Celebrating One Million Ports of Software Defined Cloud Networking and Introducing the Arista Data Analyzer (DANZ)

For the past 5 years, Arista has been setting the agenda for software defined cloud networking. We are not addressing the legacy enterprise market for general-purpose applications. Instead our innovative customers expect us to enable high performance transactions and analytics with cloud-scale, self-healing resilience, programmability, precision data analysis and network wide virtualization, while radically reducing capex and opex. I am especially proud to celebrate a key measure of our success - we have now shipped our first one million ports for this new software-defined cloud-networking era.

The massive cloud-scale of these new networks has also created challenges in the areas of traffic visibility and the attendant analysis needed to diagnose problems for the terabits of data carried by these networks. Troubleshooting applications, assuring performance, and securing cloud networks are collectively impossible with legacy methods. I believe the key is innovating and building a modern network with programmability and openness - avoiding becoming a victim of old legacy and expensive habits. Arista EOS enables this through the power of SDN.

Today we are announcing another breakthrough SDN differentiator, Arista Data ANalyZer (DANZ). It analyzes data and network behavior, while providing detailed capture and accounting of traffic for forensic analysis as part of our Software Defined Cloud Networking (SDCN) strategy.

Introducing Arista’s DANZ for TAP Aggregation Applications

Arista's Precision Data ANalyZer (DANZ) is the first and only switch solution to deliver cloud-scale, integrated end-to-end monitoring. Arista DANZ leverages the programmable data plane of the Arista 7150 series to provide low-latency packet processing and data capture with exceptional flexibility and precision in a single switch - at line-rate. Captured data can be delivered with precision timestamps, filtered and reformatted, as well as correlated with internal congestion detection and reporting.

Key highlights include the ability to:

• Aggregate, replicate and capture traffic for processing at 10 and 40 GbE without affecting the production network or building a second network infrastructure solely for monitoring
• Apply advanced filtering profiles, precision time stamps, truncate packets, and symmetrize captured data at wire rate
• Utilize a dedicated TAP/SPAN aggregation mode for servicing legacy TAP infrastructures in the standard Arista device platform
• Monitor, capture and correlate congestion and microburst events in real time
• Integrate tightly with many standard 3rd party APIs and Application/Network management and analysis tools

• Arista DANZ offers three fundamental and collectively unique core capabilities provided by the Precision Data Analysis solution: Advanced Monitoring, Precision Capture, and Event-Driven Programmability, as shown in the figure above.

Eco-System of Arista DANZ Partners

We are witnessing a sea change in networking in reducing operational costs and enabling SDN solutions. Arista is working closely with its visualization, application analysis, and performance management partners to offer a complete solution for DANZ. These include Corvil, Endace, ExtraHop Networks, nPulse Technologies, Riverbed/Opnet, Splunk and TS-Associates to name a few. Arista DANZ together with the partner eco-system gives network operators, application architects, and capacity planners a powerful, tightly integrated solution that simplifies and automates traffic analysis operations while providing robust insight into application behavior.

Celebrating Arista’s first million ports of cloud networking!

As I have been travelling the world, meeting customers, CIOs and analysts, I am struck by Arista’s momentum in an ocean of established older players. Our customers and well-wishers have validated us with their acceptance and deployments. They are demanding a modern alternative – one that is not propagating legacy packaging and mediocrity but truly building modern SDN based cloud networks. Arista finds itself uniquely positioned to satisfy their insatiable appetite for SDN innovation and to benefit from their acceptance of this new data center architecture. Thank you all for your support!

As always I welcome your comments at feedback@arista.com.

References

• Arista DANZ Video
• Arista DANZ Web Page
• DANZ Press Release
• Arista 7150 Series SDN Switch