FTOS or Force10 Operating System is the

firmware In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, h ...

family used on Force10

Ethernet switch A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, Ethernet switch, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destinat ...

es. It has a similar functionality as Cisco's NX-OS or

Juniper Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' ( ) of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere as far south ...

's Junos. FTOS 10 is running on

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

. As part of a re-

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

ing strategy of Dell FTOS will be renamed to Dell Networking Operating System ( DNOS) 9.x or above, while the legacy PowerConnect switches will use DNOS 6.x: see the separate article on DNOS.

Hardware Abstraction Layer

Three of the four product families from Dell Force10 are using the

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data cen ...

Trident+

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...

's, but the company doesn't use the

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

's from Broadcom: the developers at Force10 have written their own

Hardware Abstraction Layer Hardware abstractions are sets of routines in software that provide programs with access to hardware resources through programming interfaces. The programming interface allows all devices in a particular class ''C'' of hardware devices to be acc ...

so that FTOS can run on different hardware platforms with minimal impact for the firmware. Currently three of the four F10 switch families are based on the Broadcom Trident+ (while the fourth—the E-series—run on self-developed ASIC's); and if the product developers want or need to use different hardware for new products they only need to develop a HAL for that new hardware and the same firmware can run on it. This keeps the company flexible and not dependent on a specific hardware-vendor and can use both 3rd party or self designed ASIC's and chipsets. The human interface in FTOS, that is the way network-administrators can configure and monitor their switches, is based on

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

, an implementation which often used in embedded networking-systems. NetBSD is a very stable, open source, OS running on many different hardware platforms. By choosing for a proven technology with extended TCP functionality built into the core of the OS it reduces time during development of new products or extending the FTOS with new features.

Modular setup

FTOS is also modular where different parts of the OS run independently from each other within one switch: if one process would fail the impact on other processes on the switch are limited. This modular setup is also taken to the hardware level in some product-lines where a routing-module has three separate CPU's: one for management, one for L2 and one for L3 processing. This same approach is also used in the newer firmware-families from Cisco like the NX-OS for the Nexus product-line or the IOS XR for the high-end routers (the Carrier Routing Systems) from

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...

. (and unlike the original

IOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

: processes under IOS aren't isolated from each other). This approach is regarded not only a way to make the firmware more resilient but also increases the security of the switches.

Capabilities

All FTOS based switches offer a wide range of layer2 and layer3 protocols. All features are available on all switches: some switch models (in the S-series) offer an additional license for layer3 or routing: this additional license is NOT required to use that protocol, but only required to get support from the Dell Force10 support department on using these features. All interfaces on FTOS running switches are configured as a layer3 interface and by default shutdown. To use such an interface as an Ethernet switchport you need to configure it as such (with the command "switchport") and then enable that port using "no shutdown".

Layer2 capabilities

All standardized Ethernet standards are supported by switches running FTOS including:

Spanning Tree Protocol The Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is a network protocol that builds a loop-free logical topology for Ethernet networks. The basic function of STP is to prevent bridge loops and the broadcast radiation that results from them. Spanning tree al ...

and RSTP,

VLAN A virtual local area network (VLAN) is any broadcast domain that is partitioned and isolated in a computer network at the data link layer ( OSI layer 2).IEEE 802.1Q-2011, ''1.4 VLAN aims and benefits'' In this context, virtual refers to a ...

and the

IEEE 802.1Q IEEE 802.1Q, often referred to as Dot1q, is the computer network, networking standard that supports virtual local area networking (VLANs) on an IEEE 802.3 Ethernet network. The standard defines a system of VLAN tagging for Ethernet frames and the ...

standards, QinQ or IEEE 802.1ad, Link Layer Discovery Protocol and LLDP MED. The S-series switches ending with a V and some of the E-series line-cards support

Power over Ethernet Power over Ethernet (PoE) describes any of several technical standard, standards or ad hoc systems that pass electric power along with data on twisted-pair Ethernet cabling. This allows a single cable to provide both a data connection and en ...

or PoE with the standards for this protocol.

