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Midokura is putting the ability to connect multiple OpenStack-based clouds and support for container platforms into the latest version of its network virtualization offering.
Company officials on Aug. 10 said the enhancements in the company’s Midokura Enterprise MidoNet (MEM) software-defined networking (SDN) solution is designed to meet the growing demands being put on modern networks by the increasing adoption of cloud computing by enterprises that are looking for more scalable, agile and automated infrastructures.
“Our latest iteration of the … MEM technology is designed to address real market needs, including the ability to connect multiple OpenStack clouds and support the containers movement,” Midokura CTO Pino de Candia said in a statement.
The company’s product offers a network overlay that sits atop the hardware infrastructure from other vendors and that is used for private clouds running the OpenStack open-source software suite. Midokura’s MEM is aimed at distributed computing environments and includes the MidoNet Manager software that enables customers to make changes to the virtual network without impacting the underlying physical infrastructure.
There also are other tools for such tasks as advanced analytics and dynamic visualization of the virtual network.
The enhancements to the technology will broaden MEM’s capabilities within these distributed networks. A new MEM router peering feature overlays capabilities between multiple OpenStack cloud sites and takes advantage of VXLAN tunneling. The direct connectivity between sites will help reduce the need for constant backup procedures and traffic issues across multiple sites, officials said.
The feature will help address a growing trend in organizations, according to analysts with IHS. By 2018, enterprises will be using an average of eight different cloud service providers, creating what Cliff Grossner, senior research director for data center at IHS, called their “own customized cloud of clouds.” In that scenario, products that will enable enterprises to manage workloads across multiple clouds will be important, Grossner said in a statement.
In addition, the new version of MEM will enable container technologies like Kubernetes and Docker to run on the Midokura SDN platform. MEM will allocate subnets by namespaces, which will allow as many per node as needed. The adoption of containers is increasing as enterprises embrace the technology as a way to more easily manage applications in the cloud.
Other new features offer real-time visualization of the network fabric topology as it relates to the logical switches and routers to give network operators greater visibility into issues and failures in the environment. The new version of the overlay software also includes a 75 percent improvement in the use of memory by virtual machines, which officials said will result in better application stability and application response time.
Midokura will highlight the latest MEM technology at the Intel Developer Forum next week in San Francisco. The enhanced software is available immediately.
The company is among many established vendors and smaller startups that make up the highly competitive SDN and network-functions virtualization (NFV) space as businesses look for ways to make their networks as agile, scalable and programmable as servers and storage.
The rollout of the latest MEM technology comes two months after Midokura raised $20.4 million in its latest round of fundraising, bringing the total amount raised by the company to more than $44 million since launching in 2010. Midokura not only offers its technology as an enterprise production solution, but also in an open-source free version offered to the OpenStack community and launched almost two years ago.