 Okay, it's 340. So let's get started. So can everybody hear me at the back? Okay, awesome. I was not expecting these many people. So I'm nervous. Okay So just let's get started My name is Adnan. I run the global strategy for open networking out of the networking BU at Dell Wanted to take this opportunity to tell you guys about what Dell is doing as far as opening up the networking space and then how it enables different orchestration tools and and and and serves as a platform The other thing that I'm looking for in this session is is actually some feedback because this is something very new as you'll see that that a major networking vendor has taken on and and I mean Feedback on are we on the right path? Do you guys think we are smoking crack or? I mean it's it's a so As much as I'm here to tell what Dell is doing and how it's all awesome I want to hear you know the other side as well, and then it's a pretty good forum. So so this should be fun. So Let's get started So it's just topics. I mean what where is Dell going? I think a lot of people in this session at Dell have covered these things about how we are looking at software defined enterprise I'm not going to spend too much time and then what is open networking and and why did we do this and what did We do actually and then and then how does it fit into the enterprise space and how you guys can benefit from it? So so so with that if you look at what what the challenge is I mean right now every every CIO or everybody is talking about how do you how do you make your? Infrastructure abstracted from from the workloads and and how can you use your infrastructure in the most efficient manner? Possible so that that actually is one of the problems that exists and and everybody has different kinds of solution everybody talks about software defined enterprise and and I Personally fundamentally believe that Dell's approach is a pretty unique approach as far as as this is concerned and it'll be interesting to see what you guys think and But that's that's the thing that we are going after how do we provide the necessary tools and the infrastructure that you guys Can go and define and build infrastructure is the way you want to because one size does not fit all and and we don't want to Impose our philosophy on on how you do things. So so that's that's how we are thinking about this. So if you look at it, I mean The fundamental thing about software defined enterprise it is should give you a choice of picking the best of breed solutions from the industry And actually enable you to go deploy those solutions Rather than locking you into a vertically integrated stack across the board and that is that is that is something which we believe is is Absolutely a key to to that to software defined enterprise and I mean, let's keep going and because I want to spend Time on some interesting things. So This is our vision of The enterprise I think everybody here has heard a lot about software defined enterprise But if you look at the data center component of the software defined enterprise We believe that you know, this the the STN On the server side with with virtualization, you know, this the software defined server thing happened I mean a lot of people here are using virtual servers. I mean, I'm assuming most of the room is But but networking has been a closed black box and and we believe that one of the things that has been Prohibiting the adoption of various STN solutions out in the market has been the fact that networking vendors have had very close solutions And then we'll talk about that in a second So open networking initiative from Dell is not SDN It just enables SDN Then the and the reason why I say that is because I want everybody to understand that Dell is at Dell We are looking at building the platforms that will give you the choice to go Deploy various solutions on top be it open stack be it Any any other orchestration tool that that you want to go and build on top. So that's that's the that's the Fundamental thing that I want everybody to sort of take away from from this slide And the second thing is SDN or software defined networking is the second most abused word I think in the industry after cloud and It's it's the the only thing that I tell we are looking at is we are we're trying to solve the first Letter in that whole story, which is yes, which is software How do we provide a platform in the networking portion of our enterprise strategy that lets you run? Any kind of software on your network so you can actually truly have a software defined data center Which is part of your bigger enterprise study. So did that make sense so far with me, okay? So what did we do? What we did was if you look at the big box on the left that that is networking at is at Exist today you go to you come to us you go to any of our friends across the street You go to any other networking vendor you get a vertically integrated stack, which is it's a closed black box Which is my own asics. I? Will go and give you closed hardware. I will then put my operating system on it I will give you a choice of protocols that you can run on it some industry standard protocols BGP OSPF whatever and then I will have my own proprietary protocols and then I will you will actually have to buy the whole red box with support from me and Then that's it and I think over the last three to five years People have been looking at different ways to do SDN and a lot of pressure came on the industry and The open flow was the second way that people could actually talk to the switch outside the traditional protocols Can how many people here know what open flow is just? Okay, everybody. Okay, so