When I first started to hear about Network Virtualization maybe half a dozen years ago, I was a bit taken aback. After all, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) had been around for decades, and I had spent a good part of the 1990s and 2000s working on the protocols to allow service providers (SPs) to build scalable VPNs. So I wondered how network virtualization was different from a VPN, and why was there all the sudden interest?
As the OpenStack community releases “Essex,” momentum is clearly building for the overall software framework. Of note, the Quantum (networking) module in Essex takes the networking capabilities to a new level of scale, security, and reliability. Nicira customer Rackspace recently discussed its new enterprise OpenStack cloud that is rapidly moving toward production. Today we welcome another new customer, DreamHost, to the party.
