What is SONiC and how can enterprises try the open-source NOS?

• 10 vendors join SONiC project: In April 2024, SONiC added 10 new members to its roster of developer and contributor vendors: Asterfusion Data Technologies, Augtera Networks, Celestica, Denvr Dataworks, Edgecore Network Corporation, Micas Networks, Netweb Technologies, PalCNetworks, QualitySoft Corporation, and EPFL.
• SONiC launches new workgroup for enterprise edge: Member organizations Aviz Networks, Wistron, Cisco, and Celestica helped form the PoE Edge Networks with SONiC (PENS) workgroup. This initiative seeks to adapt SONiC – which is traditionally used in cloud-scale and data center networks – for enterprise edge networking environments. The workgroup will adapt SONiC to edge LANs, integrating specialized protocols including Power Over Ethernet (PoE), Spanning Tree, and 802.1x, which are essential for enhancing connectivity and network efficiency at the enterprise edge.
• Aviz gives its enterprise SONiC offering an AI boost: Avizcontinues to add features to its enterprise-grade SONiC offering. The latest addition is an AI-based package called Network Copilot that’s aimed at improving network operations, management and capacity planning. The ultimate goal is to help network professionals integrate AI into their daily jobs and streamline the way organizations operate their future networks, according to Vishal Shukla, CEO for Aviz. “Right now, network operations are template driven. But going forward, operations will be data driven, and AI will help you to manage your network from the observability and the orchestration point of view, ultimately making networks open and much easier to manage,” Shukla said.
• Cisco and Aviz coordinate support for enterprise SONiC networks: In late 2023, Cisco teamed up with Aviz Networks to offer an enterprise-grade SONiC offering for large customers interested in deploying the open-source network operating system. Under the partnership, Cisco’s 8000 series routers will be available with Aviz Networks’ SONiC management software and 24/7 support. “The agreement also shows that Cisco’s customers are getting more vocal about asking for SONiC, and that Cisco sees the Aviz partnership as an advantage for the 8000 Series,” said The 650 Group’s Weckel. “It also shows Cisco is clearly seeing SONiC demand beyond one or two hyperscalers.”
• SONiC test lab gains industry support: Aviz Networks and a group of well-established industry vendors and organizations are collaborating on a testing facility. The Open Networking Experience (ONE) Center for SONiC, announced in 2023, is being offered by SONiC startup Aviz and will be supported by collaboration with Linux Foundation, The Open Compute Project, Celestica, Cisco, Edgecore, Nvidia, Ragile, Supermicro, Wistron, and Keysight. The lab will feature online and in-person access at no cost for network operators to try out the capabilities of SONiC across a wide range of hardware, according to Aviz.
• Cisco invites enterprises to its SONiC sandbox: Cisco showed support for SONiC in September 2023 by rolling out SONiC Developer Sandbox, which provides a Cisco 8000 emulator that lets customers build virtual network simulations (or labs) to experiment with new topologies, protocols, and configuration changes. In the sandbox, customers can automate network tests through CI/CD pipeline integration and learn more about SONiC and the Cisco 8000 line. The sandbox topology includes four Cisco 8000 routers that run SONiC and a Linux server that functions as a traffic generator.
• Aviz attracts new investors, including Cisco: Cisco is part of Dec. 2023 round of investing aimed at making Aviz Networks’ SONiC-based operating system more mainstream. Founded in 2019, Aviz Networks has previously raised $4 million with venture capital firms, including Accton, Moment and Wistron, as well as vendors Broadcom and Edgecore. Cisco’s contribution brings its latest funding round to $10 million.
• Hedgehog launches: Hedgehog announced its launch in October 2002 as a company focused on making SONiC ready for mainstream adoption and easier to procure, deploy and manage. “Our design goal is to make it nearly as easy to deploy your cloud native workload wherever you want to deploy it via an open network fabric that’s as easy as it is today to deploy it to AWS or Google Cloud. And we enable you to choose the deployment architecture that’s optimal for your workload,” said Mark Austin, founder and CEO of Hedgehog, in a Network World article. “SONiC gives enterprises the break from vendor lock-in the networking space, and we fully automate it with cloud-native tool chain Kubernetes so that businesses can use existing cloud-native infrastructure, processes and tools, and you’re breaking out of vendor lock-in the cloud as well.”

Real world adoption: eBay scores with SONiC

In a bold move aimed at cutting costs, increasing bandwidth and providing network capacity for years to come, online auction powerhouse eBay built a 400Gbps Ethernet fabric for its on-prem data centers based on white-box switches running SONiC.

“One of our motivating factors was to build a chunk of network fabric, and we don’t want to touch it. We don’t want a custom network for applications that move. We wanted to break away from that cycle,” said Parantap Lahiri, vice president of network and data center engineering, in an interview with Network World. With the new network, “all changes are automated, nobody is making CLI changes.”

And that translates into business benefits. “Developers can come up with a new feature, and get it deployed fast,” Lahiri said. By taking the open-source/white box route, Lahiri has been able to slash operational expenses by an estimated 25%, while quadrupling bandwidth.

Read the full feature on Network World: eBay scores cost savings and a bandwidth boost with white-box switches running SONiC

Early SONiC drivers

One of the driving forces behind SONiC is its relative simplicity, proponents said.

“Microsoft built a heterogeneous network using equipment and software from multiple vendors, which is great because it gave us access to the newest, fastest technologies. But I still have to stitch all of that together and make a reliable network,” said Dave Maltz, a Microsoft distinguished engineer, during a SONiC industry roundtable in 2020. “What we really needed was a uniform software layer where we can implement changes once and easily spread them out. SONiC lets us do that on a global scale.”