our belief is that Well, two things needed to happen first of all a lot of people had to get together and agree on a standard and Then the customers had to wait for vendors to go implement those standards So so that those two things within by definition did Hamper the innovation on that side We never looked at opening up the operating system as a platform And if you look at it the application ecosystem on the switch did really did not thrive You were either you could talk to my switch using open flow or traditional protocols Or if I was nice enough in the last few years I gave you API access on the things that I wanted you to give go touch so that is that is that was the fundamental problem at Dell networking that we were looking at and and and We we didn't have to go far. We we actually went back and looked at what we did with servers a Decade ago or 12 years ago. It was before my time in the industry. So I don't remember the exact year, but what we did was we we You have this vertically integrated mainframe model either from our friends at IBM or or or son and and Dell came in and we basically gave if you look at the picture on the right. We standardized on x86 hardware We gave a choice of the operating system to our customers and What happened is the application ecosystem on the compute infrastructure thrived People started building applications that ran on the compute infrastructure and today Look at the application choice that you have that you can deploy in your enterprise We're the server and the operating system on the server serves as a platform So we took the same learning and and we brought it back to networking and we decided to take this bold step To go break the model So from now onwards Dell networking is going to give customers a choice of what operating system They want to run on their switch So you guys can and we will support it you still Can can run our own operating system if you want you can run cumulus Which is the first partnership be announced how many people here are familiar with cumulus? Okay, fair enough and the reason why we did cumulus was Cumulus is a full Linux based operating system. You get a Linux prompt. You can deploy any Linux app on it It's a essentially making switch closer and closer to the server and they abstract the front end ports of the switch As as as local ethernet ports other than that. It's just Linux So you can take any application and you can run it on the switch So we looked at operating systems out there and we said we are going to bring a choice of OSS to the industry Which are going to be serving as platforms for the networking infrastructure Structure hence if you step back. This is how SDN is supposed to be that you go enable the software component on the switch We announced that in January. We've had incredible amount of traction still then and that's where we are going and Right now. It's available on two platforms one 48 port 10 gig one Tried in two 32 port 40 gig but we are looking at accelerating that and bringing more and more platforms with that choice And eventually the second thing we did was you know what same thing as servers One throaty choke if you have a problem you pick up the phone And you call Dell as we serve a broad amount of enterprise customers We can we can we can go and support this again same thing we did with servers But just the mindset of going in breaking the model was it was a pretty big leap and I mean in this bigger forum I can't share the kind of discussions we had internally so what's What's the what's where is this going? Why cumulus? The network needs to mimic the servers how many people here run different tool set to manage their network infrastructure and server infrastructure Wouldn't be nice to have one that was the reason why we looked at cumulus and and and we brought them on as a partner Second thing is their hardware agnostic same thing as the server model Have a very fast pace of adopting different kind of hardware platforms So you break the hardware innovation with the software innovation same thing as servers If you look at it today, you don't have to upgrade your OS Just because the faster CPU came from Intel or bigger SSD came you can write the hardware innovation wave Independent of upgrading your software so in network. It wasn't the case by the way You had to buy a vertically integrated stack. So here we are giving our customers a choice as to whatever pace They want to move on Second thing third thing is networking operating system that can serve as a platform You can deploy any Linux app on it The interesting thing is do not deploy oracle server on it because network in networking switches Don't have the same compute horsepower that the servers have so so if that but there are applications out there That run on servers traditionally because they just could not run on the switch And it would be a lot more efficient to run those applications on the switch How anybody here familiar with software based load balancing? Right you run it on a server today. Wouldn't it be nice if it was running on the switch? That is where it's supposed to be but You know, we sort of got away with it as networking companies for 15 years. So That's that's the other thing. So it's native Linux It's not for the traditional network admins quite honestly because you get a Linux Prompt you don't get a CLI like the traditional operating system So it's a little bit of a leap but for several guys. It's pretty good You can leverage the ecosystem that exists today from a Linux tools at standpoint to manage your network provision as as as you would and your server ecosystem so Hence the reason for