Why Containers, White-box devices, and SD-WAN Are Ideal Ingredients for Edge Compute
Containerized Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) on white-box Intel-based devices offers a higher degree of flexibility and similar performance when compared to bare-metal solutions, especially when the goal is to deliver secure, dynamic edge compute solutions.
Container technology enables software workloads to be deployed anywhere, allowing telecom service providers and enterprises to deploy flexible SD-WAN networks that secure multi-cloud communications and edge cloud communications. Example deployments could connect corporate applications hosted in multiple public and private clouds with corresponding Edge Compute devices or uCPE at branch offices, weather-proof nodes connected to IoT devices, or 4G/5G edge devices in fleet vehicles, trucks, heavy equipment, or vessels.
White-box technology makes edge compute devices easier to procure and support, reducing sparing and maintenance costs, while container technologies make deploying or upgrading software in edge devices simpler and more scalable.
Performance testing containerized SD-WAN
[Could we enter a paragraph here that speaks of the collaboration between these partners as the members of the Intel Network Builders program since this blog will be featured in our INB blog page.]
Intel Network Builders brought together Intel, Red Hat®, Turnium, and TietoEvry over the fall of 2021 and into early 2022. The companies collaborated on lab-based tests designed to show real-world, practical results on the benefits of containerized SD-WAN using Turnium’s SD-WAN Cloud Native Network Function (CNF) certified on the Red Hat® OpenShift® platform, and running on Intel Xeon-D and Intel Atom-based servers and edge compute devices.
Our goal in this evaluation was to compare the performance of dedicated, fixed-function deployments and software-defined, containerized deployments. TietoEvry provided the third-party testing environment, traffic simulators, and technical staff to deploy, manage, and test this solution stack.
The evaluation compared the performance of two edge device configurations:
- A cloud-native containerized deployment using OpenShift Container Platform running on Intel Xeon-D and Intel Atom CPU based Universal CPE (uCPE) with Turnium’s SD-WAN deployed as a containerized application deployed, controlled, and managed by OpenShift.
- A bare metal deployment in which Turnium’s SD-WAN software image was directly installed on top of the uCPE operating system (Red Hat® Enterprise Linux).
These edge nodes or uCPE communicated with core nodes, Turnium’s Aggregator software, running in:
- A simulated public/private cloud offsite from the edge nodes, connecting the Aggregators and uCPE using a public overlay network.
- A simulated local Aggregator positioned within the same local, private network as the edge nodes or uCPE.
The results of the performance testing demonstrated that Turnium’s containerized SD-WAN delivered the required performance while also delivering scalability, flexibility, ease of deployment, and automation for Edge Compute solutions at-scale.
During the test, it was seamless to add new nodes to the network automatically. Turnium's automated network programming and capabilities, including wireline and wireless bonding and failover, enabled a survivable network to be turned up quickly. Deploying Red Hat® OpenShift® made it clear that deploying, upgrading, or changing workloads was a simple task to manage many Edge devices at scale, and decoupling the software from the hardware by using Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware made it easy to size the device for core and edge nodes.
In terms of performance, the tests showed that the Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform had a marginal impact on system load, with approximately a 2% additional CPU load compared to running Turnium’s SD-WAN on bare metal. Such a marginal CPU impact provides room to grow and run additional containerized workloads within the uCPE, enabling businesses and enterprises to benefit from Edge Compute and public or private 5G deployments. By coupling computing at the Edge with technologies such as Turnium’s containerized SD-WAN platform and Red Hat® OpenShift®, it becomes possible to deploy workloads or applications easily to take advantage of the favorable cost and computing power made available by Intel Xeon-D and Intel Atom-based COTS hardware.
To download the full report and view test results, please click here.