Last week, the Linux Foundation announced the start of work on DANOS, the first disaggregated network OS for the white-box-based ecosystem. Release open-source operating system is scheduled for the second half of 2018.
Read more about the project below.
/ Flickr / Norlando Pobre / CC')
DANOS was originally developed by AT & T's media conglomerate, codenamed dNOS (Disaggregated Network Operating System). The word "disaggregated" in the title means that it is an operating system for open devices.
dNOS is part of AT & T's plan to transition from traditional hardware platforms with proprietary software to a single ecosystem of
IT solutions for non-marketed white boxes, that is, network equipment that is not tied to any well-known brand. To implement it, AT & T began to prepare common standards for interfaces that unite the community of software and hardware developers.
In late January, AT & T’s
own blog told that the project would be handed over to the Linux Foundation. From the very beginning, the company planned dNOS as an open system, and therefore the question of transferring the open-source technology to the community was a matter of time. Something similar happened earlier with the
E-COMP platform (which became ONAP - an open operating system for a network cloud), which AT & T began to develop within the company, and then
merged with the open-source Open-O group. In the case of dNOS, the conglomerate
counted on wider support from the development community from the very beginning.
On March 27, the Linux Foundation officially
announced the start of work on dNOS. At the same time, the project changed its name to DANOS.
Arpit Joshipura, Linux Network Foundation CEO, Arpit Joshipura, said: “We are pleased to work on DANOS and invite the rest of this vast ecosystem to create a disaggregated network operating system with us.”
He was supported by John Medamana, Vice President for AT & T Packaged Optical Network Development: "By transferring the project to open source, we plan to create a community around an open framework that will support white-box projects." He also
noted that DANOS is the first open-source carrier-grade system for
global computing networks , and it represents an important stage in the development of the industry. ”
/ Flickr / jon johnson / ccDANOS architecture
The system architecture, according to
the AT & T
specification , consists of three levels: the base operating system (base operating system), the control plane (control plane) and the transmitting layer (data plane). The underlying OS is responsible for bootstrap booting, process management, and SSH access control. It also has basic network status information.
Control plane controls network applications and their integration into DANOS. Examples of applications include the BGP daemon, the SNMP server, the IPsec daemon, and the firewall management service. This layer also provides DANOS configuration interfaces to external systems and end users. Another Control plane controls several transmission levels that are linked through the chassis control system.
The chassis management client is part of the transmitting layer and is responsible for synchronizing data with the control level. The data is transmitted to the FAL (forwarding abstraction layer) abstraction layer, which “translates” the presentation of the data in the network to the language of specific APIs from various equipment suppliers.
Managing and transmitting levels can be scaled independently of each other and work on any equipment, which allows using the OS to work with multi-component systems and even in geographically-distributed network environments.
How the IT community responded
The project has secured the support of many IT professionals and companies.
According to Alley Hasan, director of strategy at Dell EMC, a collaboration with DANOS will further benefit network operators and accelerate the implementation of composable networks.
Microsoft Lead Engineer Dave Maltz reacted positively to the inclusion of SAI (Switch Abstraction Interface), developed with the help of Microsoft, into the DANOS architecture. "Using SAI on the DANOS hardware abstraction layer will allow the system to work with a wide range of switches using this interface."
Despite the fact that the open system contradicts the model of proprietary software, the initiative was also positively met by “traditional” manufacturers of network equipment.
CTO and Juniper Networks Vice President Bikash Koley said: "The product development process is constantly changing, and we firmly believe that openness and disaggregation will help organizations more quickly and efficiently implement innovative technologies."
Some materials from the corporate blog 1cloud: