SONiC, an open-source data center networking OS, transitions governance to the Linux Foundation.
On April 14, 2022, the Linux Foundation announced that SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud), a leading open source network operating system enabling disaggregation for data centers, is now part of its family of open networking projects. Created by Microsoft for its Azure data centers, SONiC is an open source network operating system based on Linux that runs on over 100 different switches from multiple vendors and ASICs. The Linux Foundation will primarily focus on the software component of SONiC and continue to partner with Open Compute Platform on aligning hardware and specifications like SAI. As Arpit Joshipura, general manager of Networking, Edge, and IoT at the Linux Foundation, stated: "SONiC is a leader in open source data center NOS deployments, and we're looking forward to growing its developer community."
SONiC brings a strong existing ecosystem with premier members including Alibaba, Broadcom, Dell, Google, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA and 50+ global partners. The operating system offers a full suite of network functionality, including BGP and RDMA, that has been production-hardened in the data centers of some of the largest cloud-service providers. SONiC already runs on millions of ports in the networks of cloud scalers, enterprises, and fintechs. Dave Maltz, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Azure Networking, noted: "Microsoft founded SONiC to bring high reliability and fast innovation to the routers in Azure cloud data centers. We created it as open source so the entire networking ecosystem would grow stronger. The SONiC project is thrilled to be joining the Linux Foundation to take the community to its next jump in scale, participation, and usage."
Key stakeholders have expressed strong support for SONiC's move to the Linux Foundation. Dennis Cai, Head of Network Infrastructure at Alibaba Cloud, called it "a big milestone for the SONiC community" and stated that "Alibaba Cloud has widely deployed SONiC-based whitebox switches in our data centers, edge computing cloud, P4-based network gateways, and will extend the deployment to Wide Area Networks." Mohammad Hanif, senior director of engineering at Broadcom's Core Switching Group, noted that "Large hyperscalers agree that merchant silicon, hardware independence, and open source protocol and management stack are essential for running their data center networks," and expressed excitement about SONiC joining the Linux Foundation. Dave Lincoln, vice president of product management at Dell Technologies, stated: "We believe SONiC will continue its accelerated adoption into the modern data center, delivering the scale, flexibility and programmability needed to run enterprise-level networks."
Additional support came from eBay and EPFL. Parantap Lahiri, vice president of Network and Datacenter Engineering at eBay, noted that "eBay is an active participant in the SONiC community and deploys SONiC at scale in its infrastructure," and expressed excitement about the next growth phase. Julien Demierre, Network and System architect at EPFL, stated: "At EPFL, we have been looking for a vendor neutral and flexible NOS that can provide HaaS capabilities for our Private Cloud Environment. SONiC OS provides us the solution we have been looking for in our Data Centre." The SONiC community will host its first hackathon later in 2022, marking another milestone in the project's continued development and community engagement.