Arista Networks has launched new switches powered by SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud). Enabled by a new Arista SAI (Switch Abstraction Interface) offering, customers now have the flexibility to deploy SONiC software on Arista switching platforms. This is said to combine the benefits of open source software with Arista EOS for open, high performance, highly available networks.
“This latest initiative is another proof point of the continued long-term partnership between Arista and Microsoft on our mutual cloud networking journey. This expansion of SONiC support allows customers to take advantage of Arista’s broad platform portfolio, high quality system design, as well as global support allowing for broader adoption of cloud networking,” says Dave Maltz, distinguished engineer, Microsoft.
Arista Networks’ chief operating officer, Anshul Sadana adds, “Arista has a long history of collaboration and support for open networking with major contributions to SONiC. Arista switches Powered by SONiC brings open software choices for on-premise enterprise data centres. We are helping customers realise their cloud networking transformation around resilience, automation and modern analytics backed by world class engineering and support.”
Arista’s SAI layer allows SONiC to run on Arista switches, leveraging Arista’s advanced hardware design and platform drivers. SONiC is an open source network operating system that runs on multiple hardware platforms and was developed initially by Microsoft for the Azure cloud platform.
Arista SAI reportedly enables customers standardising on open source software platforms to achieve consistency across their estate while taking advantage of Arista’s core platform development differentiation. Arista SAI on Arista hardware platforms aims to deliver robust software, modern streaming telemetry, verbose troubleshooting tools and diverse platform support. In addition, Arista provides integrated software and hardware support through its engineering and customer support organisations.
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