A software-defined networking solution from Radware called ElasticScale is now commercially available, the company announced today. ElasticScale optimizes network services via virtual appliance provisioning, traffic distribution across virtual appliances and acceleration of virtual appliance I/O. As a result, carriers and service providers can offer application delivery, Web performance optimization, Web application firewalls and anti-DoS protections as needs require.
Radware describes ElasticScale as an SDN-based network service scalability solution that uses server virtualization and cloud orchestration technologies. The idea is to give carriers and service providers an efficient and economical way to expedite the time to market for new network services. ElasticScale is unique, according to Radware, in its ability to address all three aspects of network service scalability, which it defines as acceleration of virtual appliance I/O, traffic distribution across virtual appliances, and virtual appliance provisioning.
Avi Chesla, chief technology officer of Radware, says: "Radware's SDN applications use the programmability nature of SDN to transform the network infrastructure into a smarter network that is part of the service itself. Carriers and service providers gain tremendous value with ElasticScale, especially if they plan to implement NFV solutions in the future."
The following are among the key features of ElasticScale:
- Ability run on any physical SDN network environment
- Compatibility with SDN controllers including Cisco XNC, NEC ProgrammableFlow, and OpenDaylight
- Integration with OpenStack and vCloud Director
- Scalable load balancing, and use of Alteon load balancing technology
- Support for oXen/KVM/Hyper-V/ESXi hypervisors
- Traffic steering that can scale to hundreds of gigabits per second
In other SDN news from Radware this month, the company announced it has joined HP’s SDN ecosystem in an effort to accelerate its software-defined networking strategy. As discussed in a previous SDNzone posting, HP has introduced an SDN Developer Kit that offers its partners a simulation suite and virtual test lab through which they can create, test and validate SDN applications based on the HP VAN SDN controller. Radware will be applying its DefenseFlow and ElasticScale applications to that controller. DefenseFlow lets network operators set up the network to provide DDoS protection as a native network service.
On a separate but related front, Radware recently contributed technology to OpenDaylight, which is a community-led open source framework aimed at accelerating adoption and fostering innovation related to the software-defined network. The OpenDaylight Project was founded by Arista Networks, Big Switch Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Dell, Ericsson, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Nuage Networks, PLUMgrid, Red Hat and VMware. Cyan, Huawei, Inocybe Technologies, Plexxi and Radware in early June announced they had joined the group.