Velocloud

Likely the best place go receive most correct answers is to pose each of your questions to each vendor.

From a high level, velocloud can be run as either a bare metal traditional router or a virtual appliance on ESXi or KVM. The VEP4600 is simply an x86 appliance running ESXi from dell that is geared toward NFV, far from the only hardware that can run velocloud.

Hi Aaron;
Thanks for responding to my Q on Velocloud, I want to know more about how to run it an instance as Virtual router to the branch site? Do we just provide an Internet access to the branch and all other functions are happening in the cloud? Can you Please explain the VNF functionality.

It runs just like any other virtual router, give it LAN and WAN interfaces and route through it. Physically It wires up just like any edge router: sonicwall, fortinet, Palo Alto, etc.  if this is your first run at it, probably best to start with a physical appliance in a lab to get comfortable with the technology.

Is this virtual router feature available on NSX Velocloud by VMWare or all the other SDWAN provides (Cisco Viptela/Nokia Nuage) provide it?

Most sdwan offerings have a virtual appliance version. For example, velocloud and viptela have a version for AWS and Azure. Running on x86 hardware is a direction all the SDN is going.

Thanks Aaron, I am beginning to see the light.. so if the customer has bunch of Cisco branch routers already deployed in the field, can we run Velocloud in conjunction w/ the customers' existing investment in Cisco gear?

Yes, Velocloud and Cisco routers can absolutely coexist in a network. Any decent sized network is going to have gear from multiple manufacturers. I frequently see velocloud, Cisco, and Palo Alto all working together to meet the network and security requirements.

Are both uCPE and VEP Controller based on the same H/W base that is x86 servers?

UCPE is short for universal customer premise equipment and can mean anything but is usually a KVM or ESXi hypervisor on x86 hardware. Frequently they are kitted out with lots of front network ports and look like a firewall but are not really that different from any other hypervisor host. The VEP is new and not proven In the field but probably a good platform. Most existing gear in the market today is based on lanner or super micro and significantly less powerful than the VEP as far as cores and ram. For just sdwan, the VEP is a overkill but for also running a few server VMs at the edge it would be a good fit.

Aaron,
Seems to me , you have very good grasp over the SDWAN Topic. We have the customer who is running existing MPLS Network and we want to supplement their branches/sites w/ uCPE devices so that additional traffic is passed over SDWAN to rest of the sites This is the scheme we are proposing where MPLS Network works in conjunction w/ SDWAN.  MPLS traffic would ride over private link (Primary) and we will get internet to connect uCPEs to carry any aditional traffic to save on expensive MPLS.
 
I have the following doubbts in this scenario:
1. Is it feasible to run MPLS connected nodes w/ SDWAN Cloud?
2. How would orchrestation layer device take control of MPLS Router, if want to control the traffic on its private Eth. link? To me, it is appearing that we are operating two different clouds. Can yiou please shine some light.


Thanks in advance.

Thanks Aaron, you helped me learn a lot of new stuff.

Appreciate it...