UPDATED 11:00 EDT / SEPTEMBER 30 2014

OpenDaylight gets a lot more open – and functional – with second “Helium” release

open sourceJust short of eight months after launch, the OpenDaylight Project is already marking its second lap towards unifying the software-defined networking (SDN) ecosystem with a new major release that fully lives up to the breakneck reputation of community-driven projects.

The successor to the original Hydrogen version appropriately takes the name of the next element on the periodic table and lays down the groundwork for future iterations with a set of strategic improvements that are most significant in the context of OpenDaylight’s big-name backers. Helium, as the release is known, is equal part milestone and steppingstone.

A coalition of vendors featuring networking kingpin Cisco Systems Inc. and more than a dozen other companies formed the OpenDaylight Project last April under the auspices of the Linux Foundation as a response to the rapid spread of SDN solutions in the marketplace. The initiative, which has since ballooned in size to include over 40 corporate sponsors, aims to provide for the network what OpenStack is for the cloud: a common management management layer that allows users to implement the products that best suit their requirements without concern for the compatibility issues that have traditionally made it difficult to combine technologies from different suppliers.

In accordance with that goal, the latest Helium release extends support to several key features in the Neutron networking component of OpenStack. The roster includes the Security Groups capability for regulating access to instances, distributed virtual routing and the LBaaS function, which permits the use of third party load balancing tools.

That enables organizations to make their deployments of the cloud platform more resilient against both regular usage spikes and distributed-denial-of-service attacks that involve a malicious party attempting to overwhelm their infrastructure with requests. But the security benefits of the LBaaS integration are much more than an added bonus.

Network protection is a core focus with Helium, which also introduces much-needed authorization, authentication and auditing capabilities that bring OpenDaylight a big step closer towards enterprise-readiness. Plus, it enables high-availability and clustering, two equally crucial enterprise features that are just as essential to delivering the kind of reliability expected from production environments.

Besides OpenStack, the new version also extends support to a number of other strategically important open-source technologies, most notably the Table Type Patterns model for handling traffic in environments employing the software-defined OpenFlow protocol. Telecoms can bring comparable of automation to their cable modem termination systems leveraging complementary integration with the PacketCable MultiMedia framework, which provides similar functionality.

To prevent all those features from weighing down on user environments, Helium has carefully been bundled with Apache Karaf, a container makes it possible for admins to choose which specific functions to install when setting up their OpenDayLight deployments. The release sports a revamped interface that aims to simplify that chore and streamline ongoing management with the same stroke.

photo credit: opensourceway via photopin cc

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