FAQs

Community SONiC is the collaborative ecosystem built around SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud), driven by a global open-source community. It follows a micro-services architecture, allowing modular deployment and maintenance for greater flexibility. It supports a multi-vendor ecosystem, ensuring interoperability across various hardware platforms. It provides optimized network designs for both data centers and edge applications. It is GPU-ready, offering enhanced support for AI workloads and high-performance computing. It fosters continuous innovation, enabling users to contribute, validate, and certify SONiC deployments.

Multi-vendor Certification:

• Community SONiC: Certified through Aviz ONE Center, ensuring compatibility across multiple hardware vendors.
• Vendor SONiC: Limited to specific vendor hardware, restricting deployment flexibility.

Multi-vendor Support:

• Community SONiC: Aviz provides vendor-agnostic global 24×7 support, offering assistance across different hardware and network environments.
• Vendor SONiC: Support is tied to a single vendor, limiting troubleshooting options.

Multi-vendor Orchestration:

• Community SONiC: Leverages Aviz ONES (Open Networking Enterprise Suite) for seamless orchestration across multiple vendors running community SONiC.
• Vendor SONiC: Orchestration is restricted to the vendor's own ecosystem.

Integration:

• Community SONiC: Enables easy integration with various platforms, simplifying network management across diverse environments.
• Vendor SONiC: Typically supports only vendor-specific integrations, leading to operational silos.

It supports multi-vendor interoperability, allowing deployment across different hardware platforms. It is optimized for data center and edge network applications. It is GPU-ready, making it ideal for AI workloads and high-performance computing. Hardware certification is available at the Aviz ONE Center for compatibility with major vendors like Cisco and Arista.

Yes, Community SONiC undergoes one-click automated validation to confirm reliability. It is tested for scalability and performance across multiple real-world scenarios. Certification includes: Detailed test reports covering everything from Layer 2 and 3 to platform scaling.

You can download the Sample Performance Report to evaluate SONiC's capabilities and performance in real-world scenarios. Download Sample Report at: https://aviznetworks.com/resources/reports/community-sonictechnical-specifications-brief

Use our TCO Calculator to discover potential savings. Click Here to Calculate Your Saving: https://aviznetworks.com/tco-calculator/

You can find all the details here: https://ovd.ai/migrateToSonic/overview/. Ready to migrate? Reach out to us today at https://aviznetworks.com/contact-us/ to get started!

Certification includes:

• One-Click Automated Validation: Quickly validate SONiC features and use cases with a single click.
• Scale and Reliability Testing: Our tests confirm the scalability and reliability of your network.
• Comprehensive Coverage: From Layer 2 and 3 to platform scaling, our automated coverage has it all.
• CI/CD Integration: Effortlessly fits into your CI/CD pipeline, making sure upgrades work well with your current system.
• Automated Certification Report: Receive detailed reports certifying your Community SONiC's capabilities.

You can certify your hardware at the Aviz ONE Center (https://aviznetworks.com/one-center), the only lab offering SONiC validation across multi-vendor hardware platforms.

Aviz Network Observability is an end-to-end network observability solution that offers:

• Fabric management for seamless network operations
• 24×7 support for continuous reliability
• Seamless deployment through our trusted partners

Customers using Aviz Network Observability save 50% or more by:

• Eliminating vendor lock-in with hardware-neutral deployment
• Reducing CAPEX and OPEX with efficient packet filtering and traffic optimization
• Enhancing network performance using AI-driven analytics

Aviz enables AI-driven insights and automation through:

• Advanced traffic filtering and aggregation for optimized data processing
• Application-aware service nodes for deeper visibility
• Automated observability tools that integrate seamlessly with existing platforms

Aviz Network Observability consists of three essential components:

• Aviz Packet Broker: Handles packet filtering, aggregation, load balancing, time-stamping, and more
• Aviz Service Nodes: Supports application identification, de-duplication, and GTP correlation
• Network Copilot™: Give Your Network Observability Infrastructure A Copilot.

