Brocade unites physical and virtual networking

The “On-Demand Data Center™” strategy from Brocade represents another major evolution in networking toward a highly virtualized, open and flexible network infrastructure. With an infrastructure that combines physical and virtual networking elements, customers can provision the capacity – compute, network, storage and services – required to deliver high-value applications faster and easier compared to legacy data center networks. With the industry-leading Brocade® VCS® Fabric technology serving as the foundation, The On-Demand Data Center strategy enables customers to simplify and automate their networks, as well as dramatically improve network efficiency, utilization and performance. This strategy also represents another logical step on the path toward mass customer adoption of Software-Defined Networking (SDN).

Brocade is supporting this strategy by delivering new hardware and software advancements across its entire data center networking portfolio. Furthermore, Brocade has reinforced its commitment for software, open management, orchestration and SDN controller initiatives by delivering new technologies in support of the OpenDaylight Project and OpenStack, strategic open-source software projects for building private, public and hybrid clouds. Specifically, Brocade is announcing:
• Virtual networking solutions: Brocade Vyatta® vRouter and Brocade Virtual ADX® Application Delivery Switch
• Physical networking solutions: Brocade MLXe 4×40 GbE Core Router module, Brocade NetIron® CES/CER Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router modules and Brocade NetIron OS update
• Orchestration and management solutions: Brocade OpenStack solution, founding board member of the OpenDaylight open source SDN project and Brocade Application Resource Broker

“While one of the more attractive benefits of virtualization is a reduction in capital expenses, we are starting to see the operational expenditures of highly virtualized environments increase because they lack proper orchestration, automation and management tools,” said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst with ZK Research. “Brocade’s On-Demand Data Center strategy provides a resilient and complete blueprint that unifies vital areas of the data center, from Fabrics to storage to physical and virtual infrastructure. Additionally, this strategy provides a pragmatic route for the adoption of emerging Software-Defined Networking technologies.”

Brocade Software Networking Solutions Bring Advanced Capabilities to IT Infrastructure
Delivering advanced routing, security and high-availability functionality as a software appliance, the Brocade Vyatta 5400 vRouter family is a software networking solution for highly virtualized data centers. Today, Brocade announced that Release 6.6 of the Brocade Vyatta vRouter will include support for Multicast routing and Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN), two technologies that are critical for large enterprises and cloud service providers.
The Brocade Vyatta vRouter provides the ability to build sophisticated multitier networks that can be deployed, configured or changed on demand—significantly reducing capital and operating expenses. Platform- and hypervisor-agnostic, the 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.

Also introduced today is the Brocade Virtual ADX, which provides a virtual application delivery platform that increases the speed of application resource deployment and differentiated services for dynamic cloud environments. As part of the comprehensive Brocade application delivery controller (ADC) product portfolio, the Brocade Virtual ADX provides the flexibility and scale to significantly reduce the total cost of operations and speed the deployment of new revenue streams.

The benefits of the Brocade Virtual ADX include:
• Rapid application delivery service provisioning
• Control of application management and provisioning via the SOAP/XML API, enabling integration with third-party or homegrown orchestration and automation tools
• Simplified orchestration of the application delivery network tier
• Ability to validate, test and replicate production or QA environments on demand
• Reduction of capital and operational network infrastructure cost

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. Designed to automate the rollout of new services and adapt to changing business conditions, Brocade Application Resource Broker builds on the strength of its dynamic resource provisioning capability to enable hybrid cloud services, as well as business continuity across globally distributed data centers for disaster avoidance.

“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.”

Building the Physical Networking Foundation with Brocade MLXe and Brocade NetIron CER/CES Advancements
On-demand data centers require high-performance hardware that can withstand the demands of mission-critical environments. Brocade is enhancing its network infrastructure portfolio for data centers with 40 GbE interfaces for its flagship Brocade MLXe Core Router, new high-performance modules for the Brocade NetIron CER Routers and significantly expanded SDN capabilities in a new NetIron OS release.

Specifically, Brocade is introducing a new four-port 40 GbE Brocade MLXe module for mission-critical and data-intensive services required in data center and enterprise core networks. With wire-speed performance on the 40 GbE module, the Brocade solution provides seamless integration with Brocade 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. These carrier-class routers provide an economical way to extend the reach of Carrier Ethernet and enable rapid deployment of new services at the network edge. Complementary to Brocade NetIron CER routers, new Brocade NetIron CES switches were also unveiled today.

Brocade also introduced NetIron software updates to enhance high-performance routing and SDN capabilities. The new release supports OpenFlow Hybrid Port Mode technology, to help customers simultaneously deploy OpenFlow and traditional routing on the same port for a seamless migration path to SDN. 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.
“Given the massive data we transport for some of the world’s largest companies, CyrusOne cannot rely on traditional networking practices to solve modern business challenges,” said Josh Snowhorn, vice president and general manager of InterConnection at CyrusOne. “The Brocade MLXe routers enable CyrusOne’s infrastructure to evolve with our customers’ needs, whether that requires scaling from 10 Gigabit to 100 Gigabit Ethernet or implementing new technologies that allow us to better serve them.”

Simplified Resource Provisioning with Orchestration
Delivering the network resources where they’re needed, when they’re needed is an essential element of Brocade’s vision for The On-Demand Data Center.

Brocade released the first in a series of OpenStack solutions that deliver advanced orchestration and automation capabilities. Available for the Brocade VDX® switch family, the Brocade plugin for OpenStack enables customers to build scale-out data center infrastructures based on industry-leading VCS Fabric technology.