Pluribus Networks

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pluribus Networks is an American manufacturer of computer networking equipment and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA. The company designs, manufactures and sells multilayer network switches based on merchant silicon and a distributed network hypervisor operating system. Its products offer software-defined networking (SDN) and Network-function Virtualization (NFV) features for large datacenter, virtualized datacenter, cloud computing, and high-performance computing applications.

Pluribus Networks
Native name Pluribus Networks
Type Private
Industry Networking, Networking Software
Founded Palo Alto, CA (April 1, 2010 (2010-04-01))
Founder(s)
Headquarters Palo Alto, CA, USA
Key people
  • Kumar Srikantan-CEO
  • Sunay Tripathi-CTO
  • Robert Drost-COO
  • Chih-Kong Ken Yang-VP ENGR
Products nvOS, Netvisor, F64 Server-Switch
Website www.pluribusnetworks.com

History

Pluribus Networks was founded by Sunay Tripathi, Robert Drost, and Ken Yang in 2010.[1] Sunay Tripathi, CTO, worked at Sun Microsystems from 1997 until 2010 as a Senior Distinguished Engineer where he was Chief Architect for Kernel / Network Virtualization in Solaris.[2] Robert Drost, Pluribus Networks COO, worked at Sun Microsystems from 1993 until 2010, working as a Distinguished Engineer and Senior Director of Advanced Hardware, and is holder of over 150 patents. Ken Yang is a Professor at UCLA, joining the faculty in 1999, before taking a leave of absence in 2010 to become VP of Engineering at Pluribus Networks.[citation needed]

The company raised a first round of seed funding in 2011.[3] The company is backed by New Enterprise Associates,[4] Mohr Davidow,[5] China Broadband Capital,[6] and Menlo Ventures.[7]

The company operated in stealth mode until October 2012 when it announced its first partnership, in which TIBCO announced use of the Pluribus Networks server-switch platform for the TIBCO EMS appliance and FTL switch.[8]

In November 2013, Pluribus hired Kumar Srikantan as president and CEO. Srikantan was previously vice president and general manager of hardware engineering in Cisco's Enterprise Networking Group.[9][10]

Recognition

In January 2013 SDN Central selected Pluribus Networks as “An SDN Startup You Will Hear From in 2013”.[11] In February 2013 Network World picked Pluribus Networks as one of “The Top 10 Network Virtualization, SDN, and Datacenter Companies to Watch”.[12] In April 2013 a Network World article described the company’s technologies and use cases.[13] In December 2013 CRN Magazine chose Pluribus Networks as one of “The 10 Coolest Virtualization Startups of 2013”.[14]

Products

Pluribus Networks applies server commoditization, virtualization, and orchestrate-ability to networking, based on work Sunay Tripathi did while at Sun Microsystems which delivered the first network virtualization within a general purpose operating system (OpenSolaris Network Virtualization).[15][16][17] The Pluribus Networks "nvOS" operating system which runs on Pluribus Networks server-switch hardware is a full Unix-based platform, extended to manage switch chips and to be a fully distributed "Netvisor" fabric operating system when used in conjunction with other server-switches running nvOS.[citation needed]

Netvisor

The Netvisor distributed operating system is an open source operating system designed to run Intel x86 CPUs connected to "merchant silicon" generally-available switch chips including the Intel Fulcrum Alta[18] and Broadcom Trident[19] line. Netvisor provides a peer-to-peer distributed hypervisor that runs on Pluribus Networks server-switches and "bare metal" white boxes. Netvisor provides a virtual network (VNET) absraction similar to server virtual machine abstractions. It follows the SDN philosophy to make the network programmable, with C, Java, Perl, Python APIs providing interfaces to existing tool chains to control the network. It also provides a CLI and GUI for immediate usability. All of these interfaces manage physical and virtual networks as one logical switch.[citation needed]

Netvisor, by nature of its being a full operating system control plane, also allows other control planes to direct its VNETs, including OpenFlow, Apache CloudStack, and OpenStack. It also allows services and virtual machines to run within server-switches it controls, provisioning services directly in the network flow.[citation needed]

Server-Switches

Pluribus Networks Server-Switch is a hardware platform that includes x86 Xeon CPUs, on-board storage, and a large amount of available memory, integrated with a merchant silicon switch chip and driven by the Netvisor network hypervisor. Pluribus-branded switches include the F64 and E68 product series.[citation needed]

White Box Server-Switches

Vendors like Advantech are releasing hardware that integrates general purpose CPUs and merchant silicon, which could be used as a platform for Netvisor.[citation needed]

References

  1. ↑ "Company Records - Pluribus Networks". Retrieved 29 January 2014. 
  2. ↑ "Sunay Tripathi Businessweek Biography". Retrieved 31 January 2014. 
  3. ↑ "Crunchbase on Pluribus Networks". 
  4. ↑ "NEA Portfolio Members". Retrieved 29 January 2014. 
  5. ↑ "MVD Portfolio Members". Retrieved 29 January 2014. 
  6. ↑ "CBC Capital Portfolio Members". Retrieved 29 January 2014. 
  7. ↑ "Menlo Ventures Portfolio Member". Retrieved 29 January 2014. 
  8. ↑ "TIBCO Sets New Bar for Messaging". Retrieved 29 January 2014. 
  9. ↑ "Lonely week for the Cisco Catalyst 6500". Network World. November 7, 2013. 
  10. ↑ "Pluribus Plucks a CEO out of Cisco". SDN Central. November 7, 2013. 
  11. ↑ Guis, Isabelle. "SDN Start-Ups You Will Hear About In 2013". 
  12. ↑ Brandon Butler (February 27, 2013). "10 network virtualization, SDN and data center companies to watch". 
  13. ↑ Jim Duffy (April 8, 2013). "Move over SDN; startup looking to go where only Cisco, VMware tread". 
  14. ↑ Rob Wright (December 17, 2013). "The 10 Coolest Virtualization Startups Of 2013". 
  15. ↑ "Crossbow Virtual Wire: Network in a Box". 
  16. ↑ "Crossbow: From Hardware Virtualized NICs to Virtualized Networks". 
  17. ↑ "Crossbow: A Vertically Integrated QoS Stack". 
  18. ↑ "Intel Ethernet Switch Silicon". 
  19. ↑ "BCM56850-Series". 
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