SONiC-DASH is an open source project with the goal to "deliver enterprise network performance to critical cloud applications". The project extends functionality to stateful workloads. DASH has joined the Linux Foundation to participate in the large communities of developers and users contributing there, and also collaborates with OCP.
We are developing set of APIs and object models describing network services for the cloud, and will work with all cloud providers and enterprise hybrid clouds to develop further functionality. We believe the DASH program describes a comprehensive set of services that are required by the vast majority of clouds. The goal of DASH is to be specific enough for SMART Programmable Technologies to optimize network performance and leverage commodity hardware technology to achieve 10x or even 100x stateful connection performance.
The technology has multiple applications such as 1) NIC on a host, 2) a Smart Switch, 3) Network Disaggregation, and 4) high performance Network Appliances. Many technology companies have committed to further developing this new open technology and its community. The best minds and practitioners are actively collaborating to optimize performance of the cloud by extending SONiC to include stateful workloads.
With the development of a Behavioral Model, we hope to push the boundaries of what P4, PNA, BMv2, and P4 DPDK can do, and contribute to shape the future of networking technology. Together these components provide a cohesive environment for developing, validating, and deploying programmable network devices that can operate consistently across different HW and SW platforms. Behavioral models help in understanding, designing, and analyzing the dynamic behavior of a system, ensuring that it meets its functional requirements. We plan to develop scenarios and test cases that verify the system behaves as expected under various conditions. The Behavioral Model can also be used to simulate a system's behavior before actual implementation, helping to identify potential issues early.
Future innovations for in-service software upgrades and ultra-high availability for stateful connections will also be developed with the utmost importance.
We hope that DASH will have the same success as SONiC for switches and will experience wide adoption as a major Open NOS for Programmable Technologies (including SmartNICs) to supercharge a variety of cloud and enterprise applications.
Visit the Documentation table of contents for access to all design and requirements documents.
For a quick technical deep-dive, please begin with:
- Peruse the DASH high level design for an overview of DASH architecture.
- SONiC-DASH High Level Design
- The SDN Packet Transforms document, this facilitates understanding of the program goal and the 7 networking scenarios that Azure has defined.
- HERO Test for an example of a test to stress DPU/NIC hardware.
The API and Object Model for VNET<->VNET has been posted; the remaining services will be added into the dash-sonic-hld.md as as we move forward.
DASH Testing is covered under the test/ directory and is a work in progress.
This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. We are happy to have the Community involved via submission of Issues and Pull Requests (with substantive content or even just fixes). We are hoping for the documents, test framework, etc. to become a community process with active engagement. PRs can be reviewed by by any number of people, and a maintainer may accept.
See GitHub Basic Process.
Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. All contributors must sign an Individual Contributor License Agreement (ICLA) before contributions can be accepted. This process is managed by the Linux Foundation - EasyCLA and automated via a GitHub bot. If the contributor has not yet signed a CLA, the bot will create a comment on the pull request containing a link to electronically sign the CLA.
This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.
This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft's Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos are subject to those third-party's policies.
