Hi and welcome back to Cloud Nets, where networks meet cloud.
Today we're going to talk about disaggregation, but even more than disaggregation, we're going to talk about distributed disaggregation. Why do we need it? Why is the disaggregation we've known for years not enough?
The long answer is that distributed disaggregation takes open networks to the next level. It allows you to have flexibility, scalability and agility in your network with very simple, basic building blocks. Not clear? Let's talk about the short answer.
In the short answer you need to remember only three things in order to understand the essence of distributed disaggregation. One, basic building blocks. Two, multi-layer disaggregation, and three, clusters.
Okay, one: Basic building blocks. We take just two building blocks, the NCP and the NCF. That's the Network Cloud Packet Forwarder and the Network Cloud Fabric. Those two building blocks come in a very compact form, just two-rack-unit high, and that means that from those two building blocks you can build any size in any scale of network.
That means, and this is interesting for you, because you have less part numbers in your network, the entire plan-to-deploy cycle is simpler and easier in terms of engineering, in terms of deployment, and in terms of maintenance and spare parts. Avoiding vendor lock-in was never that easy.
Number two: Multi-level disaggregation. That means that we do not only disaggregate hardware from software, we also disaggregate the control plane from the user plane, and in the user plane we also disaggregate the fabric from the packet forwarding, the port. So, if you need more ports, you upgrade only this part of the network. You need more control processing power; you upgrade only the control part. If you need a higher capacity fabric, you upgrade only the fabric. This is interesting for you because it gives you the granularity to upgrade just the parts you need, and this means much more efficiency in the way you use your hardware in the network.
And number three, cluster. Taking multiple white boxes and grouping them together and then abstracting them towards the application layer, means that you can have any size of network or any size of site, with multiple boxes that look like a single hardware instance. That means that those multiple boxes are grouped together into a shared, unified pool of resources. Those resources are compute CPU resources, networking forwarding resources, TCAM memory resources, etc. Everything is blended together into a single pool of resources, and this is important for you, because using cluster and a shared pool of resources means the leanest way to scale your network. You can upgrade your network, but still have the best utilization of your hardware resources.
So, three things in order to understand distribution and disaggregation, basic building blocks, multi-level disaggregation, and cluster.
Thank you for watching, see you next time.