Aviz Launches ONE Center to Accelerate SONiC

Aviz Networks, a provider of open networking tools targeted at the Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) network operating system (NOS), today launched its Open Networking Experience Center for SONiC (ONE Center).

ONE Center for SONiC is a hands-on lab that enables potential SONiC users to experiment and test deployments without investing in hardware. It includes online and in-person access for network operators, designed to showcase the capabilities of SONiC across a wide range of hardware.

ONE Center users will be able to test SONiC running on multiple platforms and ASIC combinations. The lab is designed to help customers evaluate SONiC by eliminating the need to purchase switches, thereby lowering the entry barrier.

Aviz’s ONE Center was built in collaboration with the Linux Foundation (LF), the Open Compute Project (OCP), Celestica, Cisco, Edgecore, NVIDIA, Ragile, and Wistron. The collaboration is designed to build a networking ecosystem to speed up adoption of SONiC with more rapid testing and evaluation tools.

Speeding up SONiC

SONiC is growing as a popular way to build networks without requiring proprietary software because of the choice, control, and cost savings it provides. Because it is inherently open and multivendor, it can also help organizations diversify their supply chains and suppliers.

ONE Center will serve important needs in the SONiC ecosystem by helping enterprises deploy the open-source NOS with full evaluation, testing, and support tools, according to Aviz.

In a Futuriom Leadership Brief developed with Aviz, we pointed out that open-source technologies, for all their advantages, bring a set of challenges that are difficult to overcome. Even if there is in-house expertise, there are nuances that require a depth and breadth of SONiC expertise for each specific solution.

Some of the key challenges in building open-source networks include:

• Testing and validating the environment
• Troubleshooting and management
• Visibility and management tools for SONiC
• Service and support

Aviz provides all of these elements for SONiC. The important addition of ONE Center means that SONiC networking experts can work with solutions in the lab before real-world deployment.

Enabling SONiC Testing without Hardware Purchase

One of the key elements of ONE Center is that it can lower the cost of SONiC adoption by providing a hardware environment to test and validate solutions. Customers can run SONiC on multiple platform and ASIC combinations without any upfront cost.

The ONE Center will also serve as an official OCP Experience Center, which is a program designed for evaluating OCP-recognized hardware and reserved for those community members who are official OCP Solution Providers, according to Aviz.

Aviz also envisions ONE Center functioning as a hub for the SONiC community --examples include hackathons, solutions testing in real-world environments, global university access for educational purposes, and more.

With the launch, Aviz provided many supporting quotes for the effort. Some of these included:

“SONiC is at the forefront of the open-source networking movement and the ONE Center for SONiC is a testament to the strength and collaborative spirit of this community,” said David Maltz, Chair, SONiC Foundation, in a statement for Aviz. “We are excited to see many companies contributing to this lab to provide people with the tools and resources they need to experience the benefits of SONiC and open-source networking. We look forward to ONE Center for SONiC being instrumental in shaping the future of networking,"

“At the Linux Foundation, we are committed to creating and sustaining collaborative communities that foster open source innovation, said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT. “The ONE Center enables the SONiC community to have a collaborative sandbox to push development to new heights. We are pleased to have Aviz as a member, contributor, and moderator of the SONiC community and look forward to seeing the ONE Center for SONiC help enable further innovation and adoption."

“Celestica continues to deliver a range of innovative networking platforms supporting Open Networking and the SONiC community,” said Gavin Cato, Head and CTO, Hardware Platform Solutions, Celestica. “We're excited to participate with Aviz in the ONE Center and look forward to showcasing our solutions and bringing our expertise to this collaborative interoperability effort.”

Cisco’s Included Too

Another interesting element of the news is the inclusion of Cisco, which of course is well-known for its own hardware and proprietary NOSs. Cisco’s support of Aviz ONE Center and SONiC shows it has a strategy to help customers adopt open networking. Cisco is also supporting ONE Center to help boost the growth of its own chipset, the Cisco Silicon One.

“Cisco is committed to providing industry-leading open networking solutions to meet our customers flexibly where they need us,” said Aravind Srikumar, Sr. Director Product Management — Cisco Networking, SONiC & Open NOS. “Working together with Aviz on the ONE Center, we are combining our expertise and strengths in networking to share best practices with the industry and drive open-source initiatives.”

Enterprises have long looked at the success that SONiC has had in large hyperscaler environments such as Microsoft Azure, Alibaba, Tencent, and others. They want to extract the same value from SONiC, which combines performance with economies of scale.

With the launch of ONE Center, Aviz has identified a key gap in the SONiC market – tools to help customers validate, test, and deploy the technology with the smallest possible upfront investment.