bringing cumulus up hence the partnership and With Dell you pick up the phone you call us and and we give we basically stand behind it and we ship it What do you need so let me touch on one thing in a second? How many people here are wondering if how are we different than the ODMs? Anybody, okay Why white box or bare metal switch? See if you if you the reason why we got into this was because we believe that we have a Significant amount of value to bring to our customers that the white box switches cannot bring and here is the reason if today You want to go and do this with the white box vendor. You have to go buy the chip You have to build your own supply chain You have to get your operating system running on it. You have to put the sparing and everything in place so you can actually Replace and rma the box so you actually get a vertically integrated lock Because you made all those investments and there is a certain amount of volume commitment that sometimes is required to get The kind of pricing that is needed from the white white box vendor with Dell you don't have to make those investments We are going to continue to innovate on the hardware side On our software as well and on the partner software ecosystem So you can actually ride the wave as far as the best silicon is concerned and also the best operating system features that are concerned So that's that's how we believe you are a little different. So if you look at them I mean basically we are unlocking the hardware portion first so Second is we are basically going to give more and more vertical options up the networking stack starting from the top of rack To the core to high density platform. So you are you have the same flexibility You have a choice of our own operating system Then you have the cumulus cumulus Linux as an option which can be managed by the rich ecosystem of linux Linux management tools That are out there. So how many people here use chef puppet this integrates right in So you don't have to go and do use a different Cacti on ideas if you do that that's final work But you don't have to go develop a separate ecosystem for your networking tool and then it has integrated up the stack with the different Overlay providers as well and then the beauty is if you look at it your applications are can also run on the switch we are looking at different Overlay technologies and and virtual overlay functions as we as we bring and that's some of the feedback that I would like from from the room as to What kind of application ecosystem you would like to see come on the switch honestly? I mean, we've you know, we've got so customer interaction. We get some good ideas But that's the that's how the stack works and how it is different from the networking today You can't you could not do this six months ago. You had to go buy the not from a tier one networking vendor So that's the So if you if you look at how your infrastructure will look like based on on your workload needs and What where the right place of for an application is you can dynamically move your applications within your infrastructure? Obviously, I would not be running very compute intensive applications or Disconsentive applications on my switch, but there are applications out there where they actually could move Within the rack from one place to the other depending on what the right place for them is to go service the workload So you're not tired to Just the whole the whole the whole rack or your whole compute infrastructure and the connectivity becomes this big compute block That your workload and your applications can move around and obviously we're giving you incredible amount of power Where do you have the capability to go shoot yourself in the foot as well? But but you know with great power comes great responsibility. So I mean it's it's it's but that's what we are unlocking And as del we have done a great job with this when we started as a company 30 years ago We did this with the With the desktops the laptops then the servers Different by the network and I think storage software defined story There was a talk earlier about software defined storage that is where this was all why is it that I will decide where your application runs I just give you a big compute block with interconnectivity and your workloads can move around as you see fit if Assuming people in this room are the kind of people that want to have that kind of a granular control So that's why we are different again. I keep emphasizing because that's something I keep hearing from customers that You can actually use third-party Open tool set to manage your infrastructure Versus going and getting a lock in with a vendor What I would caution you is how many people here are using layer 2 in their infrastructure Layer 3 it's not a layer 2 solution We believe that infrastructure is moving to layer 3 from the top of rack and above and With del we are giving you the transition path to run del operating system Which has all the L2 functionality and move to an L3 based infrastructure because we believe there's a lot more resiliency in L3 based environment than it is On the L2 environment so for L2 It's not a they doesn't have the all the required features to go run a big L2 environment, but for L3 It's a good fit. So I just wanted to make sure I caution people before before we get in trouble. So Cumulate the beauty of being in this business for my from my standpoint is I actually actually disaggregate the hardware and software So I actually can go and kick their butt to go develop more features so they are actually going to show a demo tomorrow on On On the Dell switch running their neutron plug-in on s6000 