Datacenter migration, SDN is the future of data center network?

Datacenter migration，In recent years, the popularity of SDN technology has been recognized, and there is a certain scale of practice deployment in the data center field.SDN carries the EVPN technology, in the data center network new project can be said to be a popular young person, people see the love.With more data center for SDN, network vendors also eager to promote SDN solution, although each SDN different to achieve, connectivity and a lot of problems, but does not prevent SDN technology of high-speed expansion, every data center network in thinking about how to evolve in the direction of SDN.So is SDN the future of the data center network?Of course, network technology is still developing, but SDN technology is more mainstream in academia and market.In fact, the SDN technology itself is divided into various factions, such as NFV, and there is a lot of debate about the technology of forwarding and control separation, and no technology has the absolute advantage.In 2016, ONF issued a white paper "the Intent NBI - Definition and all," describes the north interface Based on Intent, the IBN (Intent - -based Networking, network) Based on Intent technology, IBN technology through the improvement of the two years to replace the trend of SDN.

We the development of network technology can be divided into three stages: traditional networks, network of SDN, IBN, SDN network is only an intermediate process in the development of data center network, finally is to realize IBN network.From the current view, IBN is data center network in the future, maybe after ten years are no longer IBN, there will be more advanced network technology to replace it, that's another story, no one can predict how long it will last, a new network technology as the FC storage network, although the technology update is slow, and even no update, but use for decades has not been eliminated, is still active in the data center market.Many people may not be familiar with IBN, which has not been mentioned by many people until recently.Traditional network is in the past 50 years, has been the use of network, with hardware network equipment is given priority to, as long as the purchase of a batch of data center network equipment, realize the interconnection, issued a good configuration to realize each other can, later found with the expanding of network size, the traditional network operations and management into a very difficult thing, multiplying number of human and financial growth, so SDN appeared.Network core idea of SDN is to control and transform the separation, open interfaces and protocols, software controller to control the entire network, simplify operations and management, improve business deployment speed, obviously SDN is to improve network operations and management of a sword, widely welcomed by the data center, but SDN is merely the first step to open the closed network decades, data center network needs to be intelligent, hope is a self learning network, this is the category of IBN network.The IBN network is based on high automation and is intended to minimize human operations.In IBN network, users only need to provide the purpose, by the network facilities automatic translation for the network configuration instruction execution, and continually collect and monitor the network running quality feedback, so as to realize the purpose of continuously optimize the network.The traditional network is "yesterday", SDN is "today", but IBN is still "tomorrow".
The relationship between SDN and IBN is very close. IBN is not to eliminate SDN technology, but the technical concept of IBN is also implemented by SDN.SDN is an architecture, and IBN is a product.SDN realizes the network refinement operation, but brings the complexity index level up, and IBN reduces the network application complexity with the concept of closed loop.SDN is more focused on how to control the infrastructure in the network, based on software, and the configuration of network strategies in an open and programmable manner.The control of IBN can be traditional control or SDN control.IBN pays more attention to how the network can better satisfy the user's business intention, so that the intention and network status can be smoothly and consistently reached highly consistent.SDN and IBN are two help mutually beneficial technology, they can be deployed independently already, also can be mixed deployment in the network, to a certain extent, IBN contains SDN, forwarding and control of the separation networks in IBN, IBN based on business intentions, holographic state for network access and fine-grained control equipment are no doubt to the network has brought great agility.Vendors representing cisco and juniper have started to develop IBN, and open source projects such as OpenDaylight are gradually adding IBN's ideas to its SDN controller.
2017 Gartner once in the report pointed out: "we think a IBNS deployment can be reduced by 50% - 90% of the network infrastructure, delivery time, at the same time can reduce at least 50% of the outage occurrence frequency and length", Gartner also enshrines IBN. But IBN is still a theoretical technology, today, only a handful of people really familiar with this concept.IBN technique is not perfect, IBN heavily rely on the interaction between various components and equipment API/CLI docking, at present has not been a unified standard specification, manufacturer both are private API/CLI, build the barriers of support for other IBN components, largely inhibit IBN technology of heterogeneous components.In the data center market, the technology update cycle is relatively long, and the attempt to carry out new technology will face great resistance, especially the network part which is always in a closed state.To know SDN technology was put forward as early as ten years ago, and after ten years of technology improvement, promotion and popularization, to reach today's situation, at least in the data center no longer go to exclude SDN, many data center has begun to deploy SDN, so need to transition to IBN, there should be a long way to go, if development is not good, the end of the day, no possible.IBN technology implementation, the challenge is some, is still in the prototype stage, unlike SDN have Openflow network deployment standards implementation agreement, IBN technology also need to constantly improve itself, to form a standard as soon as possible, in their own way to avoid major network vendors, by way of private IBN, thus and go back to the closed network.Network could mark a step towards opening, acceptance of SDN technology is not easy, if you can combine the pace of bigger, can walk into IBN network, walked into a new world of intelligent network.
IBN is the future of the data center network, at least for now.The future network must be intelligent, unattended, and the future of IBN is a complete set of unmanned network.Is expected within 10 years, IBN will first applied to a large or very large scale of data center network, that's because these huge data centres, the efficiency of network and the optimization of network cost in urgent need of innovative solutions, IBN is a very good catalyst.So, some people say that SDN is the future of data center network, stop that now.