Brocade outlined an “On-Demand Data Center” Strategy for evolving networks toward a highly virtualized, open and flexible infrastructure.
Brocade’s strategy will leverage its VCS Fabric technology as its foundation. The goal is to enable data center customers to provision compute, network, storage and services faster and easier than ever before as a step on the path toward mass customer adoption of Software-Defined Networking (SDN).
This week Brocade announced a series of networking hardware and software products including the Brocade Vyatta vRouter, the Brocade Virtual ADX Application Delivery Switch, the Brocade MLXe 4×40 GbE Core Router module, Brocade the NetIron CES/CER Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router modules and a Brocade NetIron OS update.
Building on its acquisition of Vyatta last year, the Brocade Vyatta 5400 vRouter family is a software networking solution for highly virtualized data centers. The lastest software release (6.6) adds support for Multicast routing and Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN). The platform- and hypervisor-agnostic Brocade Vyatta vRouter is already deployed in environments ranging from virtual private data centers to public clouds, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), and supports all major hypervisors, including VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and Red Hat.
The Brocade Virtual ADX is a virtual application delivery platform that increases the speed of application resource deployment and differentiated services for dynamic cloud environments. It enables rapid application delivery service provisioning via the SOAP/XML API, enabling integration with third-party or homegrown orchestration and automation tools. Brocade said this is especially useful to validate, test and replicate production or QA environments on demand. Brocade also enhanced its cloud provisioning capability with an update to Brocade Application Resource Broker and continued work on the OpenStack plugin for load balancing as a service.
“Strengthening the Brocade software networking portfolio, the Brocade Virtual ADX combined with the Brocade Vyatta vRouter and Brocade Application Resource Broker delivers an end-to-end software networking solution that increases data center agility and reduces network complexity,” said Ken Cheng, vice president of the Routing, Application Delivery and Software Networking Group at Brocade. “Brocade’s ability to unite the physical and virtual networking elements provides our customers with heightened agility not only in their deployment options, but also when it comes to implementing emerging technologies that simplify business processes.”
The new four-port 40 GbE Brocade MLXe module for the flagship Brocade MLXe Core Router integrates with the VCS Fabric technology for an end-to-end multitenant 40 GbE solution in the data center. For smaller data centers that are integrated into Carrier Ethernet networks, Brocade has introduced the new versions of the compact Brocade NetIron CER routers, featuring up to four ports of 10 GbE.
The NetIron software updates deliver new routing and SDN capabilities, including support for OpenFlow Hybrid Port Mode technology. This enables customers to optimize specific data flows using OpenFlow without disrupting the existing production traffic. Additionally, new software features support multitenant data center environments to improve cloud service delivery and enforce tighter service level agreements.
