With the acceleration in data centre construction and expansion, network architects require IP transport solutions that simplify management, allow incremental growth, and dramatically increase throughput performance while remaining within the practical limits on power/cooling capacity and obtainable real estate. Foundry delivers on this need and effectively facilitates the expansion of data centres for enterprises and service providers worldwide.
Traditionally, data centre growth relied on installing additional switching and routing capacity with less concern for energy use and long-term incremental performance and capacity scalability. However, due to rising power costs, networking real estate availability, and the need to amplify performance and capacity quickly without a complete network overhaul, network managers today have become exceedingly meticulous when selecting networking solutions.
To exceed the demands of new and next-generation data centres, NetIron router users can leverage carrier trunks that aggregate up to 32-ports of 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) and scale to a record-setting aggregated link capacity of 320 gigabits per second (Gbps). This successfully allows data centre operators to efficiently augment capacity in the aggregation and core layers beyond the 10GbE barrier before the anticipated 40GbE and 100GbE standards arrive. This breakthrough solution is founded on state-of-the-art load-sharing algorithms allowing enterprise and service provider data centres to implement optimal load-balancing across link aggregation bundles (trunks) and multiple equal cost multipath (ECMP) routes.
Equally as important, the ability to incrementally add trunk capacity by units of 10GbE while maintaining efficient load-balancing provides data centre architects with maximum granularity and flexibility for scaling capacity in lockstep with current and future growth patterns.
Business continuity is also of utmost priority for enterprises and service providers worldwide. With data centres now an integral part of organisations' daily operations and revenue stream, network operators require maximum reliability to remain competitive. Traditionally, multiple technologies, such as Spanning Tree Protocol and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP), were needed in a large portion of the data centre to help maintain maximum resiliency. This was not only difficult to manage but also restricted fast deployments of highly reliable data centres. Foundry solves these issues through the implementation of the Virtual Switching Redundancy Protocol (VSRP), which combines Layer 2 and Layer 3 resiliency (for default IP gateway) into a unified, intuitive, and simple to deploy and manage protocol. Network managers can now not only maintain the greatest levels of reliability but also benefit from increased deployment speed and simplified management due to reduced configuration complexity in the servers and edge switch layers.
Ray Mota, chief research officer for Synergy Research Group, Inc, said:
"There is no question that data centres are expanding and requiring more performance capacity. Simultaneously, enterprises and service providers are also demanding a significant reduction in power consumption, cooling requirements, and physical rack space. Foundry's new data centre networking solutions address these requirements with viable switches and routers that not only provide added scalability, flexibility, and productivity, but also act as an effective trigger for data centre growth by freeing IT operators from ongoing power constraints and delivering the capacity and performance headroom needed today and in the future."
Organisations are quickly running out of physical space, capacity and power driven by dramatic business-critical application growth. Many of these applications require robust disaster recovery technologies as safeguards, and the new server technologies deployed to meet application growth require more than data centres' current infrastructure can deliver. To solve this, Foundry engineered the world's most efficient data centre switches and routers in terms of power, cooling and rack space delivering significant power reduction per Gbps over alternative solutions. Foundry's BigIron RX-32 switches and NetIron MLX-32 routers effectively reduce overall power consumption by approximately 40 percent and save valuable data centre real estate by offering industry-leading rack space efficiency through approximately 250 percent greater density than competitor solutions.
Furthermore, Foundry's ultra-high capacity switching and routing strategy aims at allowing data centre architects to realise even greater efficiency gains than those obtainable by optimised standard capacity devices. Using this approach, data centre designers can consolidate multiple traditional devices into ultra-high capacity BigIron RX-32 switches and/or ultra-high capacity NetIron MLX-32 routers achieving up to 70 percent power and cooling reduction and up to 80 percent rack space savings.
NetIron MLX-32 routers and the BigIron RX-32 switches represent a major breakthrough in networking performance and can scale to more than two billion packets per second (Bpps) of throughput. The NetIron MLX-32 port density can scale up to 128-ports of 10GbE and 1,536-ports of GbE with a switch fabric capacity of 7.68 terabits per second (Tbps) in single system. The BigIron RX-32 can scale up to 512-ports of 10GbE and 1,536-ports of GbE with a switch fabric capacity of 5.12 Tbps in a single system.
Ahmed Abdelhalim, director of product management & marketing for Foundry's High-End and Service Providers Systems Business Unit,
commented: "Foundry is committed to advancing the architecture of the data centre. Foundry's data centre optimised solutions powered by the BigIron RX switches and NetIron MLX routers are at the forefront of scalability, flexibility and efficiency enabling increased service quality and a host of new applications. The incremental scalability and optimised energy and space efficiency result in a new industry standard for data centre connectivity."