Aruba, which is a division of HPE, announced a significant expansion of its enterprise switching portfolio to include campus, branch and data center products – all running a single, cloud-native network operating system.
Specifically, Aruba is rolling out a new CX 6300 Series fixed configuration and CX 6400 Series modular access, aggregation and core switches, and delivering new capabilities in the latest advancements of its AOS-CX operating system. The capabilities include a Network Analytics Engine (NAE), which utilizes embedded analytics and automation to simplify management, accelerate troubleshooting of application performance issues and remediate common network problems.
Significantly, all of the new Aruba switching platforms are powered by a new, 7th generation version of its own switching ASIC.
“AI-powered automation must be at the heart of a modern, edge-to-cloud architecture and, in order to be truly useful, it requires an intelligent infrastructure as the foundation,” said Keerti Melkote, president and founder at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “We believe that AI is the key to analyzing data, providing actionable insights, and automation at scale to optimize network operators’ ability to quickly troubleshoot, remediate and proactively resolve some of IT’s most pressing challenges. Our vision for the future is a cloud-native architecture that delivers true business agility and new digital experiences, and today’s introduction is an important step in that direction.”
Announcement highlights:
- The Aruba CX 6300 Series is a family of stackable switches that offers flexible growth via a 10-member virtual switching framework (VSF) and provides built-in 10/25/50 gigabit uplinks.
- The Aruba CX 6400 Series modular switches offer both a 5-slot chassis and a 10-slot chassis with a non-blocking fabric that scales from Gigabit POE access to 100G core, allowing customers to standardize on one platform across the enterprise, including hybrid use cases.
- AOS-CX 10.4: The new version of AOS-CX introduces rich access features to the OS while extending CX differentiators to the access layer of the network. These include Aruba Dynamic Segmentation to provide secure, unified policy across wired and wireless down to every user and IoT device, Ethernet VPN (EVPN) over VxLAN for simplified and secure connectivity from enterprises to data centers, and Virtual Switching Extension (VSX) live upgrades for no downtime during maintenance cycles.
- Aruba NetEdit 2.0 with Network Analytics Engine (NAE): The significantly enhanced version of Aruba’s NetEdit software now integrates with Aruba’s NAE. This advancement enables centralized visualization of network health leveraging NAE distributed analytics across every switch in the network to reduce troubleshooting cycles from days to minutes. New automation capabilities simplify common tasks such as implementing configuration changes or initial system set-up which can now be completed via the CX Mobile app.
- List pricing for the Aruba CX 6300 and CX 6400 Series starts at $5,899 USD and $13,499 USD respectively.
