Brocade VCS fabric innovations provide multitenancy at scale

BANGALORE, INDIA: The network-centric server era is here. Further, Brocade Communications' vPlane leverages Intel to the maximum. Brocade's Vyatta 5600 vRouter delivers an order of magnitude performance leap. This complements the industry-leading Vyatta 5400 family. Brocade uniquely owns the open networking software industry position.

Brocade is empowering the on-demand data center by interconnecting all resources within and between data centers with the world's most automated, efficient, and agile fabric-based networks. Roadblocks along the journey toward the on-demand data center includes rigid data center architectures, operational complexity, infrastructure inefficiencies, IT Silos and multitenancy scale.

The classical heirarchical architecture is rigid, north-south optimized, has inefficient link utilization, individually managed switches, and is VM-ignorant. However, when it comes to Ethernet fabric architecture, there is topology freedom, it is east-west optimized, all links are active, and it has L1/2/3 multipathing. The fabric is managed as one logical switch and it is VM-aware.

Brocade is now announcing its end-to-end multitenancy blueprint, VCS virtual fabric, VCS storage intelligence, and next generation VDX platforms. The multitenant network design for CSPs and enterprises consist of four important factors -- separation, security, scale and services.

Brocade's end-to-end multitenant blueprint is the industry's most complete, delivering multitenancy at scale from server to WAN. VCS virtual fabric has native network-based approach to multitenant scale, retains full network visibility utilizing existing tools, minimizes disruption to operational and organizational models, Hypervisor agnostic, and automated provisioning through open APIs.

In VCS storage intelligence, VCS AutoQoS automatically recognizes and prioritizes storage traffic greatly, reducing capital and operational costs. The next generation VDX platforms have integrated ASIC support for VCS virtual fabric, ISL trunk support for 40GbE-160GbE, are OpenFlow 1.3 ready, have Flexports (FC/FCoE/Eth) 100GbE performance, etc.

Software emerges as a critical IP networking category. Brocade is number one in virtual routing. Its Vyatta 5600 vRouter is driving more virtual machines per server, and the servers are exploding with power and network centric, with huge leaps in throughput, driving shifting to 10G NICS.

The VM density is expanding and network centric servers need faster vRouters. Virtual distributed routers optimize network capability through separate control and forwarding, powered by vPlane. When it comes to cloud, it distributes traffic load and control and has an agile scale-out infrastructure.

Some well known organizations that use Brocade's solutions are Amazon, IBM and VMWare.