Cisco making SONiC available to all customers – not just hyperscalers

Cisco is close to allowing customers to run the SONiC network operating system on its flagship Nexus 9000 series datacenter switches. SONiC - aka Software for Open Networking in the Cloud" - is a Linux Foundation project that develops an open source network operating system (NOS) capable of running on diverse switches and silicon. The project started life at Microsoft, which adapted the software from its Debian-based Azure Cloud Switch. The project is widely adopted by hyperscalers, who need and like customizable stacks. Hyperscalers also buy plenty of networking hardware from the likes of Cisco, Juniper, and Arista, who therefore support SONiC. Some vendors, notably Dell, have argued that SONiC is ideal for enterprise networking - especially switching - and supported it while promoting the cause of NOS choice. A corollary of that idea suggests that users might stop buying all their networking hardware from one vendor, and buy diverse fleets of SONiC-capable hardware instead. That mostly hasn't happened, but the times have come to suit SONiC because one of the roles in which hyperscalers put it to work is running the networks they use to power AI services. Many organizations have very good reasons not to run AI in the cloud or other hosted environments. SONiC on everyday datacenter hardware is therefore an idea whose time has come. Enter Cisco, which has supported SONiC on its routers for years and last week quietly mentioned it will soon extend that support to its N9000 datacenter switches. The N9000 Series is expanding to include a foundation for SONiC, built on Cisco Cloud Scale and Silicon One - alongside platforms powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet switch silicon for AI-class fabrics," the post we linked to above states. These platforms give customers a consistent hardware layer for a wide range of leaf-spine and AI/ML topologies." Our open choice model will extend this flexibility to the N9000, giving customers the future option to run SONiC for AI or non-AI clusters, while maintaining their existing Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) or NX-OS environments on the same proven hardware, ensuring investment protection and simplifying lifecycle management." The networking giant said its support for SONiC includes hardening the stack and backing it with Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC), while integration with Nexus Dashboard provides familiar tools for automated bring-up and health monitoring." A Cisco spokesperson told The Register the post we've linked to above effectively represents an announcement that it will soon make support for SONiC generally available. (R)