Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is considered by Hewlett-Packard (HP) to be a big opportunity. Leading HP’s NFV efforts is General Manager Saar Gillai, who in 2013 was the CTO of HP’s Networking division.
HP is active in many areas where NFV will fit, including the OpenStack cloud and the Linux Foundation’s OPNFV effort. In a video interview with Enterprise Networking Planet, Gillai explains how the various pieces of HP’s NFV strategy fit together.
NFV is targeted for use by carriers, where reliability is typically considered to be more stringent than a traditional enterprise deployment. The need for carrier-grade reliability in NFV doesn’t mean that specific hardware will be required, however.
“Part of NFV is about moving away from monolithic architectures, but you may need certain hardware capabilities,” Gillai said. “Certainly high-availability is not going to be achieved via hardware.”
Gillai added that NFV high availability needs to be measured in terms of a specific service rather than a specific hardware component.
“In the past, when you achieved high availability, you had elements that never went down, never failed and were very expensive,” Gillai said. “The whole idea of the cloud is that you are built for failure, but can manage it quickly.”
Watch the full video interview with Saar Gillai below:
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Networking Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
