[j-nsp] RE-S-X6-64G-BB

[Saku Ytti]

On 25 May 2016 at 17:10, raf <raph at futomaki.net> wrote:

Hey,

> On this point I disagree. Virtualization add a layer and a little overhead,
> but nowadays it's a mature and stable technologies.
> And splitting things and decoupling them are always a good things for me. I
> talk about junos which was a relatively complex architecture; and splitting
> them between muliple vm(s) shoud be good.
> Two other point come in my mind : the opportunity to have an second virtual
> standby RE, which it good for upgrade.
> Or something I haven't considered at first, the reborn of real logicial
> systems (multi tenant).

I'm not sure we disagree. You're talking about virtualisation like
we're moving components off JunOS into separate VM's, but this is not
what is happening. These VM's are marketed to be there mostly for
external/3rd party applications.
Surely we agree, adding 3rd party VM on router cannot increase reliability.

If vendors would be doing, what you're hoping, distributing their own
control-plane in multiple VM (IOS-XR is sort of doing this, in LXC
containers). Then I really have to ask, if you can talk between VM or
LXC, why not talk over network, and have your compute separately for
those components.

> Yep unfortunately. I really think rpd design must be rethink-ed.

I don't think anything major is being done to rpd in the roadmap,
other than more threads on the single process.

> Sure; but often network components are relatively isolated of the rest of
> the DCs, so running all of them on a big hypervisor close to the forwarding
> engine make sense (at least for me).

Adding 1RU dell server to the rack wouldn't a problem. And perhaps
this is options we can do in future, buy forwarding-plane box and then
hook control-plane hardwares over ethernet to it. If we can separate
control-plane on multiple VM, we can also do this. And I like the
latter option even more.

> Ah completely agree on this. Perhaps running small utilites vm (DNS, tools);
> but corner case use.

I don't see those corner cases as particularly useful. I can't help to
wonder, is VM a white-label play in disguise? Are some customers not
running IOS-XR/JunOS at all, just not starting that VM, instead
running own VM with under NDA documents how to program the hardware?
Or is the 3rd party VM just marketing gimmick, because they get VM
'for free', as they need it for their own infrastructure, to provide
better redundancy, upgradability and loose coupling to underlaying
control-plane HW. So as it is going to be there anyhow, no harm done
investing some marketing efforts to see if market figures out if there
is application for 3rd party VMs.

-- 
  ++ytti