Technology
Tail-f Systems’ software is designed from the ground up to meet the rigorous needs of equipment providers serving carrier and enterprise markets. These markets place significant dependency on IP networks to deliver non-stop service with predictable bandwidth and real time service provisioning.
Equipment providers are being bombarded with new requirements driven by customers and competitors. At the same time, product life cycles are shrinking and it is imperative that new capabilities get released quickly. Internal resources are always constrained and generic outsourcing, while viewed as a panacea, often fails.
The solution is intelligent outsourcing. Intelligent outsourcing involves off-loading specific areas of development to proven solution providers and using internal resources for other critical problems. Intelligent outsourcing is achieved when a third party supplier can deliver results that meet or exceed what could be achieved internally. Our customers tell us that Tail-f Systems’ well thought-out architecture and rapid code development tools meet this criterion.
The following technology threads are at the core of Tail-f Systems’ software architecture:
Next Generation Tools and Platforms
Robust Standards-based Configuration Management
Integration with Legacy Environments
Next Generation Tools and Platforms
ConfD is built on XML. XML is used to provide a single model of networking data. Advantages of using XML include efficiencies for data transport, broad availability of XML tools, portability, and extensibility. ConfD is optimized and pre-integrated with Linux. Linux is frequently the OS of choice for next generation networking products. ConfD uses technologies like AJAX to allow developers to build dynamic real time Web UIs.
Rapid Development
The ConfD software engine auto-generates three critical northbound interfaces from a single XML-based data model. These interfaces are NETCONF, CLI, and Web UI. Tail-f Systems provides extensive libraries of XML specifications and C instrumentation code for many of the networking functions expected to be found in a switch or router. The extent of our documentation helps fast track the description of customer specific functions in XML.
Unify Disparate Systems
In legacy product lines, it is common for each member of a product family to have a unique adapter or network management API. ConfD enables equipment suppliers to streamline the development of multiple devices in a product family by removing silos of development and standardizing all parameters on a common XML data model. This leads to reduced development time and costs for both on-device and element management systems.
Robust Standards-based Configuration Management
ConfD fully implements the IETF NETCONF standard (RFC 4741 and RFC 4742). Tail-f Systems actively participates in the IETF Working Group on NETCONF and is the first company to support Event Notifications ("draft-ietf-netconf-notification-09.txt"). NETCONF is a leap forward enabling network operators to automate network configuration without the risk of network outages caused by configuration inconsistencies or the cost of maintaining legacy scripts. For more information, read whitepaper: Next Generation Network Management with NETCONF.
Performance and Scalability
ConfD was designed to meet the performance and scalability demands of very large networks. ConfD uses its own parsing algorithm and a very fast database to ensure efficiency. For example, ConfD has been tested configuring over one million network elements and performance of both reads and writes scales linearly.
Granular Security
Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) is integrated into ConfD. Developers have the option to build granular controls into the administration of their applications. For example, users with different authority levels or scope of responsibility can be given access and visibility to only specific network data or functional capabilities relevant to them. Network operators appreciate such flexibility when dealing with dynamic networks and multiple network administrators.
High-Availability
ConfD’s Configuration Database can store data in redundant locations. The replication process is fully configurable and nodes can share some or all of the common configuration data. This capability allows customers to develop network management approaches aligned to a full range of high-availability architectures.
Clustering
To deliver on the promise of scalable performance, equipment providers need to offer their customers a fast and simple way to configure added capacity. Developers can use ConfD’s Configuration Database’s clustering capability to view multiple blades or appliances as if viewing a single system. Users can coherently monitor and control multiple nodes from a single point without regard to the fact that the system uses multiple nodes.
Integration with Legacy Environments
ConfD is not a monolithic software framework. Rather it was designed with rich callback APIs to integrate with existing data stores and other interfaces. For example, ConfD can be used to add NETCONF support to an existing network management application that already has a CLI, Web UI, and configuration database.