Innova builds a cost-efficient data center to reduce operational complexities

Overview

Innova is an IT company that creates web services, publishes computer and mobile games, and develops "4game" - a gaming platform and news portal with more than 25 million active users. Popular games they publish include Lineage, Aion, Blade & Soul, Point Blank, and Kingdom Under Fire.

Challenges for Innova

• To have a reliable network that delivers high-quality entertainment, while preventing network outages which strongly affect Innova’s user experience and ultimately the success of the business.
• To reduce operational complexities and adopt a network approach which is easy to scale and manage.
• To replicate and scale its infrastructure while saving money and time and avoiding hardware lock-in. Low-cost scaling is the key for such a fast-growing company to expand its footprint and host game servers throughout the world.
• To spend less time on troubleshooting and network change/ticket implementation and focus on business development.

Solutions Provided by XCloud, Cumulus Networks, Edgecore Networks, and OCP

As XCloud Networks provides an out-of-the-box automated solution to run complete data-center networks based purely on open networking technologies, it became an all-in-one solution for the challenges Innova had to face. As a result, Innova swapped Cisco, Juniper and F5 for XCloud Networks.

In the scope of the partnership Innova:

• Adopted Layer3 CLOS topology with routing on the host principles, taking Layer3 end-to-end between every single server. 
• Spine-leaf topology easily scales almost infinitely by simply adding new racks.
• Employed XCloud Networks’ hardware load balancer, ACL, ACL2.0. With XCloud Networks, access enforcement and load balancing functionality are embedded into every switch in a distributed manner. When adding a new rack with TOR switches there is no need to check/upgrade centralized firewalls and load balancers.
• Was provided with a proper combination of hardware and software solutions based on XCloud Networks’ native support of open source technologies such as KVM, HAProxy, Proxmox, OpenStack, FRR, OpenVPN. It allows the team to handle all lifecycle management using single and intuitive GUI.

Benefits Realized by Innova

• Scalability: Swapping the existing 20 racks of operational infrastructure within 4 months and rolling out new sites in just a few days was important to Innova.
• Operational efficiency: Leveraging a ready-to-go GUI-based lifecycle management platform improved average change delivery time from 2-5 days to 2-5 mins.
• TCO reduction: Switching to open networking hardware and software reduced CapEx 20X. Through operational efficiency, Innova was empowered to manage bigger networks with the same team, improving the operator switch ratio 3 X and OpEx 5 X.
• Diversity: XCloud Networks supports more than 40 hardware platforms available from 10 brands, and supports native integration with 6 open source software platforms. This enabled Innova not to be tied to one vendor provider while choosing a hardware.
• Technical Assistance: Innova had easy access to senior level 24/7 technical assistance and professional guidance during the planning and migration phases. 

Partners

XCloud Networks leverages Open Compute Project (OCP) networking technologies with Cumulus Networks and Edgecore Networks. Innova’s network infrastructure is mainly based on OCP networking with AS5812-54X from Edgecore Networks.

Why Edgecore Networks?

Edgecore Networks Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Accton Technology Corporation, the leading network ODM. Edgecore Networks delivers wired and wireless networking products and solutions through channel partners and system integrators worldwide for data center, service provider, enterprise and SMB customers. Edgecore Networks is the leader in open networking, providing a full line of open WiFi access points, packet transponders, virtual PON OLTs, and 1G, 10G, 25G, 40G, and 100G OCP-AcceptedTM switches that offer choice of commercial and open source NOS and SDN software.

Model used:

AS5812-54X - provides full line-rate switching at Layer 2 or Layer 3 across 48 x 10GbE ports and 6 x 40GbE uplinks, based on Trident II+, which has relatively larger TCAM utilized in Innova's setup.

Why Cumulus Networks?

Cumulus Networks, the leader in building web-scale networks for the digital age with open and modern software solutions, provides organizations with all the tools needed to affordably build and efficiently operate networks like the world’s largest data centers. Cumulus was selected because of its wide selection of hardware compatibility, native support of FRR and BGP unnumbered, and strong collaboration between XClound Networks – all of which were very important parameters to Innova.

Summary

With XCloud Networks, Innova adopted a simple network solution which allowed the company to reduce TCO and improve operational efficiency.  Innova swapped its existing 20 racks of operational infrastructure within 4 months and rolled out new sites in just a few days, improved average change delivery time from 2-5 days to 2-5 mins, reduced CapEx 20X. It was empowered to manage bigger networks with the same team, improving the operator switch ratio 3X and OpEx 5X.

About XCloud Networks

XCloud Networks provides an out-of-the-box automated solution to run complete data-center networks based purely on open networking technologies.

It fully automates the deployment and management of network infrastructure providing all the required applications in easy to manage and ready to use fashion (Security, VPN, load balancer, BGP peering, L2/L3 circuits, routing on the host, cross-connects, monitoring, logging, analytics, in system software upgrade and else).

It enables companies to scale 10X with existing human resources and save 20X on total cost. 

Moreover, only a five-hour training is required for engineers to run XCloud Networks’ solution.

With XCloud Networks it takes maximum 3 months for companies to facilitate their smooth transition into open networking.