Nokia drives OpenConfig community support for multi-vendor, open network architectures
Over the last few years, as networks have scaled, automation challenges have continued to limit growth in multi-vendor deployments. Much like Captain Ahab chasing the white whale, we’ve been tirelessly chasing multi-vendor automation schemes, with futile success. That’s changed for some customers with the arrival of OpenConfig.
The networking industry is driving towards truly open architectures which seamlessly integrate into any customer’s or partner’s ecosystem - across any server, CPU, RAN, Cloud or software stack and Nokia’s contributions with OpenConfig align with this direction.
Started in 2014, OpenConfig is a collaborative effort by network operators, equipment vendors, and the wider community to develop programmatic interfaces and tools for managing networks in a more dynamic, vendor-neutral way.
OpenConfig defines and implements a common, vendor-independent software layer for managing network devices and operates as an open-source project with contributions from its members. Nokia’s OpenConfig implementation, with a broad and comprehensive feature set, is helping us differentiate with network operators.
-
Our OpenConfig models are developed in line with the industry standard but also include a unique and very thin stateless translation layer in our operating system. This eliminates lag between updates to our OpenConfig models from our native data stores. They stay in sync, and address another key requirement from network operations teams, the need for on-change streaming telemetry accessibility on all OpenConfig paths.
-
Combined with read/write support and excellent coverage of OC objects, but without risk of variation from the native data stores, the implementation provides a flexible and complete solution customers can rely on.
Our OpenConfig initiative has been driven by very close interactions with a recognized leader in the OpenConfig Community who is implementing OpenConfig across multiple technologies in their network. This work is getting great visibility and is being embraced, by broader industry stakeholders, who are either beginning their network management evolution to OpenConfig,or are already working with it.
As part of our full commitment to the OpenConfig community, Nokia has contributed gNMIc (an open-source automation tool for making gRPC family calls) for inclusion in their standard tool set. GNMIc is just one of many opensource projects that enables network operations teams to deliver open and flexible solutions for our customers. Our additional contributions to the broader set of automation tools for the community include Containerlab, the family of gRPC protocols, and Netbox, with all open-source investments leveraging our long history in using and participating in these communities. Over 25 years of open-source experience has provided Nokia the expertise to select and implement open source correctly with its products to best serve our customers.
For additional information on OpenConfig, please refer to the Packet Pushers Tech Byte Nokia’s SR Linux Embraces OpenConfig to Support Network Automation
