Service Router Linux

Evolve your IP and data center networks with an open, extensible and resilient NOS

What is an open network operating system (NOS)?

Unlike a traditional network operating system (NOS), an open NOS is consciously designed to implement an architecture that is extensible, extremely customizable and ready for network automation. The architecture of an open NOS needs to enable management clients with deep, real-time visibility into the network so they can constantly monitor and react to potential problems before they cause an outage.

Building for openness also means that extensibility can’t depend on the vendor. In an open NOS, anyone, especially the operator, must be able to internally develop and deploy solutions to meet their customers’ needs or react to operational demands on their terms.

The mantra is simple: be more agile, merge changes frequently, drive change using automation and validate the end state using the management stack.

SR Linux: Redefining openness

Nokia SR Linux is a truly open NOS that makes enterprise, service provider and webscale network infrastructures more scalable, more flexible and simpler to operate.

Designed for modern IP and data center networks, SR Linux uses an unmodified Linux® kernel as the foundation for a suite of network applications.

SR Linux opens the NOS infrastructure with a unique architecture built from the ground up around model-driven management and modern interfaces. This approach simplifies your operations and integrations while giving you the ultimate in visibility and flexibility.

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Features and benefits
Deployment use cases
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Features and benefits

Nokia SR Linux delivers an open, extensible framework that enables automation with advanced software features that provide proven quality and resiliency.

With SR Linux, your NetOps teams get the most flexible and customizable foundation for modernizing your IP and data center networking infrastructures.

Cloud-native design principles

A cloud-native design approach gives you superior programmability, unrivaled flexibility and resilient IP routing.

Linux kernel

An unmodified kernel enables you to build network applications that are modular and isolated into their own failure domains.

Ground-up model-driven design

Our fully modular design, where each network application has its own YANG data structure, delivers complete openness.

State-sharing architecture

State-sharing with a pub/sub architecture using protobufs, gRPC and the lightweight Nokia Impart Database (IDB) gives you reliable, scalable and secure communication channels.

Robust foundation

Field-proven, high-performance IP stacks and network functions from our Service Router Operating System (SR OS) ensure that you get a feature-rich, hardened, interoperable and secure NOS.

Resiliency and high availability

A microservices-based, state-efficient design makes it easy to enable hitless per-application upgrades and resilient networking.

Best-in-class streaming telemetry

An open, scalable telemetry framework at the core uses gRPC, gNMI and protobufs to ensure that SR Linux is ready for streaming telemetry immediately, without requiring any translation layers.

Unmatched extensibility

Our programmable CLI, NetOps Development Kit (NDK) and support for open community ecosystems enable your NetOps teams to use SR Linux’s underlying open architecture to deliver unprecedented customizability.

Automation at scale

SR Linux is designed to enable scalable, easy integration with enhanced NetOps platforms and systems so you can efficiently automate your IP and data center networks. It is supported by Nokia Network Services Platform (NSP), Nokia Event-Driven Automation (EDA) or third-party platforms and tools.

Curious to know how you can integrate network operations tools into your IP router?

With the SR Linux NDK, it’s as simple as building an app

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Supporting a diverse set of deployment use cases

SR Linux is extremely portable and uses our eXtensible Data Path (XDP) to provide a hardware abstraction layer that simplifies interfacing with a broad range of hardware platforms. By supporting container and virtualized instantiations, SR Linux enables a wide range of deployment use cases and network applications.

Next-gen IP access, aggregation and edge networks

The Nokia 7730 Service Interconnect Router (SXR) series simplifies service evolution and network operations with programmable FPcx silicon complemented by Nokia SR Linux, which delivers high-performance IP routing and security features, and the Nokia Network Services Platform (NSP), which automates network management and optimizes resources across IP networks.

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Future-proof your IP networks

Modern data center switching

Our next-generation Data Center Fabric solution includes Nokia SR Linux, together with high capacity merchant silicon-based hardware platforms for data center leaf/spine/super-spine applications. It also includes Nokia Event-Driven Automation (EDA), a modern data center network automation platform that combines speed with reliability and simplicity.

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