Brocade delivers On-Demand Fabric Orchestration Solution for OpenStack

Available as a component of the OpenStack Grizzly release, the Brocade VCS plugin expands the native attributes of Brocade VCS Fabric technology – unsurpassed network automation, efficiency and elasticity – by coupling these benefits with the ease of provisioning provided by OpenStack. This will allow customers to deploy network capacity and services in their cloud-based data centers far more quickly than with legacy network architectures and provisioning tools. This solution is an essential component of the Brocade “On-Demand Data Center™” strategy, a comprehensive approach that depends upon highly automated and scalable network architecture.

“The benefit of deploying a private or public cloud built on OpenStack is that it gives the customer the utmost level of flexibility and control when provisioning essential components within an open cloud architecture. The inclusion of Brocade as a part of the Rackspace Private Cloud reference architecture addresses the desire of our customers to have choice in their distributions,” said John Igoe, vice president of Rackspace Private Cloud. “Innovative companies like Brocade, who are committed to supporting open initiatives, enable customers to fully capitalize on their IT investments without risk of vendor or technology lock-in associated with proprietary platforms.”

In addition to delivering the Brocade VCS fabric plugin, Brocade is also taking a leadership role in the OpenStack development community with the delivery of a Fibre Channel blueprint for storage networking. With the delivery of a framework for Fibre Channel zone management, Brocade is further enabling customers to adopt OpenStack by ensuring investments in mission-critical Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs) are protected as they move to cloud architectures.

“Brocade is currently the only networking vendor offering OpenStack-compatible solutions with advanced fabric-enabled capabilities that support cloud-based, scale-out data center infrastructures,” said Jason Nolet, vice president of the Data Center Networking Group at Brocade. “In addition to delivering OpenStack support for Brocade products that accelerate the adoption of cloud technologies and deliver on the promise of The On-Demand Data Center, Brocade is an active contributor to the OpenStack development community, taking an active leadership role in driving innovation in important areas of the framework, such as the addition of Fibre channel SAN provisioning into OpenStack.”

Earlier this month, Red Hat announced that Brocade is a member of the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network, which is aimed at the continued innovation and development of the OpenStack framework.

“The Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network and its commercial support is an important step as we establish a robust ecosystem aimed at accelerating customer adoption of the Red Hat OpenStack distribution,” said Mike Werner, senior director of the OpenStack ecosystem at Red Hat. “The expertise and networking innovation Brocade brings to the program is a welcome addition as we see great alignment in our respective visions.”

These announcements demonstrate Brocade’s continued commitment to the OpenStack community and the company’s keen focus on ensuring that Brocade data center technologies are fully orchestrated within an OpenStack framework. In addition to Red Hat, Brocade has partnered with other leading distribution vendors, such as Rackspace and Piston Cloud, to bring commercial-grade versions of OpenStack with full support and services elements to market.

The plug-in for the Brocade VCS is available today in OpenStack Grizzly and is undergoing certification for the Rackspace Private Cloud.