AVAYA has released a new VOSS Software for their VSP8000 and VSP4000 Switches. Like most software updates it has some new features and bugfixes on board. The VOSS image that runs on several VSP devices is a Linux based operating system. The real news here is that AVAYA now is releasing an image across two different device families. The main goal is to have feature parity on the different VSP platforms that are running VOSS and brodcom silicon. So some of the features from the VSP8k are now available on the VSP4k and vice versa. From a development point of view it makes sense to bring a new feature to multiple platforms that using the same OS and the same silicon asics inside. I would also suggest that it is faster to develop and test a feature for multiple platforms instead inventing the wheel completly new for the different device families. As a customer I also like the idea to have the same feature set across different platforms, that makes deployments and planing more easy. Here is an overview what is new in SW 4.1.
For more informations check out the release notes.
https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101007558
https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101007562
The VSP 4000 has become besides the features mentioned above the SMLT and RSMLT with vIST feature. I already wrote about the vIST , if you are interested in that feature you should read the blog post: http://networkautobahn.com/2015/02/04/multichassis-link-aggregation-in-a-spb-fabric/ With 4.1 you get a lot of new options for a network deployment including the option to encrypt all uplinks with MACSec or deploying IPv6 over an SPB fabric. For MACSec and L3 VSN you need an extra license on both device families.
AVAYA hasn´t achieved full feature parity so far there are still 7 features that are not available on both platforms, but for me AVAYA is going in the right direction. Hopefully that effort will be continued.