Layer3 capabilities

As mentioned above, by default an interface on a switch running FTOS are configured as a layer3 port. All FTOS switches are thus routers with many interfaces that can (and most often are) reconfigured into a layer-2 Ethernet switch. All FTOS switches run at least the following routing protocols:

Routing Information Protocol The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is one of the oldest distance-vector routing protocols which employs the hop count as a routing metric. RIP prevents routing loops by implementing a limit on the number of hops allowed in a path from so ...

and RIP version 2, OSPF,

IS-IS Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS, also written ISIS) is a routing protocol designed to move information efficiently within a computer network, a group of physically connected computers or similar devices. It accomplishes thi ...

and

Border Gateway Protocol Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. BGP is classified as a path-vector routing protocol, and it ...

version 4.

Management Interface

Switches running FTOS can only be configured using a

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

or CLI: FTOS doesn't offer a web-based

Graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

. Initial configuration is done via the console port using either a straight-through or roll-over cable (depending on model) to a terminal on 9600 bit/s and some models also support an AUX port allowing remote management via a dial-in modem. Most switches have a standard serial port or offer a

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

-B port. After initial configuration access to the cli is possible via

telnet Telnet (sometimes stylized TELNET) is a client-server application protocol that provides access to virtual terminals of remote systems on local area networks or the Internet. It is a protocol for bidirectional 8-bit communications. Its main ...

and/or SSH. FTOS based switches also support

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically su ...

and file-transfer (FTOS upgrades and startup-configuration data) can be done via

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

TFTP The Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is a simple Lockstep (computing), lockstep communication protocol for transmitting or receiving files in a client-server application. A primary use of TFTP is in the early stages of nodes booting on a l ...

Secure copy Secure copy protocol (SCP) is a means of securely transferring computer files between a local host and a remote server (computing), host or between two remote hosts. It is based on the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol. "SCP" commonly refers to both the ...

Most switches running FTOS offer a dedicated management interface where the IP routing to/from the management system is not part of the internal switching or routing system. Some S-series switches only offer ''in-band'' management using a physical router interface or a VLAN interface in layer-3 mode.

Open Automation

Under the name OpenAutomation 2.0 Dell Networking switches running DNOS 9.x (the new

-name for FTOS) offers a number of features under this name. These features include:Dell Force10 Open Automation 2.0
visited 29 May 2013

Smart Scripting

Dell Force10 switches support so called smart scripting. It is possible to develop scripts that run on the switches running FTOS. Both

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

and Python are supported as scripting languages to automate environment specific repetitive tasks or to build in custom behavior. Users who write such scripts are promoted to share these scripts with the user-community and make them available to other Force10/DNOS users. Force10 introduced the smart scripting in FTOS in 2010, following other vendors like

for their

Nexus NEXUS is a joint Canada Border Services Agency and U.S. Customs and Border Protection-operated Trusted Traveler and expedited border control program designed for pre-approved, low-risk travelers. Members of the program can avoid waits at border ...

product range.

Bare metal provisioning

Force10 switches support a ''bare metal provisioning'' option: if you need to deploy a number of similar switches you can put both (desired/latest) firmware release and standard user-specific configuration on a USB key: when deploying the switches you can insert the USB key, power-up the switch and it will automatically load the correct firmware and configuration. In combination with smart scripting someone can combine these features for a fully automated installation and configuration of new switches.

Virtual server networking

Part of the Open Automation platform are special features for the use of virtualization in your datacenter. Virtualization allows you to create complete (virtual) server-systems running on a standard hypervisor farm. This will create new challenges for networking in such a datacenter, support automated configuration of datacenter switches to connect newly created virtual servers. The open automation platform has several features to support this.Technical Whitepaper
Network automation with F10 Open Automation Framework
downloaded 25 May 2013

Network Automation

According to Dell the move to (server and datacenter) virtualization is one of the most important developments in the IT industry. According to this vendor the industry must prevent that this path leads to getting locked-in into specific vendors due to the use of proprietary technologies. The open automation framework is an open framework that doesn't rely on proprietary solutions.Dell technical specsheet
Open Automation Framework
{{webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130319150049/http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/Dell_Force10_Open_Automation_Framework_Spec_Sheet.pdf , date=2013-03-19 , downloaded: 29 May 2013

Sources and references

Embedded operating systems Internet Protocol based network software Dell Computer networking