1. Can configurations from the physical QFX switches be downloaded directly from their virtual counterparts
While most configuration elements are supported as is in vQFX, some features aren’t. Hence usually configuration cannot be directly copied into vQFX. Also interfaces needs to be managed separately. vQFX supports only 1 LC and 12 Interface (ports) AFAIK.
2. How can data traffic be simulated which validates the virtual topology?
In Camphor Networks Platform, connected interfaces can send packets across the network as configured. Both small and large MTUs are supported alike. Both control plane traffic and data plane traffic can be exchanged across various network elements as desired.
3. Are instances of virtual traffic generators required to pump traffic?
In virtualized simulated environment, usually data plane performance testing is non-goal. Hence simple generators such as iperf and ping can be effectively used to drive traffic through the simulated virtual network topology.
4. Can frames/packets in the physical world be captured and replayed in the virtual world?
Some specific instances of this can be achieved if required, but would not recommend as a general strategy to pursue to recreate any and all kinds of scenarios. It is better to build the virtual topology to reflect the design of the physical topology in the most accurate manner possible abstracting away entities which are either not required or not feasible to build in the virtual world.
5. What are the scale limits of the solution?
Camphor Networks has adapted a very modern distributed compute architecture, based directly on Kubernetes. Due to this critical aspect, platform can support routers and switches modeled pods which can run anywhere inside the distributed cluster of compute servers. This enables the offered solution to be horizontally scalable and mainly constrained only by the underlying compute infrastructure capacity.
6. Is there any integration supported with a CI/CD model such that any config changes to the infra can be pre-validated in the virtual world before being pushed to production?
Users can interact with the platform in multiple ways – GUI, CLI, YAML and API. Because of this, the platform is easily usable across the board, from non-programmers to automation experts. Using the python API, small and large network topologies can be built alike, very quickly and managed effectively. This enables seamless integration with any standard CI/CI solution such as GitLab-CI and GitHub-CI.
7. Can physical routers be part of the network topology built using camphor?
Absolutely. Camphor Networks provides seamless integration with physical devices. All necessary networking connections are managed automatically, thanks to the SDN provided by Camphor Networks. All it takes is to run a simple docker command to launch a container which bridges traffic between physical links of the devices and the virtual links of topology built. UX remains the same and almost indistinguishable from operational perspective.
8. Which all vendors are supported ?
At present, Arista (vEOS), Cisco (NXOSv, IOS-XEv, IOS-XRv), Cumulus (FRR/Sonic), Pica8 (PICOS), Juniper (cRPD, vMX, vQFX, vRR, vSRX), various distributions of Linux and Windows are supported. More shall follow soon.
9. How is the camphor networks software delivered and deployed?
Camphor Networks Software is deployable both on-premise and on various public clouds such as aws, Azure, GCP, and Equinix. Typically installation takes only 10 to 30 minutes based on the Internet download speed. You can use this Getting Started link to start playing with the platform.
10. How is camphor networks software priced?
Currently, software is priced on a monthly/yearly recurring fashion. Pricing has been kept very simple and is just based on the size of the underlying compute/server infrastructure. Please email Info@CamphorNetworks.com for further details.