Dell Networking introduced a new Active Fabric for SDN, new Active Fabric Manager software and a new S5000 modular LAN/SAN switching platform.
Dell Active Fabric is a flat, fast, any-to-any multipath network architecture. The new management component uses design wizards to help users set-up and manage non-blocking, high-performance Active Fabrics for handling predominantly east-west, traffic-intensive workloads in virtualized data centers and private clouds.
Dell said its Active Fabric flattens the traditional data center network architecture using high-density and low-latency, fixed-form factor 10/40GbE switches that can be deployed quickly and easily while reaching to hyperscale proportions.
Key features of Dell Active Fabric include:
- Supports NVOs using the leading hypervisors from Microsoft, VMware and OpenStack.
- Supports Open Flow-based controllers from leading vendors including Big Switch Networks.
- Supports legacy programmatic interfaces including Telnet/CLI, TCL, REST, SNMP, Perl and Python scripting
- Purpose-built for virtualized, converged, and SDN environments
- High-performance 10GbE & 40GbE L2/L3 multipath fabrics
- LAN/SAN convergence using Data Center Bridging (iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
- OpenFlow support
- Standard northbound and southbound interfaces
Dell said SDN offers a logical extension to the enhanced network flexibility its Active Fabric solutions provides. The company also said that it is "one of the only vendors to offer a complete and unbiased approach to SDN encompassing networking virtualization overlays (NVO), OpenFlow and legacy interface capabilities."
The new Dell Networking S5000 is a 1U 10/40GbE top-of-rack LAN/SAN switch equipped with native FC and FCoE capabilities. It is powered by merchant silicon and features Dell's feature-rich operating system and Open Automation framework for integrated automation, scripting and programmable management. The S5000 accommodates four modules allowing customers to populate a single module and add as necessary instead of buying all four modules at once. The S5000 has a maximum of 64 x 10GbE ports, or 48 x Ethernet/FC ports with 16 x 10GbE ports. SAN support includes iSCSI, RoCE, NAS, FCoE and FC fabric services, all on the same platform.
"We’re challenging conventional wisdom with new products and solutions designed to accelerate our customers’ migration to virtualized and cloud data center environments.” said Tom Burns, vice president and general manager, Dell Networking. “We’re excited about these new offerings and their ability to simplify operations, boost performance and improve economics."
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