“Meeting our commitment and shipping the Cloud Xpress in Q4 2014 is a key milestone for Infinera as we enter the metro Cloud market,” said Stuart Elby, senior vice president of Cloud network strategy and technology at Infinera. “The Infinera Cloud Xpress marks a better way to bring innovative Intelligent Transport Network solutions to the metro Cloud market by delivering a purpose built product with the right form factor, space and power profile.”
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In September, Infinera unveiled its Cloud Xpress, a compact, high-density, optical system optimized for the transport network that interconnects multiple data centers within a metro area. It leverages existing Infinera technologies, including its Photonic Integrated Circuit (PICs) and super-channel aggregation, to provide massive bandwidth in a form factor that data center operators can rack-n-stack and easily integrate into their operations.
In a press event in Santa Clara, California, Infinera predicted that hyper-scale cloud operators now building data centers packed with hundreds of thousands of servers, will soon need vast numbers of 100G connections between their metro data centers. The Cloud Xpress aims to provide point-to-point hyper-scale bandwidth over distances of up to 200km without amplification. On the client side, it supports 10GbE, 40GbE, 100GbE interfaces and on the line side its offers 500 Gbps WDM super-channels. It can be managed with a wide range of tools: CLI, the Infinera Network Management System—DNA as well as an API-driven SDN control. The Cloud Xpress is currently in customer trials and commercial release is expected in December 2014.
Infinera said the key benefits of its Cloud Xpress for the metro cloud include:
- Hyper-scale Density – The Cloud Xpress delivers one terabit per second (Tb/s) of input and output capacity in just two rack units (RU). This means a single 42 RU rack can support an industry leading 21 Tbps of input and output capacity.
- Simplified Operations – The Cloud Xpress is designed with a rack-and-stack form factor and a new software approach that will enable it to plug into existing cloud provisioning systems using open SDN APIs. By offering an experience similar to the server and storage infrastructure currently deployed in the cloud, the Cloud Xpress enables smooth integration into existing operational processes enabling cloud providers to scale quickly, reduce human errors and lower operational costs.
- Lowest Power – The Cloud Xpress consumes half as much power as the current leader of the market for comparably-sized metro cloud solutions.
