– Pavel Radda, Manager of Corporate Communications at Brocade (www.brocade.com), says:
It’s no surprise that the way organizations communicate and conduct business has changed dramatically over the past decade. Services such as high-definition video streaming, cloud services, and anytime/anywhere connectivity not only consume an enormous amount of network capacity, but also create a greater degree of complexity for network operations. As a result, today’s network planners are seeking solutions that provide the right mix of scalability, performance, operational simplicity, and cost-effectiveness.
The Brocade MLX series of switching routers meets all of the requirements that all network solution providers must meet and more. This includes the right mix of functionality and high performance while reducing Total Cost of Ownership, as well as providing a solid future-proof network design that can handle the rapid pace of today’s technology market. As Data Center infrastructures force administrators to move to support virtual environments, continuous operation, simplicity and scalability become key elements of the network.
The MLX Series delivers on these elements as follows:
Redundant hardware (management, switch fabric, power supplies, fans) and resilient software features for hitless failover and software upgrade as well as instantaneous failover in case of link or node failure for high application availability and continuous operation. So how are we simplifying network complexity? For one, simplified Layer 2 configuration without the complexity of Spanning Tree Protocol to provide higher VM mobility on all links. Second, simplified management capabilities for a virtualized environment where you can have end-to-end visibility of VMs to the backend infrastructure. Scalability for growing virtual infrastructures that are transitioning from 1G to 10G and beyond without network forklift. The MLX Series provides 10GbE ubiquity that scales to 100GbE.
Although adding routers to address bandwidth shortage might initially solve the capacity problem, it does so at the expense of the environment and the opportunity to reduce energy and space costs. Any new solution that fails to reduce energy consumption is only a partial answer to the problem.
Each new generation of line modules on the Brocade MLX Series consumes less energy per bit than the previous generation while significantly increasing throughput per module. In addition, the routers provide industry-leading wire-speed port densities for 1 GbE, 10 GbE, and 100 GbE interfaces, efficiently consolidating more services and collapsing network layers. For example, in data center environments, the Virtual Top of Rack (VToR) solution with the 48-T module on the Brocade MLX Series reduces the number of active power-consuming devices in the network—thereby providing significant savings on power, cooling, and overall operating expenditures.