The Aviz Packet Broker is a multi-stage traffic processing solution that enables:

• Efficient packet filtering, aggregation, and replication
• Traffic load balancing and ingress port labeling
• Tunneling support, time-stamping, traffic forwarding to tools via VxLAN and VxLAN Stripping

Aviz Service Nodes enhance network traffic visibility by performing:

• Application identification for deeper analytics
• De-duplication to eliminate redundant traffic
• GTP correlation and flow distribution to optimize network performance

The Network Copilot™ acts as an AI-powered assistant that:

• Analyzes network data to uncover deep insights
• Generates automated reports for better decision-making
• Seamlessly integrates with existing observability tools

Yes! Aviz Network Observability is hardware-neutral, meaning you can deploy it with preferred switches and servers, including:

• NVIDIA
• Supermicro
• Celestica
• Edgecore
• Dell

You can begin your journey in three simple steps:

1. Test – Validate Aviz against your current solution in the Aviz One Center Lab.
2. Deploy – Use Aviz's white-glove transition services for a seamless migration.
3. Scale – Optimize your return on investment with Aviz's post-deployment support.

You can book a demo to see Aviz Network Observability in action: Book A Demo

Aviz AI solution (Network Copilot™) provides a tailor-made, AI-driven networking expert powered by open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) to:

• Offer real-time insights and recommendations for network optimization
• Support prompt engineering for customized AI responses
• Continuously adapt and improve based on your network infrastructure

Network Copilot™ enhances network operations by:

• Providing compliance insights to align networks with security and business goals
• Detecting network anomalies, traffic spikes, and performance deviations
• Automating compliance reporting for better governance and risk management

Network Copilot™ acts as a smart assistant for network engineers by:

• Offering full visibility into network configurations and operations
• Identifying issues in real-time and recommending corrective actions
• Learning from deployment insights to optimize future troubleshooting

Network Copilot™ delivers on-demand business intelligence analytics to:

• Empower network engineers, operators, and executives with data-driven insights
• Analyze network ROI, vendor performance, and cost optimization
• Provide industry benchmarks for better strategic decision-making

Yes! Aviz's Network Copilot™ allows you to:

• Integrate vendor-agnostic data sources for deeper network insights
• Fine-tune AI models to analyze ROI, performance, and optimization metrics
• Leverage LLM-powered automation for personalized network management

Network Copilot™ supports various network roles with specialized AI-driven insights:

• Executives: Get AI-powered insights via a custom graph dashboard
• Network Engineers: Ask for industry trends for design advantages, capacity planning, and POC simulations and leverage industry data for efficient TCO analysis.
• Network Operators: Enable AI-assisted operations and real-time observability
• Procurement Teams: Leverage data-driven vendor comparisons for negotiations

Aviz offers dedicated prompt engineering support to:

• Customize AI-generated responses based on your infrastructure
• Optimize AI models for faster and more accurate insights
• Ensure seamless integration with existing NetOps workflows

You can begin your journey today by:

1. Exploring AI-powered solutions for compliance, analytics, and optimization
2. Engaging with our Prompt Engineering Team for tailored AI support
3. Leveraging Network Copilot™ to transform your network infrastructure

Book a demo to see Network Copilot™ in action: Book A Demo

Yes — with the right testing and validation, SONiC can match (and often exceed) the reliability of proprietary Network Operating System solutions. What's needed is config validation, runtime use case testing, scale boundary testing, stress testing, and — most importantly — the ability to fix issues and collaborate with switch vendors to deliver an end-to-end, reliable solution. That's exactly what our Fabric Test Automation Suite (FTAS) does, ensuring SONiC is fully production-ready for your environment.

