– Doug Ingraham, Vice President of Product Management (Data Center Products) at Brocade (www.brocade.com), says:
What is a cloud-optimized data center?
In the data center, the cloud-optimized network connects virtual servers and their application workloads to other virtual servers and to virtual LUNs in storage resource pools, while maintaining secure, load-balanced client access connections to the Web, applications, and databases deployed on virtual machines. The cloud-optimized network connects to virtualized resource pools and physical clients, servers, and storage using a single logical network. Ultimately, a cloud-optimized network can consolidate multiple physical networks onto a common physical infrastructure.
The cloud-optimized network is designed to reduce cost, improve agility, and extend virtualization across the data center. A key enabling technology is the Ethernet fabric. Compared to classic hierarchical Ethernet networks, the Ethernet fabric delivers higher levels of performance, utilization, availability, and simplicity. Ethernet fabrics have the following characteristics:
• Flatter. Ethernet fabrics are self-aggregating, enabling a flatter network.
• Intelligent. Switches in the fabric know about each other and all connected devices.
• Scalable. All paths are available for high performance and high reliability.
• Efficient. Traffic automatically travels along the shortest path.
• Simple. The fabric is managed as a single logical entity.
Brocade’s VDX 6720 Data Center Switches are specifically designed to improve network utilization, maximize application availability, increase scalability, and dramatically simplify network architecture in virtualized data centers. By delivering Brocade VCS™ technology, the Brocade VDX 6720 helps organizations build data center Ethernet fabrics—revolutionizing the design of Layer 2 networks and providing an intelligent foundation for cloud computing.
Features:
• Provides Ports on Demand flexibility with 16-, 24-, 40-, 50-, and 60-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) models built on Brocade sixth-generation fabric switching technology
• Maximizes performance through wirespeed ports with 600 nanosecond port-to-port latency and hardware-based Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Trunking
• Provides multihomed active-active server connections for Ethernet networks
• Creates scale-out Ethernet fabrics for virtualized data centers
• Enables end-to-end convergence of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), iSCSI, and NAS storage traffic along with IP LAN data traffic
• Simplifies management by maintaining network policies as virtual machines move throughout the data center with Automatic Migration of Port Profiles (AMPP)
• Helps reduce operational costs and complexity by enabling the entire fabric to be managed as a single switch
Data center and IT managers will benefit from using the Brocade VDX switches, allowing them to:
• Scale virtualization without adding network complexity
• Flatten network; maximize performance, utilization, resiliency
• Increase pool of server resources to optimize app performance
• Significantly reduce OPEX and CAPEX
