Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies
Open Source networking innovation with enterprise-grade features and global support

Overview:

Dell Technologies is Taking Open-Source software, mainstream

IT organizations around the globe strive to deliver superior business value by helping their organizations increase productivity, deliver services faster and remain flexible by incorporating the latest technology innovations like automation, containers and cloud. In addition, the use of modern applications and workloads like virtualization, cloud, IoT and AI are pushing the boundaries of existing data centers as more and more traffic moves from the edge of the network to the core and into the cloud. These organizations need a modern network infrastructure that can support these demands.

Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) represents open source innovation at its finest, and as it evolves and matures, it is expanding beyond the public cloud, into large-scale enterprises, private clouds and service providers, empowering them to modernize their networks, easily address emerging IT scenarios, and overcome evolving business challenges.

Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies helps IT organizations to run their business with the innovation, automation and reliability that comes from a commercial offering of SONiC with production-ready enterprise feature enhancements, hardening and global support targeted for demanding cloud, data center and edge fabrics.

• Open source innovation – based on SONiC, Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies builds on Dell Technologies long history of contributing with and contributing to the open source SONiC community with new features and capabilities ranging across the protocol stack and management applications.
• Edge, Enterprise and Cloud ready – Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies is enterprise-class tested and validated across hardware and software, field-tested in hyper-scale environments, includes a centralized management platform, and is integrated with a growing ecosystem of partner automation/orchestration applications.
• Flexible Hardware Options – Dell Enterprise SONiC supports not only a broad portfolio of high performance data center and edge switching options with Dell PowerSwitch, but is also validated on select third-party switch options to provide greater choice and flexibility for your fabric architecture.

Open source networking made real

Implement a modern containerized network OS architecture to accelerate innovation and evolution

Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies integrates Linux-based, open source SONiC with a focused roadmap of features and enhancements to meet the needs of tier 2 cloud and large-scale enterprise networking environments.

• Taking open networking to the next level with containerized OS components
• Customized enterprise-focused features and roadmap
• Centralized management framework and API-centric software

Enterprise and cloud data center ready

Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies is enterprise-class tested, validated across hardware and software, and integrates an ecosystem of partner management applications.

• Across key enterprise use cases on select Dell PowerSwitch platforms
• Proven and production-hardened at several large-scale enterprise customers
• Includes a growing ecosystem of market-leading partner applications

Operate with confidence from a trusted leader in open networking support and services

Global enterprise-level support you expect with a choice of services that align with the unique needs of your data center environment.

• Comprehensive offerings for both hardware and software support
• Around-the-clock, consistent support in 165 countries with 60,000+ professionals
• Proactive and preventive technologies to help get ahead of issues before impact

Features:

• Based on Open Source SONiC: Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies is based on SONiC, an open source network operating system built on Debian Linux around a containerized architecture. SONiC is in production today at multiple web-scale companies for data center fabric deployments and has a thriving developer community and vendor ecosystem.
• Edge, Enterprise and Cloud Data Center features: Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies integrates a host of enterprise-ready features including select Layer 2 and Layer 3 protocols, Quality of Service capabilities, and key management protocols, along with support for edge use case features like port security (802.1x), POE, POE+ and UPOE. Version 4.1 introduces QinQ, also known as VLAN stacking, that enables refined service management and expansion of VLANs for complex multi-tenant, large-scale network fabrics. In addition, version 4.1 now supports ROCEv2, enabling RDMA based applications running directly over Routed IP Networks.
• Centralized management: The Management Framework is designed to improve agility and visibility by adopting open industry standards such as OpenConfig, gNMI and REST, and end-to-end streaming telemetry to enable advanced analytics. It includes a centralized, intuitive and holistic command line interface (CLI) that helps integration with existing practices. With the latest version of Dell’s Enterprise SONiC, customers have the capability to manage their fabric end-to-end, from the edge to the core to the cloud, through a unified network operating system (NOS).
• Integration with PowerSwitch platforms: Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies has been fully qualified on select Dell PowerSwitch Z series and S series platforms for full hardware support including LEDs, power, PHYs, environmentals, documentation, etc.
• Testing and validation: Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies is tested and validated across PowerSwitch and select 3rd-party hardware platforms with the full set of software features including Layer 2 and Layer 3 functionality, congestion control, power consumption, address capacities, scalability and more.
• Dell Technologies global support & services: Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies is backed by a world-class supply chain and industry leading support and services spanning 170 countries and 60K+ partner professionals.
• Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies 4.1 is supported on the following PowerSwitch switches:
  • PowerSwitch Z series: Z9332F-ON, Z9264F-ON, Z9432F-ON, Z9664F-ON
  • PowerSwitch S series: S5448F-ON, S5296F-ON, S5248F-ON, S5232F-ON, S5224F-ON, S5212F-ON
  • PowerSwitch N series: N3248TE-ON - PowerSwitch E series: E3248PXE (TD3-X5), E3248P (TD3-X5)
• Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies 4.1 is based on Azure SONiC Version: 202012 and SAI version 8.0.0.15.

Specifications:

Documentation:

Download the Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies Datasheet (PDF).