FTAS stands for Fabric Test Automation Suite. It's basically your SONiC "test drive" before going live in production. It tests your use case so you can check if your SONiC deployment will handle real-world demands — Data Center, Edge and Ai Fabrics. It puts 500+ Automated Tests at Work to Make SONiC Enterprise-Ready

• Simulate Your Exact Network At the Aviz ONE Center, we recreate your exact configurations — SONiC running across multiple vendors, ASICs, and hardware models. This ensures we're testing in a setup that matches your network, with your preferred switches, in a true multi-vendor environment.
• Test Your Operations in a CI/CD Manner We run scale, stress, VM motion, route withdrawal/insertion, failover, and failback tests — everything your network experiences in the real world. SONiC gets battle-tested to give you the confidence that it will perform at peak quality in production.
• Keep It Running — Always FTAS isn't a one-off test. It runs 24×7 in our ONE Center. With every patch, bug fix, or SONiC release, you get a predictable, consistent report showing what changed, how it changed, and whether you should upgrade.
• Enterprise-Grade Quality Beyond Community Tests Community SONiC tests stop at unit and feature checks. FTAS goes further — validating the full fabric for performance, resilience, interoperability, and multi-Network Operating System readiness. It's the step from community validation to real-world enterprise reliability

500+ Test Cases. Real-World Topologies. Multi-Vendor. No Guesswork.

• Full Feature & Protocol Coverage FTAS tests everything your modern data center, edge, or AI fabric needs — Layer 2, Layer 3, EVPN, VXLAN, IP Clos, MC-LAG, interface management, transceivers, and more.
  • 500+ automated test cases
  • Covers 100+ real customer configurations
  • Includes traffic generators ( Ixia, etc.) to validate performance under real load
  • Supports inter-op multi-vendor, multi-Network Operating System setups, not just SONiC
• Scale & Resilience You Can Trust We don't stop at testing a single box — FTAS stress-tests your entire fabric.
  • Simulates day-2 operations at scale
  • Validates fabric-wide scalability for both control plane and ASIC data plane
  • Tests failovers: link drops, protocol flaps, route withdrawals/insertions
  • Simulates real events: VM migrations, container spins, runtime traffic spikes
  • Proves your network holds up under chaos — across multiple vendors
• Custom & Compliance-Driven Testing Your network is unique. FTAS adapts to your exact topology and compliance needs.
  • Custom test cases for specialized architectures
  • Validates security and compliance (including Nessus vulnerability scans)
  • Flexible setup to match your operational standards
  • Integrates into CI/CD pipelines for continuous validation before deployments

The All-in-One Platform for SONiC Operations and AI Fabric Management

ONES is your unified control center for running SONiC across any hardware, ASIC, or vendor — plus other network operating systems. It combines 24×7 expert SONiC support with powerful orchestration, observability, and automation tools, all built in. Whether you're managing a data center, edge network, or AI fabric, ONES keeps everything running smoothly with proactive monitoring, real-time alerts, and rapid issue resolution. The result? A future-ready, high-speed, AI-capable network you can trust to perform at scale.

ONES gives you round-the-clock SONiC support that works with any hardware brand. It automates monitoring, collects operational data proactively, triages issues quickly, sends real-time anomaly alerts, and provides complete fixes. It also includes the ONES Observability Edition for deep visibility across your entire fabric.

ONES uses open APIs and a GNMI-based architecture to act as a middle layer. It standardizes all automation northbound to your existing tools while managing SONiC southbound — letting you keep your current investments, workflows, and skills intact.

No. When you use ONES, your support plan already includes a full suite of NetOps tools. These apps handle automation, configuration, and visibility — without extra licenses or hidden costs.

ONES supports a phased migration from platforms like EOS, Cumulus, and NX-OS to SONiC. We start with your current environment, replicate it in SONiC, and guide you through a smooth, low-risk transition with no operational downtime.

Aviz includes a Certified SONiC Quality Report with ONES at no extra cost. Every patch, bug fix, and release is tested against real-world customer configurations so you can upgrade confidently without breaking production.

• It ingests multi-vendor telemetry, configs, tickets and documents and lets you ask questions in plain English (“show top capacity risks on GPU pods,” “compare current fabric health to last quarter,” etc.).
• It works across vendors and NOS (SONiC, NVIDIA Cumulus, others) rather than being tied to a single hardware stack.
• It doesn’t replace your existing monitoring; it unifies it and adds automation and RCA workflows on top.

