Extreme Networks Debuts its Open Fabric Data Center Switches

Extreme Networks unveiled an Open Fabric data center architecture along with two new Ethernet switches designed for cloud-scale deployments requiring low latency and energy efficiency.



The Extreme Networks Open Fabric data center architecture incorporates standards-based OpenFlow technology to simplify network provisioning and supports Data Center Bridging (DCB) to provide consolidation of LAN and storage fabrics in the data center, including iSCSI and FCoE. The company said its design goals with this new architecture were to scale for huge switching capacity, support vast number of highly dynamic virtual machines, while leveraging standards-based technologies and existing investments.



The Extreme Networks Open Fabric data center solution leverages the ExtremeXOS operating system end-to-end and emphasizes wire-speed switching of Virtual Machines (VMs), intelligence to automate VM mobility through XNV, standards-based, non-blocking high density 10Gbs server connectivity and non-blocking high density 40Gbs fabric interconnect with multi-path forwarding that is also designed to evolve for 100GbE.



Key elements of the introduction:



BlackDiamond X8 modular chassis -- a 20 Terabit chassis featuring up to 768 non-blocking 10GbE ports or 192 non-blocking 40GbE ports in 1/3rd rack or 14.5 RU. The platform is designed to evolve to support 100GbE. It boasts 1.28Tbps bandwidth per slot, performance of 11.4 Billion packets per second (Bpps), and switching up to 128,000 VMs at wire speed. Energy efficiency is rated at 5 watts per 10GbE port. It also offers a latency of less than 3 micro-seconds and support of N+1 grid redundancy further scale data center build outs. The BlackDiamond X8, equipped with redundant power, redundant management, redundant fabrics, and populated for 768 10GbE interfaces, has list pricing of $1,000 per 10GbE port and $4,000 per 40GbE port, and is expected to begin customer trials in October 2011.



Summit X670 Top-of-Rack switches -- up to 64 ports of wire speed 10 GbE or 48 ports of wire speed 10GbE with modular four ports of wire speed 40GbE uplinks. The Summit X670 is designed for high density of 10GbE servers and offers an optional, future-proofing 4x40 GbE uplink support and support from existing 1GbE servers to 10 GbE servers. The X670 switches offer up to 64 ports of high density 10 GbE in 1RU and support up to 448 10 GbE ports in an 8-unit virtual chassis using the SummitStack-V160, delivering up to 160 Gbps stacking bandwidth with distributed forwarding. Extreme Networks has performed compatibility testing on the Summit X70 switches with a number of 10GbE adapters, including the Intel Server Adapter X520.



BlackDiamond 8900 high density, 6x40 GbE blades



"The Extreme Networks Open Fabric data center solution demonstrates our continued innovation in the data center market," said Shehzad Merchant of Extreme Networks. "As the Cloud ramps in its adoption and services, and as applications and Virtual Machines become more mobile and dynamic, so do the requirements for greatly improved performance and control from the network."http://www.extremenetworks.com