InfraNAL

InfraNAL is an open framework and protocol suite designed to provide a unified interface for managing heterogeneous infrastructure networking resources across data centers, cloud environments, and edge deployments. It emphasizes abstraction from vendor-specific APIs and promotes interoperability among diverse networking components and services.

The project defines a minimal set of core concepts—resources, endpoints, and policies—and offers a pluggable set of adapters or providers to connect to various networking hardware, software-defined networks, and cloud networking services. InfraNAL supports declarative configuration and real-time state reporting, enabling consistent control across environments.

Architecturally, InfraNAL centers on a core engine that reconciles desired and actual states, with provider adapters implementing southbound integrations. Northbound APIs include REST and GraphQL interfaces, while a resource graph models relationships between devices, networks, and services. A policy engine enables automation and governance, and an event system propagates changes to dependent components.

Key features include resource discovery and inventory, topology mapping, lifecycle management, observability, and policy-based automation. The framework supports multi-tenancy, security through role-based access control and audit logging, and extensibility via plugins. It is designed to operate with asynchronous events and streaming updates to support dynamic infrastructures.

InfraNAL is positioned for use in environments such as large data centers seeking unified management, telecom networks requiring multi-layer orchestration, cloud providers integrating on-premises and public clouds, and edge deployments needing localized control with centralized governance.

Development and governance are handled by an open source community under the InfraNAL Foundation, with regular releases, documentation, and collaborative workgroups to steer interoperability and standards alignment. See also: Software-defined networking, network virtualization, infrastructure as code.