The Stargate Group, Australia’s leading application service provider (ASP) to the mortgage finance sector, has deployed Brocade’s NetIron® CER 2000 Ethernet/MPLS routers as a first step toward applying software-defined networking (SDN) to its operations.
Brocade said its networking solution includes multiple routers deployed at Stargate’s two data center sites and headquarters. The sites are linked over a Gigabit Ethernet mesh and also connected to two different ISPs, giving Stargate Internet route redundancy. Stargate is running MPLS across its router mesh to increase network resiliency, load-balance its data centers and also mirror transactions between the sites. At each data center, two routers form a high-availability cluster using the Brocade Multi-Chassis Trunking (MCT) feature to create a single logical device that dynamically load-balances traffic. Each router is connected to both data center firewalls, eliminating any single point of failure. The routers themselves are highly reliable devices built to carrier-grade specifications with redundant hot-swappable power supplies and redundant fans.
The Brocade NetIron CER 2000 Series enables SDN by supporting the OpenFlow protocol, which allows direct access to and manipulation of the forwarding plane from an SDN controller. As a next stage, Stargate is currently evaluating the Brocade Virtual ADX Application Delivery Platform, which enables an on-demand service delivery model and extends application delivery service as an “elastic” network component.
“As an application service provider, it is obviously critical to Stargate that its online services are available at all times,” said Greig Guy, Brocade country manager for Australia and New Zealand. “Our partner, Mycom, designed a very elegant solution that simplifies the Stargate routing infrastructure while increasing network resiliency to make it virtually failsafe. We are also now engaging with Stargate on how to move ahead with SDN, which will bring major data center operational benefits.”
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