OpenDaylight Project Announces Availability of Helium
The OpenDaylight Project, a community-led and industry-supported open source platform to advance Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), announced that Helium, its second open source software release, is available for download.
In the past year the networking industry has come to embrace open source as the right path toward achieving innovation and interoperability for software-defined networks. OpenDaylight's open SDN and NFV platform has evolved to include 11 new protocols, applications and technologies making it the most flexible and interoperable platform available. Over a dozen vendors are building their controllers on top of OpenDaylight, and users are seeing the value of a common SDN platform and beginning to turn to OpenDaylight for testing.
"Increasing numbers of customers are seeking open source SDN solutions and technologies that provide them with choice, flexibility and Interoperability," said Brad Casemore, IDC Research Director for Datacenter Networks. "Within that context, OpenDaylight is making steady progress cultivating a growing community of developers and users interested in adopting an open, common SDN controller platform."
The community's second release comes with a new user interface and a much simpler and customizable installation process. Users can build on-demand combinations of components and features to customize their solution thanks to the use of the Apache Karaf container. There is deeper integration with OpenStack for those who want to manage their networks using OpenDaylight including significant improvements in the Open vSwitch Database Integration project, and a technology preview of advanced OpenStack features such as Security Groups, Distributed Virtual Router and Load Balancing-as-a-Service. The OpenDaylight platform has evolved in other key areas including high availability, clustering and security, as well as strengthening and adding new protocols like OpenFlow Table Type Patterns, PacketCable MultiMedia, an application policy framework and tools for Service Function Chaining.
"The OpenDaylight community is iterating, shaping and defining a de facto standard for SDN and NFV through code creation," said Neela Jacques, executive director, OpenDaylight. "They've taken on the monumental task of bringing together all the disparate technologies, thoughts and ideas around SDN and forming it into a cohesive platform. The community has made amazing progress in a short amount of time as you can see in this second release which integrates more functionality, apps and use cases. Helium brings us one step closer to having one common platform the entire industry can standardize on."
