.net/blog/rel4-1/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2018. ↩︎