which is our 32 port 40 gig box So I wanted to show this slide I think everybody who has to work with open stack has to have an implementation of this So in the open stack workload, they also have a plug-in which which Let's you run open the orchestration tool side. So Where are we going beyond this and I want to use a lot of time sometime for debate and then feedback Because I hope people give me good feedback, but you know where we are going as networking is We'll give you a choice. We'll keep adding choices. We will certify I will put this behind and for the extremely brave customers out there We will even give you a choice of not running an operating system and putting your own OS on top And from a tier one standpoint in networking industry. I can promise you this has never been done before so That's that's the high-level overview of Dell networking Where we are going how we think we are different and how we are enabling software adoption on the Networking layer in the data center and now we are working with different partners out there to to see what kind of applications or plug-ins we can bring to the switch to actually Enable scenarios that have been locked before so so ideas feedback Flame mail potatoes anything is most welcome. So so that's that's all I had I wanted to use this opportunity. So what do you guys think? See Dell net? Are you do work for aster? Okay, I Have a byst opinion about it We are investing very heavily in our own operating system But just just from a high-level standpoint Dell networking OS comes from the 4 stand acquisition So I don't know how many people here at no 4 stand and 4 stand has been around for a decade and a half Which was based on the net BST base the Arista's version of EOS is is a Linux based OS, but it is not a open Implementation you have to actually have a different implementation of the Linux apps that you do want to run and they they they allow you to run there They're gateway into their OS is scripting and API's and things like that They don't just let allow you to run any application on the switch from what I know And if anybody works for rest eyes in the room can correct me if I'm wrong I Dell we are also moving in the same direction. That's all I can say From this standpoint, but again that the the question becomes That innovation Can only happen if you if you don't wait for one another in certain ways See I if I if it's going at Dell if it's going to take me three months Right or to get to where cumulus is today or if it's going to take cumulus four months to get to where I am today as Customers you should have the choice to benefit and again. It's coming back to the same thing which is in our DNA which is open standards Go disrupt Build more the most efficient supply chain in the world And you know what also keep investing in your own intellectual property and may the best man when because one side does not fit all I I look at the market is changing today. I think enterprise and cloud are going in two different directions I don't know how many people here agree with me or not enterprises are going consolidated more virtualization a lot of traffic Cloud is just exploding right and left. I mean, you know enterprises going from hundred servers to virtualized servers But fist 50 physical servers, but the Amazons and the azures of the world are going to 200,000 plus servers. How do I build a platform one platform that solves both problems? I Can't and I'll be very open about it Anybody who runs a networking company and is thinking one size can fit all is On Mars needs needs to come back on earth, but I have to give them the choice Right if I want to play in both markets, I want to give them the choice So sorry it was a little long answer, but that's that's how we're different any other Feedback. Yes. Do you work for HP? Okay? I always ask that question because I want to say something You see HP is doing How is this different than what HP is doing HP is not doing this I mean, they are going down the same old traditional model and in I have to be careful about what I comment on as far as my Opinion about competitors are concerned because big guys are sitting on the left side of the room It's I Mean they're still stuck to the vertically integrated model Intel on the on the merchant silicon side Sorry, I can Not on the software side The beauty is the differentiation that we have by the way the merchant silicon transition from Dell happened three years ago We all went to Broadcom and Melanox and Intel to get the merchant silicon We've that that's that wave is is done the second wave is providing the software as as a platform or a choice of software That unless it has changed in the last 35 minutes. Nobody else is doing it. So that's the differentiation Yes, so you So the two things I mean we Are you asking for for low-level access to the to the ASIC APIs, right? Yes, so I mean you see everything is exposed to Linux constructs, right? So so you have access if you want deeper access to if you if you know the way the switch works Basically, whatever chipset you're using there's an SDK that comes with that chipset. For example, if it's a Broadcom Tried into platform then it has the Broadcom SDK Which is what we hook into as vendors to basically everybody uses that so so for certain customers or for the right scenarios We do expose the low-level programming tables as well as needed for people that need that kind of a programming power but other than that it's a You know you have just like a server you can install any application And you can access all the APIs and the constructs on Linux that you can right? I mean that's and and the