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Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

code.facebook.com

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Re: Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

#11

Post by randartie »

tambourine_man wrote: post #10
SEJeff wrote: post #5

Regardless of what people think of facebook and their business, this is a pretty big deal. As a very large tech company, they have the time and talent to develop their own switches. If they are releasing the reference implementations, unlike google, this helps anyone else trying to build the next big web company. The more information the merrier.

Yes, but only because they lag behind Google in this regard. Companies embrace and propose open standards in the areas they don't dominate. As soon as you hit a core competitive advantage, they get as closed as possible.

It's not because they don't "dominate" in the area of building network hardware that they release their designs. It's because this is not what gives Facebook an advantage in the social products space.

There aren't better social networks out there that would thrive if only they had better network switches.

Re: Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

#13

Post by [deleted] »

Smudge wrote: post #4
kv85s wrote: post #2

"We’re big believers in the value of disaggregation" -- says the world's biggest data aggregator. The irony is amazing.

They go on to define their terms: "breaking down traditional data center technologies into their core components" -- very little to do with what we think of as "data aggregation." So, I wouldn't exactly call it ironic. More... homophonic? Homophonically ironic?

[deleted]

Re: Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

#14

Post by joshAg »

nbm wrote: post #9

I work in a somewhat related team (Traffic/CDN) at Facebook, and I'm very excited about what this is going to allow us to do in future. Current switches just don't support the deployment, monitoring, and configuration power we have for servers. While we've done a lot (probably close to the most than can be) to bring them somewhat close to par, Wedge should not only leapfrog to equality, but also use the same infrastr…

What managed switches did you guys try and find lacking?

Re: Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

#15

Post by planckscnst »

tambourine_man wrote: post #10
SEJeff wrote: post #5

Regardless of what people think of facebook and their business, this is a pretty big deal. As a very large tech company, they have the time and talent to develop their own switches. If they are releasing the reference implementations, unlike google, this helps anyone else trying to build the next big web company. The more information the merrier.

Yes, but only because they lag behind Google in this regard. Companies embrace and propose open standards in the areas they don't dominate. As soon as you hit a core competitive advantage, they get as closed as possible.

I'm not so sure of this. Google has published multiple documents [1] mentioning the limitation of top-of-rack switching capacity and data center bisection bandwidth: how they need to design around it, and why it makes sense to use commodity switches despite the burden on software design.

[1] Here is one less than a year old: http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00516ED2V01Y2...

Re: Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

#16

Post by scott_karana »

joshAg wrote: post #14
nbm wrote: post #9

I work in a somewhat related team (Traffic/CDN) at Facebook, and I'm very excited about what this is going to allow us to do in future. Current switches just don't support the deployment, monitoring, and configuration power we have for servers. While we've done a lot (probably close to the most than can be) to bring them somewhat close to par, Wedge should not only leapfrog to equality, but also use the same infrastr…

What managed switches did you guys try and find lacking?

Somehow I'm going to guess "all of them". ;)

(They were known to use Force10 switches at some point in the past: http://www.force10networks.com/company/customer_profiles/pdf...)

Re: Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

#17

Post by magicalist »

planckscnst wrote: post #15
tambourine_man wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but only because they lag behind Google in this regard. Companies embrace and propose open standards in the areas they don't dominate. As soon as you hit a core competitive advantage, they get as closed as possible.

I'm not so sure of this. Google has published multiple documents [1] mentioning the limitation of top-of-rack switching capacity and data center bisection bandwidth: how they need to design around it, and why it makes sense to use commodity switches despite the burden on software design. [1] Here is one less than a year old: http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00516ED2V01Y2...

I didn't read it to see what you were referring to, but that's the second edition of an older book, so maybe they didn't update everything for the new edition. Google has been banging the software-defined networking drum for a while now (configuration is part of the compute engine APIs now, for instance[1]).

[1] http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/04/enter-androm...

Re: Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

#18

Post by planckscnst »

magicalist wrote: post #17
planckscnst wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure of this. Google has published multiple documents [1] mentioning the limitation of top-of-rack switching capacity and data center bisection bandwidth: how they need to design around it, and why it makes sense to use commodity switches despite the burden on software design. [1] Here is one less than a year old: http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00516ED2V01Y2...

I didn't read it to see what you were referring to, but that's the second edition of an older book, so maybe they didn't update everything for the new edition. Google has been banging the software-defined networking drum for a while now (configuration is part of the compute engine APIs now, for instance[1]). [1] http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/04/enter-androm...

Yes, I just looked at the place where it specifically talks about switching costs (chapter 1 around page 18/19), and it hasn't changed.

Re: Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

#19

Post by nbm »

joshAg wrote: post #14
nbm wrote: post #9

I work in a somewhat related team (Traffic/CDN) at Facebook, and I'm very excited about what this is going to allow us to do in future. Current switches just don't support the deployment, monitoring, and configuration power we have for servers. While we've done a lot (probably close to the most than can be) to bring them somewhat close to par, Wedge should not only leapfrog to equality, but also use the same infrastr…

What managed switches did you guys try and find lacking?

This isn't my area, so I don't know what we've previously disclosed or what agreements we might have in place with vendors about, say, not mentioning them, so I don't feel comfortable disclosing that.

If it was anything like experiences in other cases, my suspicion (as I said, not my area) is that switch vendors have relatively few customers like us (certainly few that discover bugs, change configuration, upgrade firmware nearly as often as we do, or who make use of the particular set of features we do at the same time), and so some things we really would want would not really be in their interest to work on relative to things that would be useful to most of their customers.

At some point it probably became worth trying something new like Wedge/FBOSS (which while technically hard at least can build on our experience building hardware and software for servers) in the hopes of improved turn-around time and getting the features we want further down the line.

I'll try remember to track down someone from the team to give a less vague answer after lunch.

Re: Introducing “Wedge” and “FBOSS,” the next steps toward a disaggregated network

#20

Post by ChuckMcM »

I am so excited about this, while I realize switches are perhaps one of the last bastions of over priced software I would love to have a switch where it is just a freakin' switch. It isn't trying to be all things to all people at some level and doing that badly. I've got Blade, HP, Cisco, Supermicro, and Mellanox switches that have been in this role (Top of Rack) and so often they bite the big one when it comes to some random protocol going nuts. Every single site outage in nearly 4 years of 'launch' has been due to a switch bug.
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