Experiences in Operating a Mixed OCP Non OCP Data Center Network

Speaker: Starsky Wong, Facebook

Facebook has been aggressively rolling out its Wedge, Wedge100, and now Backpack devices throughout its data centers. Yet, our data centers are (and will continue to be for quite a while) a mix of these OCP-accepted, disaggregated networking devices running FBOSS and traditional, non-OCP networking devices from traditional networking vendors. The Facebook Net Systems group writes the software on our switches (FBOSS) but also writes the software that provisions, automates, monitors, and controls these mixed data centers. This talk will cover learnings from how we had to adapt our existing systems to handle OCP networking devices such as Wedge/Wedge 100 alongside the traditional networking switches. It will also highlight patterns/conventions that we'd like to see all networking devices move toward to make operations of the network smoother.