BUILT TO SCALE

CloudStation Web Architecture

According to Gartner, 40 percent of global enterprises will have a web-scale networking initiative by 2020, Lavelle Networks with its ScaleAOn Solution brings the Web scale architecture to the Enterprises in India.

CloudStation follows a Web Application architecture

A proven architecture that delivers scale and performance.

We are not re-inventing the wheel here but by using a web architecture for a network controller, we have brought in the scale element of the web into network control, management and monitoring. This ensures that the solution scales, just like a web application, like Google or Facebook application - built using distributed micro services that can individually scale in order to scale the entire system.

The enterprise networks were classically plagued with the issue of performance and scale – and the web scale architecture of CloudStation – overcomes the scale issue with the enterprise network.

With this Approach and Architecture our systems are capable of providing the resiliency, scale and performance that enterprises need to keep customers happy today.

Our architecture:

network_analysis

Open and Modular

network_analysis

Intelligence in software

network_analysis

Scalable and Efficient

Which eventually helps the enterprises to design cost-effective, agile networks for the modern era. Our SD-WAN platform is Horizontally Scalable this results in no one component becoming a limiter for the network to scale.

Data plane Vs Control Plane Architecture

The Control Plane, Data Plane and Forwarding Plane in Network is the heart core DNA in today’s networking hardware to move IP packets from point A to Z.

Our solution is a true software-defined network with the control plane centralized in the CloudStation Software Defined Network Controller and the Data Plane Our Edge Appliances CloudPorts adhering to instructions from the Control Plane in terms of encrypted secure messages .

An Intent driven configuration framework that does not need persistent old school transport connections like SSH, and therefore the control plane can fail over to the right WAN path even before it loses a single transaction.

In most of the software implementations of the data plane, the system architects have followed what was done in the classical old world ASIC based custom appliances in which the software data plane followed the same hardware centric design of the data plane – with a sequential set of tables for Packet Look up, Classification, Forwarding – that eventually leave the data plane with lot less flexibility.

This also meant that any service insertion had to follow this sequential architecture allowing for a lot less flexibility.

ScaleAOn

With ScaleAOn, we have broken down this paradigm to separate out the data plane components for network connectivity from those of the services. While the data plane is architected for high performance & high throughput, and the services themselves are architected and designed to run as separate containers on this foundational connectivity data plane .

So the services can be easily isolated and can be turned on or off, and this will not affect the system – be it terms of the throughput or reachability. This is where the Always ON part of ScaleAOn architecture also comes in.

Mobile application like approach for
Wan Software Upgrades

Our System is architectured in such a way which can be a similar Analogy in the way we upgrade a Smartphone

Automation Driven Zero touch deployment
on Multi-Cloud

CloudStation Controller application has been developed with self-service precepts in mind. The Data plane deployment be it in Public or Private Cloud or Virtual Form Factors or Physical Branch Edge devices can be launched, managed, and controlled without requiring the human intervention.

Automation is key in our Solution in which Cloudstation Centralized Controller and CloudPort
(Edge Appliance ), each CloudPort (Network node) at a branch or DC location, will try to reach the pre-configured service URL on the CloudPort to form a HTTPS connection with CloudStation . This only requires a reachability to the CloudStation and all the steps are automated no human intervention is required

In case any or all of the WAN interfaces use an automatic IP assignment protocol like DHCP, this is really simple. In case of a static IP address, or a site specific network, IP assignment is needed from the LAN UI of the device. Successful authentication happens by verifying the UUID & Serial number, once done all further communication happens between the controller and the Edge appliance .

The CloudPort sends all the discovered LAN information (number of ethernet ports, any network discovery et al). The CloudStation sends all the required LAN configurations, which is applied at the CloudPort. And first reboot is performed to ensure all parameters are in the right state. Upon second power up (Note- first power up is for dialing home and fetching LAN configuration), the CloudPort completes the fetching all policies, configuration state, and follows an internal algorithmic series of steps to connect to the overlay WAN network, and set up forwarding plane as per the latest state programmed by CloudStation. All set up is automatic from here for the lifetime of this branch location.

The communication between the CloudPort and CloudStation is a REST API call, which is stateless and atomic. The control plane communication is not bound to one link. The control plane communication can be on an internet link or a private link like MPLS as long as the controller (CloudStation) is reachable from the CloudPort (Edge). The link used for control plane communication can dynamically change based on the reachability of the CloudStation from the CloudPort. This significantly improves the availability of the edge location and increases the manageability of the location from the centralized controller.

Resources

network_analysis

Case Study Godrej

Download the case study to find out how Godrej transformed their network using Lavelle Networks SD-WAN solution across multiple branches.

network_analysis

Datasheet ScaleAOn SD-WAN 11.0

ScaleAOn SD-WAN is the next generation SD-WAN platform and the most comprehensive portfolio for transforming your enterprise network

network_analysis

ScaleAOn

Unfold Lavelle Networks revolutionary flagship technology - ScaleAOn - Cloud controlled SD-WAN that simplifies the complex art of creating scalable VPNs.