The new offering is a a rebooted version of its Contrail Networking platform.
Juniper Networks this week announced CN2, a new, cloud-native version of its Contrail Networking platform. Contrail Networking enables the automation of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) with service chaining. Juniper has positioned CN2 as a software-defined networking (SDN) platform, which automates the creation and management of virtual networks.
James Kelly, Juniper’s Senior Director of Product Management, detailed the new offering in a blog post. “With the release of CN2 and Contrail 22.1, Juniper is delivering a modern, Kubernetes-native architecture that provides an automated, high performance and scalable cloud-native networking solution,” he wrote. The platform also delivers the DevOps efficiency of a hyperscaler, he added.
“Most important, CN2 is designed to securely connect applications in the worlds of both Kubernetes and OpenStack.”
“Flipping the coin” on Kubernetes/OpenStack
Kubernetes is more pervasive than OpenStack and has been for a while, Kelly says. “At Juniper, we knew there were tremendous modernizations we could build into CN2 to better serve Kubernetes and OpenShift use cases for our customers,” he adds. And this is while still providing OpenStack support so users balancing both worlds, or evolving into Kubernetes, could maintain a common experience. “Fast forward to today and CN2 is now Kubernetes-first. Moreover, CN2 is also now Kubernetes-native,” he says.
Contrail’s transformation isn’t only about serving cloud-native and the ecosystem around Kubernetes, according to Kelly. “It’s about a quintessential optimization for Kubernetes – rebuilding CN2 as an extension of Kubernetes itself.” Working as a Kubernetes CNI “and much more”, CN2 integrates as a foundational piece of cluster infrastructure by employing the Kubernetes extension framework of custom resources,” Kelly continues. “Now, everything in CN2 is provisioned just as it is with Kubernetes itself. Customers can use kubectl, K9s or any Kubernetes tool of their choosing. We’ve also extended Lens, the popular Kubernetes GUI, with a Contrail plug-in.”
Kelly says this means CN2’s API now integrates using the native Kubernetes RBAC and adjacent IAM systems. “And even better, CN2 is now configured as code, effortlessly enabling GitOps, infrastructure as code and CICD. We’re even introducing Contrail Pipelines based on ArgoCD and ArgoWorkflows for turnkey CICD for Contrail’s SDN, which includes Juniper’s new test suites.”
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