With the industry?s largest Ethernet fabric installed base of more than 1,700 customers worldwide and more than 550,000 Brocade VDX switch ports shipped, Brocade continues to innovate and advance its leadership in Ethernet fabrics. Brocade announced today the availability of its multitenant solutions, including VCS Virtual Fabric, and new additions to the Brocade VDX switch portfolio, broadening its suite of cloud-optimized, fabric-enabled switches.
Brocade recognized this more than three years ago, and set out to transform networking by delivering a highly automated, efficient, VM-aware Ethernet fabric architecture that provides the ideal network foundation for virtualized, cloud-based data centers. Brocade?s new solution help address new data center imperatives, such as network virtualization, and evolving network requirements in Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and enterprise data centers.
An emerging requirement for both CSPs and enterprises that offer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the ability to provide multitenancy support at scale to ensure each tenant?s traffic remains private while sharing a common infrastructure. To address this requirement, Brocade has developed two multitenant solutions: VCS Virtual Fabric and the VCS Fabric Gateway for VMware NSX.
Brocade also expanded its flagship VDX portfolio with new VCS Fabric-enabled switches based on Brocade?s next-generation ASIC. The new products include the industry?s first fabric-based 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) top-of-rack switch that can be upgraded to 10 GbE through a software license, offering customers unmatched investment protection. In addition, Brocade announced a complete suite of next-generation line cards for the Brocade VDX 8770 chassis switch ranging from 10 GbEBase-T to 100 GbE.
Brocade VCS Virtual Fabric is a key feature of Brocade VCS Fabric technology supported on Brocade VDX next-generation switches. An alternative to overlay networks, VCS Virtual Fabric attributes include:
Provides a native, network-based approach to multitenant scale enabling data center operators to retain full network visibility utilizing their existing tools.
Offers a highly evolutionary approach to multitenancy that minimizes disruption to current data center operational and organizational models.
Is hypervisor agnostic, ideal for customers who may be considering more than one hypervisor vendor in their data center.
Provides automated tenant provisioning through open APIs and OpenStack.
Brocade also announced today that it is engaged in in-depth customer trials with its VCS Fabric Gateway for VMware NSX, with general availability planned for March 2014. In collaboration with VMware, Brocade developed this integrated and high-performance gateway solution for customers who prefer overlay architectures, such as VMware NSX, to virtualize their networks. Solution benefits include:
Unifies virtual and physical environments by converting tunnel connections into IP connections for bare metal servers running non-virtualized applications, physical storage devices or specialized hardware running network services.
Provides orchestration support for network provisioning and automation through Brocade VDX Ethernet fabric switches and VMWare NSX hypervisors.
Delivers gateway-level robustness allowing multiple VDX Ethernet fabric switches to be connected to support mission critical applications.
Next Generation VDX Platforms
Brocade VDX 6740T-1
Fixed 48 ? 1 GbEBase-T ports upgradable to 10 GbEBase-T
Unparalleled value: Industry?s lowest-cost entry point into Ethernet fabrics
Brocade VDX 8770 Modules
6 ? 100 GbE port module: The industry?s first and only offering to support 100 GbE Ports on Demand (PoD) capabilities within Ethernet fabrics, designed for emerging 100 GbE deployments in the heart of the data center
27 ? 40 GbE port module: For dense 40 GbE spine/middle-of-row deployments, this module is optimized with large buffers to absorb microburst traffic in data centers
48 ? 10 GbEBase-T port module: For dense 10 GbE leaf/middle-of-row deployments, this module is designed to cut CapEx by supporting 1/10 GbE connectivity directly on copper interfaces, without the need for more expensive optics
The Brocade VDX 6740T-1 starts at $14,995. The Brocade VDX 8770 starts at $45,000 for the 48x10G-T, rising to $60,000 for the VDX 8770-27x40G and then $96,000 for the VDX8770-6x100G.
Jason Nolet, vice president data center switching and routing, Brocade, says, ?Legacy network architectures are no longer able to cope with the rigorous demands that modern data centers are placing on them. As both enterprises and services providers move to cloud architectures, the need to rethink the legacy data center network has become apparent. Brocade VCS Fabric technology offers the ideal network foundation for the modern data center, addressing the most challenging data center requirements, including network automation and native network multitenancy at scale, with the most robust end-to-end portfolio of data center fabric solutions. With this announcement, Brocade is furthering its leadership in Ethernet fabrics, enabling customers to deploy an automated networking architecture that can radically improve business efficiency and agility, delivering 50 percent lower OpEx over competitive alternatives.?