You can describe it as: “Your own private ChatGPT for your network—with enterprise controls, data residency, audit trails, and RBAC.”

One-sentence answer: NCP is your multi-vendor private “ChatGPT for networks” that sits on top of all your existing tools so you can ask questions and automate operations in plain English.

• Locked to that vendor’s hardware and NOS
• Constrained by a single model roadmap and their release cycle

NCP is designed differently:

• Uses best-available LLMs , open-source or commercial, and can be tuned on your data and policies.
• Stays vendor-neutral : works across any switch vendor, any NOS, any cloud, and multiple ITSM / observability stacks.
• Innovation cadence is driven by the broader LLM ecosystem, not one hardware vendor’s software release calendar.

Instead of being “less powerful,” NCP is more flexible and more aligned to your environment .

One-sentence answer: NCP is more flexible than vendor AI because it uses the best LLMs and works across all your vendors, tools, and clouds, not just one hardware stack.

• You can deploy it on-prem or in a private environment, with modular LLMs and right-sized infrastructure instead of per-device or per-port taxes.
• The entry point is lower than hiring a single AI engineer and scales with usage and outcomes, not with the raw number of devices.
• The ROI comes from reduced MTTR, faster RCA, automated audits, and fewer manual change cycles— time saved by NetOps translates directly into cost savings.

One-sentence answer: NCP is cheaper than traditional “AI tax” models and quickly pays for itself by cutting MTTR, manual work, and operational overhead.

• Telemetry (flow, interface stats, congestion)
• Fabric health and topology
• GPU job performance and AI fabric metrics
• Change logs, tickets, inventory, and your own BCP/DR documentation

This allows NCP to answer questions such as:

• “Where are my capacity hotspots over the last 90 days?”
• “Which changes preceded this failure pattern?”
• “Which vendors or platforms are driving the most incidents?”

Instead of dashboards and guesswork, you get natural-language answers with context and drill-downs.

One-sentence answer: NCP connects data from across your network to give you clear, natural-language answers about trends, risks, and root causes.

• Works with any vendor’s switches and NOS (including SONiC, NVIDIA Cumulus, and more).
• Integrates with ITSM, observability, and logging tools through connectors and APIs.
• Normalizes multi-vendor, multi-NOS data into a unified data layer you can query and automate.

You keep your existing tools—NCP simply gives you a smart, AI-driven layer on top .

One-sentence answer: NCP plugs into your existing switches and tools and turns all that data into a single, queriable, AI-ready operations layer.

• SONiC is the “Linux of Networking” —proven at hyperscalers and increasingly used by enterprises to standardize networks, regain control, and reduce TCO.
• Major switch vendors ship and support SONiC or SONiC-based solutions because it delivers choice and savings .
• Aviz lets you run SONiC your way (community or Broadcom SONiC), on your preferred hardware, with full lifecycle support and NetOps tools built-in .

Net: SONiC gives you standardization, choice of switches, and cost reduction —and Aviz makes it safe and enterprise-ready.

One-sentence answer: SONiC gives you Linux-style freedom and cost savings for networking, and Aviz makes it as safe and supported as a traditional NOS.

• 24×7 SONiC support and lifecycle management , as if you had your own in-house SONiC team.
• FTAS for automated validation and regression; ONES for orchestration, observability, and AI fabrics; NCP for AI-assisted operations.
• Proven recipes from customers running SONiC at scale.

Think of Aviz as your SONiC platform team : you get the benefits of open networking without needing hyperscaler staffing.

One-sentence answer: Aviz is effectively your outsourced SONiC platform team, so you get open networking without needing a huge internal engineering staff.

• Aviz operates like a “Red Hat for Networking” : we take community SONiC and wrap it with enterprise processes—SLAs, certified quality reports, lifecycle and security practices.
• You don’t have to chase issues upstream; Aviz owns escalation, fixes, and integration into your environment.

You can treat SONiC as enterprise software with commercial support , not a DIY project.

One-sentence answer: Aviz shields you from open-source complexity, giving you SONiC with Red-Hat-style SLAs, quality, and lifecycle management.

