The networking world is changing rapidly, and two of the most important developments are software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV). In this blog post, we’ll explore how SDN and NFV differ to help you decide which suits your organization.
At a high level, both SDN and NFV are designed to improve network performance by providing more flexibility in managing networks. However, some critical differences between them should be considered when deciding which technology suits your business needs.
SDN focuses on the control plane of a network – the part responsible for routing traffic across different devices or services – while NFV focuses on virtualizing physical hardware like routers or switches into software running on commodity servers. This saves organizations money as they no longer need expensive specialized hardware to run their networks efficiently. Additionally, it enables greater scalability since new services can easily be added without having to purchase additional equipment every time an upgrade is needed; instead, all that’s required is extra resources, such as memory or processing power, within existing infrastructure components like servers or storage systems.
On top of these advantages, though, comes increased complexity when compared with traditional networks where everything runs directly off dedicated hardware; now multiple applications must communicate over shared resources rather than dedicated ones meaning careful planning must go into ensuring nothing will bottleneck any particular component at any given time. Furthermore, security risks increase due to potential vulnerabilities in underlying hypervisors used by Virtual Machines hosting Network Functions.
Ultimately, deciding whether SDN vs. NFV makes sense depends heavily upon individual use cases; if an organization has already invested heavily in legacy infrastructure, then moving towards either approach might not make much financial sense, whereas those looking at building new solutions from scratch could benefit significantly from leveraging either technologies capabilities.