in the front-end ports are actually exposed as Ethernet ports I think there's a talk tomorrow by cumulus. I don't know if you I don't know what time it is But I highly encourage folks that are interested to to actually go and attend that talk I think their CTO is coming in to give that talk Questions. Oh No, I'm not that's why I made a caution saying that Yeah, yeah, I absolutely you brought up three different points. So I think converged infrastructure is happening and And and and I know how familiar you are but but del By everybody everybody has a strategy and converging infrastructure, and so do we and we think ours is the best What we are not what we are not saying is That you can you should now start running applications on the switch What we are saying is that we are giving you the choice to Actually use the networking switch as a platform and we will see how the market evolves and how the ecosystem evolves You know what 15 years ago? Nobody knew that somebody would could come up with an application like Microsoft link on That would run on Windows servers, and we'll actually not be using PBX form So that's we are going as far as to say that we are providing the customers a choice of the platform We will see how the ecosystem evolves. It'll be a learning process and But but at least we are giving that platform Nobody's saying that you should start moving workloads and that I think you're absolutely right that With the orchestration tools that exist like open stack with the compute power the way it is on the servers Switch is supposed to be a really fast highway But but what if somebody came up with a more efficient way to route traffic on a converge Infrastructure, which is other than either layer 2 protocols or layer 3 that exists today That needs to be unless you have a switching platform that gives you that flexibility You will never be able to move into that direction So that's the we're just going as far as saying that we are now moving into that direction And we'll see how the ecosystem evolves and the adoption happens Fair enough Sorry, which partner we talking about? Yeah, and I I'm yeah, I hope next year when hopefully I'm still with Dell They still keep me and I'm back here at open stack. We have a more integrated solution that actually has Runs workloads more efficiently Today I'm here saying that I've gone to the point where we have enabled a platform tomorrow We're the if I'm if I'm standing here next year with the same slight thing that I'm still giving you a choice And I have not innovated beyond it Then I think we have failed as as as as vendors. So that's a fair Hi, hello, my name is Charles game. I'm from Arista Linux OS we are using as the same the Linux maybe yet to be honest We are using the federal core. So nothing different. I think anyway I have one question about the bare metal or high box solutions Actually, the as I know the currently the one one are you fixed the switch towards which are available? But do you have any plan to make the modular chassis? Even if I had 20 beers in me, I would not answer that question here and especially to you but But Actually, we are using the leaf spine 2t on that one I'm very familiar with what you're doing And and I think you've done a phenomenal job at creating platforms and solving certain problems in the cloud space with del 3 and leaves mine architecture Let me just say that we at Dell we're not gonna stop at this and and and my hope is is is is is to come in and and honestly, you know Being polite to to you guys did a phenomenal job. You were the first ones that came with the US based to us, but Well, you'll see some more things coming from Dell So one more question actually, I love that after us actually that I support the port stand the switches Several years ago. So is there any reason just to gave up the FT OS the move to the No, that's that's that's a very valid question We when the difference between I believe my personal opinion the difference between Arista and For Stan is that you guys have presence in two segments of the market HFT Very significant based on hardware accelerated follow-crum chipset on the other side cloud customers, right and and named cloud customers in the world We have a huge legacy that we carried the customer legacy that we carried for a decade, right? We are not abandoning FT OS I want to be very sure we are Continuing to invest on it But we just have a difference of opinion as far as strategy is concerned because we believe that by giving customers a choice We will actually write the best of innovation waves. So you mean you will maintain We will maintain you will see more features you see next generation opening system as well. That's what I want. Yeah, okay Thank you. I Never I actually should be given a price. I never thought I'll get a question from Arista This should be recorded anybody else Interesting good bad Sorry, only yes, so I Think I mean I was at OCP and I gave a talk at OCP last week We are looking at at Contributing and participating very actively in OCP. I Think it's a matter of what are the next requirements from an OCP standpoint, but but with this fundamental shift in strategy I mean I we are open open about it So so but I think OCP is is also I mean there I mean right now they have platforms in there But really they're not very efficient And then we are in conversations with OCP to see what is the the right thing for the community? So but but open networking switches actually run on only board I think there was a public statement. We made regarding supporting only and OCP release last week as well Okay Thank you, and this was very interesting for your time