Arista has a controller now too

Arista Networks this week unveiled what essentially is a centralized controller for its data center and cloud switches.

The company's CloudVision product is the Arista EOS operating system running on an x86 server to perform administration on Arista switches. It provides workload orchestration and workflow automation for cloud networks comprised of Arista gear.

The intent is to allow enterprises to harness cloud-like automation in their Arista environments without significant internal development.

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CloudVision also serves as an underlay abstraction gateway to upstream, higher-level cloud orchestration, network services and overlay controllers from Arista partners Microsoft, VMware, HP, Dell, Red Hat, Rackspace, F5, Nuage Networks, and Palo Alto Networks. CloudVision supports OVSDB, JSON and OpenStack plugins and APIs for integration with these controllers for centralized representation of distributed network state, network-wide visibility and analytics, and physical and virtual workload orchestration, Arista says.

The product is also intended to provide workflow automation for zero touch provisioning, configuration management, and network upgrades and rollbacks; real-time streaming instead of per-device polling for telemetry and analytics; and a dashboard for security, audit and patch management.

CloudVision is available now as a software subscription. Pricing starts at $295 per Arista device per month.