• Cisco and Arista both support SONiC in the right contexts; Cisco is even a visible partner with Aviz.
• With Aviz you get:

• Cisco / Arista-class quality via strict testing (FTAS) and certified SONiC reports.
• Linux-style openness and multi-vendor optionality .
• Material TCO savings vs. closed NOS licensing and locked hardware.

• To de-risk, you can start with low-criticality domains —packet brokers (OPB) or management networks—before touching the core.

You’re not replacing quality; you’re combining hyperscaler-grade openness with enterprise-grade stability.

One-sentence answer: You keep Cisco/Arista-level quality while gaining SONiC-driven choice and cost savings, starting in low-risk parts of the network.

• Aviz runs 24×7 POCs in its OCP-certified lab across all major vendors. You can send configs and success criteria; we do the heavy lifting and deliver a Grade-1 POC report back.
• You stay involved only at defined checkpoints —no need for a full on-site project team.
• Alternatively, start with a small scope (e.g., a management VLAN or packet broker use case) to validate value with minimal time.

In short: “We’ll do the work; you keep control of the decision.”

One-sentence answer: Aviz does almost all the POC and validation work in its own lab, so you get answers without consuming your team’s time.

• Deploy NCP as an overlay on your existing networks to start your AI-for-NetOps journey.
• Modernize management networks or packet broker domains first—low-risk surfaces that still deliver tangible savings and experience with SONiC/ONES.
• When you do refresh, your team is already familiar with SONiC and Aviz tooling, making the refresh faster and less risky.

One-sentence answer: You can start with AI and low-risk domains today and be fully ready for SONiC when your next hardware refresh comes.

• Start by mapping your current configs and requirements to SONiC and Broadcom Enterprise SONiC; Aviz can show you feature coverage and gaps.
• Use FTAS to enforce a strict quality gate: upgrades and deployments run through automated feature, scale, and chaos tests before you go live.
• Begin in non-critical segments (mgmt, packet broker, test fabrics) and expand as confidence grows.

Risk is controlled by scoping and quality automation , not by avoiding SONiC altogether.

One-sentence answer: We de-risk SONiC by starting in non-critical areas and enforcing strict automated testing before anything touches production.

• Many “missing” features are already present either in community SONiC or Broadcom Enterprise SONiC, or can be achieved via automation.
• Aviz can take your current config / feature checklist , map it against supported platforms, and propose:

• Which platforms satisfy parity today.
• Which gaps can be filled with automation or roadmap items.

• If you need day-one parity for mission-critical workloads, you can start on Broadcom SONiC under Aviz operations and migrate toward community SONiC over time without re-tooling (ONES + NCP stay the same).

One-sentence answer: We map your exact feature set to SONiC options and close any gaps with Broadcom SONiC, automation, or roadmap, so you don’t lose critical capabilities.

• You choose community SONiC or Broadcom SONiC , and your switch vendors (Cisco, NVIDIA, Edgecore, etc.).
• ONES, NCP, FTAS use open APIs and put data into your data lake , not a closed SaaS silo.
• If you ever decide to change vendors or tools, it is far easier to swap a toolset than to replace your entire NOS and hardware stack.

Aviz’s value is in keeping your options open across vendors, NOSes, ASICs, and AI stacks.

One-sentence answer: Aviz exists to keep your options open—across NOSes, vendors, and tools—rather than locking you into one stack.

• Hyperscaler approaches (SONiC, AI-fabrics, disaggregated packet brokers) inevitably trickle down and become mainstream—like EV tech going from exotic to everyday.
• The need to cut TCO , manage multi-vendor supply chains, and prepare for AI workloads (400/800 GbE) applies to everyone , not just the largest companies.
• Aviz packages these capabilities in repeatable “recipes” appropriate for different sizes and stages.

You get the benefit of “Fortune 500 networking” without needing their budget or staff.

One-sentence answer: We package hyperscaler networking patterns into right-sized solutions that mid-sized enterprises can actually deploy and afford.