Aviz gives its enterprise SONiC offering an AI boost

Aviz Networks continues to add features to its enterprise-grade SONiC offering as it works to make the open-source network operating system a more feasible option for customers.

The latest addition is an AI-based package called Network Copilot that’s aimed at improving network operations, management and capacity planning. The ultimate goal is to help network professionals integrate AI into their daily jobs and streamline the way organizations operate their future networks, according to Vishal Shukla, CEO for Aviz.

“Right now, network operations are template driven. But going forward, operations will be data driven, and AI will help you to manage your network from the observability and the orchestration point of view, ultimately making networks open and much easier to manage,” Shukla said.

Network Copilot will work by gathering data from Aviz’s core Networking 3.0 Stack package, which includes support for intent-based networking technology, network telemetry, anomaly detection and the vendor’s Open Networking Enterprise Suite (ONES). The ONES suite of management software includes SONiC configuration templates for data-center leaf/spine configurations and supports standard networking technologies such as EVPN, VxLAN, and border gateway protocol (BGP).

ONES compiles a network’s hardware and software inventory by gathering telemetry from switches in the network. It supports multi-vendor NOSes such as Nvidia Cumulus Linux, Arista EOS, and Cisco NX-OS, as well as switches that utilize standard OpenConfig telemetry, according to Aviz.

From the Networking 3.0 Stack information, Network Copilot customers can pre-train their own large language models (LLM) for network benchmarks for functions such as network operations, compliance, capacity planning, bandwidth management and troubleshooting. Customers then can fine-tune those models with real-time data from their networks, Shukla said.

“Customers can create a data lake with all of the normalized data they are familiar with – that’s data coming from any switch vendor, ASIC or network operating system, as well as data from AWS, Azure and GCP – and build AI-based applications to broadly control their entire enterprise,” Shukla said.

In addition, customers have the opportunity to collaborate with the Aviz Prompt Engineering team to explore and develop new use cases, pushing the boundaries of network management innovation, Shukla said.

Copilot ensures that network devices align with business expectations, Shukla said. This covers aspects such as security compliance, resource utilization, and end-of-life hardware inventory. Administrators are alerted to any deviations from best practices.

In a blog describing Copilot, Aviz noted that the system facilitates a number of use cases, such as:

• Forecasting and overseeing the resources needed to meet current and future demands on the network infrastructure. This ensures the data center network operates optimally, delivering performance, scalability, and efficiency.
• Using generative AI capabilities to identify anomalous behavior within the network. This includes providing answers on unusual traffic spikes, deviations from normal usage, or potential security breaches.
• Assisting NetOps and support teams in streamlining troubleshooting and day-two operations by providing extensive visibility into network state information and traffic flows.

SONiC support picks up steam

Experts say enhancements such as Network Copilot can go a long way in attracting new customer and bringing valuable improvements to SONiC in general.

“Network Copilot is important [because] it makes Aviz more unique in their offering and makes SONiC easier to consume,” said Alan Weckel, founder and industry analyst for the 650 Group. “This will add value to existing SONiC customers and should help enterprises evaluating SONiC look at SONiC as a more compelling option.”

The idea is to add value to SONiC, Weckel said. “SONiC adoption has two layers: the SONiC proper and the additional features and solutions. The more features on top of a solution, the better the vendor will differentiate,” Weckel said.

Linux-based SONiC decouples network software from the underlying hardware and lets it run on hundreds of switches and ASICs from multiple vendors while supporting a full suite of network features such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), remote direct memory access (RDMA), QoS, and Ethernet.

Originally developed and open-sourced by Microsoft, SONIC is now part of the Linux Foundation and its 450,000 developers. The vendor community supporting SONiC has been evolving over time and includes development activity from Google, Dell, Arista, Nokia, Alibaba, Comcast, Cisco, Broadcom, Juniper Apstra, Edgecore, Innovium, and Nvidia-Mellanox.

“There are a lot of new logos to SONiC in the past six months, [and that] list is a nice mix of enterprise verticals and business sizes, which is a good sign,” Weckel said. “We aren’t just in the early adopter part of the curve anymore.”

According to the 650 Group, the worldwide market for SONiC in the data center switching arena will exceed $8 billion in revenue by 2027. SONiC’s role outside of hyperscalers will increase significantly during that period.