Nauticus Networks selects OSE Systems for the N2000 series of intelligent data center switches

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, April 28, 2003

OSE Systems (OSE) has announced that its OSE real-time operating system (RTOS) has been chosen by Nauticus Networks for use in the Nauticus N2000 Series of Intelligent Data Center Switches.

The Nauticus family of intelligent data center switches enables high-performance network and security services in the data center, including SSL processing, layer 4-7 application switching, and load balancing. The result is drastically simplified operations, reduced costs, and increased security, performance and availability.

OSE provides the embedded operating environment for the N2000's network and security functions. It also provides the memory-protection and partitioning facilities that the N2000 needs to deliver its Virtual Switching Technology, which enables a single N2000 system to act as multiple independent virtual switches. This enables the N2000 to deliver both infrastructure and service virtualization in a secure, operationally efficient way across multiple customers, departments and/or applications.

"We chose OSE because they have a proven track record," said Karen Wise, director of software engineering at Nauticus. "We evaluated a number of operating systems and ultimately chose OSE as the foundation for the distributed processing system that we needed. Key factors included their high availability, high reliability, scalability, and distributed systems capabilities--all achieved without adversely impacting overall system performance."

"OSE is fast becoming the preferred platform for hosting secure, scalable, high-availability network services, particularly those provided by next-generation virtualized switches like the Nauticus N2000," said Vance Hilderman, vice president of OSE Systems. "Our memory-protected architecture and versatile interprocess communications facilities make it easy to build distributed, flexible, fault-tolerant systems that can be dynamically reconfigured to run multiple applications."

The N2000 is the first data center switch to provide multi-gigabit layer 4 through 7 intelligent application switching integrated with high performance security services on a single, virtualized switching platform. The N2000 Series employs custom hardware acceleration to deliver industry leading performance for key network and security services such as SSL acceleration, TCP offload, and policy parsing and evaluation. Together, the N2000's high level of integration, high performance, and virtual switching technology make it the industry's fastest, most flexible switch, enabling it to handle changing data center application requirements with improved operational efficiency--significantly reducing capital equipment expenses and operational costs.

The N2000 Series combines a system board with up to two function cards, enabling it to be customized for a variety of functionality and capacity needs. The main system board provides all I/O, switching, and network services up to layer 4. The function cards, where Nauticus' own TideRunner chipset resides, provide hardware acceleration for all advanced layer 4-7 services. The function cards and system board each utilize a PowerPC device for control. OSE runs on all three PowerPC processors.

OSE's Memory Management System (MMS) is used extensively throughout the N2000 to help provide secure partitions for each virtual switch. These virtual switches, though sharing the same physical hardware resources, operate out of private memory partitions with their own dedicated memory and CPU resources. This helps them to act as logically independent switches with unique application, security and system-level attributes, customizable on a per-application, per-department, or per-customer basis. It also makes the virtual switches reconfigurable on the fly. OSE's memory protection and secure partitioning also enhance reliability, availability and fault tolerance by preventing outside agents from corrupting the application code and data in each virtual switch.

The N2000 takes full advantage of OSE's Link Handler, which greatly simplifies interprocess communications in the N2000's distributed processing architecture. Utilizing a message-passage paradigm, the Link Handler provides a hardware- and application-independent framework for distributing multiple inter-communicating processes and applications across multiple processors, without the need for cumbersome, expensive middleware and additional APIs. With the Link Handler, the communications between processes are independent of the process' physical location. This greatly enhances flexibility and reconfigurability by enabling processes to be moved to new CPUs without changing either device drivers or application code.