Hedgehog offers support for a multi-vendor, open, stable, secure and automated SONiC distribution. Our software development team makes improvements to SONiC features and fixes defects. We make SONiC more compact, performant and secure so that it can be deployed in a variety of environments. Our SONiC software factory builds SONiC containers for specific use cases, and our Kubernetes open fabric operator orchestrates SONiC deployment and configuration for those use cases. Our SONiC contributions are 100% open source, and our Hedgehog open network fabric is also 100% open source. Hedgehog SONiC will always be free to use without support from the hedgehog team. Customers with production workloads on Hedgehog SONiC open network fabrics may wish to purchase a service level agreement for direct support from the Hedgehog engineering team.
To download and use Hedgehog SONiC please sign up as a Hedgehog Design Partner at https://githedgehog.com/download
Service Level Agreement
| Hedgehog SONiC Services | FREE | STANDARD | ADVANCED |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone and ticket support | No | 24×5 | 24×7 |
| Initial Response Time SLA – Sev 1 | – | 4 hours | 1 hour |
| Initial Response Time SLA – Sev 2 | – | 8 business hours | 2 hours |
| Initial Response Time SLA – Sev 3 | – | 12 business hours | 6 hours |
| Initial Response Time SLA – Sev 4 | – | 24 business hours | 12 hours |
| Fix defects in SONiC | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Coordinate with hardware vendors for SAI fixes | – | ✓ | ✓ |
| Warm Updates | – | ✓ | ✓ |
What’s Included
Service Level Agreements cover all software and services offered by Hedgehog, including Hedgehog SONiC, the Hedgehog open network fabric and Hedgehog fabric designer. Software is available through https://githedgehog.com, https://githedgehog.com/download and source code is available through Github.
| Hedgehog SONiC Features | FREE | STANDARD | ADVANCED |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open – all updates contributed to community edition | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Stable – tested and certified for device lists | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Secure – report trust attestation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Fabric Plan – design and publish with cloud-based fabric designer | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Install and Wire – Hedgehog control nodes | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Validate and Attest – preboot image | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Update Firmware | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Orchestrate – configure Hedgehog SONiC containers for device role in fabric | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Download Container Images | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Warm Boot Images | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Start Services | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monitor Services – with Prometheus and Grafana | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Definitions
Device Certification
Hedgehog SONiC is guaranteed to be open, stable and secure for a list of certified devices. If you want to deploy Hedgehog SONiC on a device that is not currently on the Hedgehog SONiC device certification list, you may ask Hedgehog to certify that device. Device certification is required for a new combination of switch, optical transceivers and cable. Please reference Hedgehog’s certified device list at https://githedgehog.com/devices to see if your device is currently supported or request a new device certification.
Feature Certification
Hedgehog SONiC is designed to create and manage open network fabrics for cloud native applications running on distributed cloud architectures. Hyper-scalers like Microsoft Azure designed SONiC to support simple L3 BGP fabrics for cloud native applications. Hedgehog tests, certifies and supports SONiC features that support leaf and spine switching roles in simple BGP fabrics for cloud native workloads. Please reference https://githedgehog.com/features for the list of features we test, certify and support.
Silicon Vendor
SONiC and SAI have gained wide industry support. Most major network chip vendors are supporting SAI on their flagship ASICs. Hedgehog partners with Broadcom, Cisco, Intel, Marvell and NVIDIA for SAI support and device certification. Hedgehog may partner with additional silicon vendors upon customer request.
Switch Vendor
Hedgehog partners with Celestica, Cisco, Dell, Edgecore, NVIDIA, and Wistron to test, certify and support their switches. Switch vendors provide hardware support and tier 2 troubleshooting support to the Hedgehog support team.
Node
A Node is a unit of physical compute or a server. It can be a bare metal worker node in Kubernetes or a physical server with a virtualization stack. In a Hedgehog SONiC data center, the data center fabric is controlled as a Kubernetes cluster, so the network devices that connect physical servers are also nodes. Hedgehog SONiC Nodes may be a physical server (baremetal, kubernetes or virtualized), switch, router, or smart NIC. Each Node is managed by the control plane. A Node can have multiple pods, and the Kubernetes control plane automatically handles scheduling the pods across the Nodes in the cluster. The control plane’s automatic scheduling takes into account the available resources on each Node.
Open Source
Any third-party software, which is commercially available from an open-source provider or considered as a “hardened release”, having been tested and offered by commercial providers identified by and including Hedgehog, and is certified on the Hedgehog SONiC Hardware and Device Certification List located at https://githedgehog.com/devices. Hedgehog commits all code added or modified during Device Certification to the open source community.
Response Time
The amount of time between when you open a support ticket and when a Hedgehog Support Engineer first responds and lets you know they’re currently working on it.
Severity Levels
Severity 1
Existing network or environment is down or there is a critical impact to your business operation. You and Hedgehog both will commit full-time resources to resolve the situation.
Severity 2
Operation of an existing network or environment is severely degraded or significant aspects of your business operation are negatively impacted by unacceptable network or environment performance. You and Hedgehog both will commit full-time resources during standard business hours to restore the service to satisfactory levels.
Severity 3
Operational performance of the network or environment is impaired, although most business operations remain functional. You and Hedgehog both are willing to commit resources during standard business hours to restore service to satisfactory levels.
Severity 4
Information is required on Hedgehog product capabilities, installation, or configuration. There is little or no impact to your business operation. You and Hedgehog both are willing to provide resources during standard business hours to provide information or assistance as requested.
Software Releases
Maintenance Release
Incremental software release that provides maintenance fixes and may provide additional software functions. Hedgehog designates Maintenance Releases as a change in the digits to the right of the tenths digit or of the hundredths digit of the software version number [x.x.(x) or x.x.x.(x)].
Minor Release
Incremental release of software that provides maintenance fixes and additional software functions. Hedgehog designates Minor Releases as a change in the tenths digit of the Software version number [x.(x).x].
Major Release
Release of software that provides additional software functions. Hedgehog designates Major Releases as a change in the ones digit of the software version number [(x).x.x].
Standard Business Hours
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on your local time on Business Days for the performance of Services. Business Days are the generally accepted days of operation per week within the country where the Services are performed, excluding local holidays as observed by Hedgehog.
Switch Abstraction Interface
SONiC is built on the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), which defines a standardized API. Network hardware vendors can use it to develop innovative hardware platforms that can achieve great speeds while keeping the programming interface to ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) consistent. Microsoft open sourced SAI in 2015. This approach enables operators to take advantage of the rapid innovation in silicon, CPU, power, port density, optics, and speed, while preserving their investment in one unified software solution across multiple platforms.
Warm Updates
SONiC is the first solution to break monolithic switch software into multiple containerized components. SONiC enables fine-grained failure recovery and in-service upgrades with zero downtime. It does this in conjunction with Switch State Service (SWSS), a service that takes advantage of open source key-value pair stores to manage all switch state requirements and drives the switch toward its goal state. Instead of replacing the entire switch image for a bug fix, you can now upgrade the flawed container with the new code, including protocols such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), without data plane downtime. This capability is a key element in the serviceability and scalability of the SONiC platform.