Arista Introduces Network Applications with VMware and Microsoft

At VMworld 2013 this week in San Francisco Arista Networks announced three new network applications that integrate with Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS) and bring a new level of awareness to critical applications in the data center: OpenWorkload, Smart System Upgrade and Network Telemetry.

“Businesses are increasingly deploying network virtualization to simplify IT and improve the speed of business,” said Milin Desai, director, product management, VMware. “VMware and Arista are partnering to integrate Arista EOS-based and VMware NSX™ to enable the same operational model to be used for both virtual and physical workloads, resulting in increased efficiency and agility for the data center operator."

Arista's Software Defined Cloud Networking (SDCN) combines automation and linear scaling with software-defined networking to deliver network virtualization, custom programmability and simplified architectures. With support for flow monitoring, auto-initialization of zero-touch deployment of large numbers of switches (ZTP/ZTR), early notification of application caused network congestion (LANZ) and advanced event triggers (AEM), Arista switches running EOS are an ideal choice for SDN controlled cloud networks.

The new OpenWorkload application enables a distributed system of network switches to support mobile workloads. Arista and VMware collaborated to enable Arista EOS switches to seamlessly integrate with VMware NSX to provide hardware-based gateway services for non-virtualized servers and existing VLANs. The Smart System Upgrade application provides features that tightly couple with data center infrastructure partners,such as Microsoft, F5 and Palo Alto Networks. The Network Telemetry application provides  a new model for faster troubleshooting from fault detection to fault isolation. It streams data about network state, including both underlay and overlay network statistics, to applications from Splunk, ExtraHop, Corvil and Riverbed. With critical infrastructure information exposed to the application layer, issues can be proactively avoided.

"The architecture of Arista EOS, coupled with best-in-class hardware and partnerships with the other best-of-breed companies in each category creates network capabilities unachievable by monolithic providers," said Anshul Sadana, Senior Vice President, Customer Engineering at Arista Networks. "The integration and demonstration of VMware NSX with EOS at VMworld is a clear example of this best in class partnership."