Antonio Perez

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**SONiC Networking Software**

[[https://sonicfoundation.dev/|SONiC Web Site]]

[[https://sonic.software/|SONiC Networking Software]]


**Q: What is SONiC?**
A: SONiC is a collection of networking software components required to have a fully functional L3 device. It is designed meet the requirements of a cloud data center. It is fully open-sourced at OCP.

**Q: What is SAI? What's the relationship between SONiC and SAI?**
A: SAI stands for "Switch Abstraction Interface". It is a common API that is supported by many switch ASIC vendors. SONiC uses SAI to program the ASIC. This enabled SONiC to work across multiple ASIC platforms naturally.

**Q: Is SONiC a Linux distribution?**
A: No. SONiC is Linux-based, but is not a distribution by itself. Today, SONiC runs on Debian. SONiC has also been ported to Ubuntu (as a snap).

**Q: How can I get SONiC?**
A: If you clone the sonic-buildimage repo and follow the instructions there, you should be able to produce the SONiC image yourself. Our build pipeline also produces a regular build. So you can download the image there as well. The list of supported devices and ASICs are maintained here.

**Q: How can I get the SONiC source code?**
A: SONiC is fully open-sourced on GitHub, and distributed under Apache License. It is maintained as multiple repositories instead of a single big repo for manageability reasons. The list of SONiC source code repos is maintained here.

**Q: Why are certain SAI implementations only distributed in binary form?**
A: SAI defines the common API supported by multiple ASIC vendors. The SAI implementation depends on each individual vendor's SDK, which may not be open-sourced itself. Therefore, depending on the vendor's license model, SONiC may or may not be allowed to open source the SAI implementation.

**Q: Does SONiC offer Linux options, and/or can it be customized?**
A: We built and tested on Debian Linux, but theoretically any distribution could be supported. It is fully open sourced and can be customized by users. A contributor’s guide is posted to cover how to add documentation and code as well as report and fix bugs.

**Q: Which hardware platforms and ASIC chipsets are you running SONiC on?**
A: SONiC supports all the ASICs that are supported by SAI. Those ASICs are available via various switch hardware through both ODMs and OEMs. Currently, SONiC focuses on single ASIC devices.

**You can find a full list of supported devices and platforms here.**

**Q. Does SONiC have its own hardware?**
A. No. SONiC is purely a software solution.

**Q. How can I port SONiC to a new device?**
A. Please follow the porting guide.

**Q. Is SONiC deployed in Microsoft data centers today?**
A. Yes, SONiC is deployed in Microsoft production data centers.

**Q. How many devices are running SONiC?**
A. SONiC has been deployed globally by top cloud service providers, enterprises, large telecom service providers, retailers, online service providers, campus etc large, medium and small organizations.

**Q. How is SONiC supported?**
A. SONiC is a community supported product. Microsoft is committed to engage with the community to keep SONiC relevant, reliable and stable. We use it in our own production network.

**Microsoft has no plans to sell SONiC to customers or provide any network engineering or development support.**

**Q. What is the relationship between Azure Cloud Switch and SONiC?**
A. Azure Cloud Switch was the previous project name of SONiC. That name has been deprecated.

**Q. How can I contribute to SONiC?**
A. SONiC welcome collaboration with the community in many different capacities. Please check the contributor's guide for details: https://github.com/sonic-net/SONiC/wiki/Becoming-a-contributor

**Q. How can I rerun a build for my PR?**
A. In your PR, add "/azpw run Azure.sonic-buildimage" as comments, it will trigger a new build.