OIF Completes FlexE IA for Data Center Interconnections

Members of the OIF have finalized and implementation agreement (IA) covering flexible Ethernet for Data Center and transport interconnect efficiency.

The FlexE Implementation Agreement provides a generic mechanism for supporting a variety of Ethernet MAC rates that may or may not correspond to any existing Ethernet PHY rate. This includes MAC rates that are both greater than (through bonding) and less than (through sub-rate and channelization) the Ethernet PHY rates used to carry FlexE.

“The FlexE IA allows Ethernet to be used more efficiently in response to ever changing technologies, link rates, and bandwidth needs,” said Scott Irwin of MoSys and the OIF’s Physical and Link Layer Working Group – Protocol Vice Chair. “OIF members worked hard to get this IA completed in record time to meet the industry’s need for flexible and scalable bandwidth provisioning.”

http://www.oiforum.com

http://www.oiforum.com/wp-content/uploads/OIF-FLEXE-01.0.pdf

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NTT DOCOMO Deploys NFV with NEC in Commercial Network

NEC confirmed that NTT DOCOMO has deployed its NFV solutions, including virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) and a Virtual Network Function Manager (VNF Manager), in its commercial networks.

On March 9, DOCOMO started providing its commercial mobile communication service by using the NFV technologies.

The vEPC virtualizes the functions of a LTE core network, including the Mobility Management Entity (MME), the Serving Gateway (S-GW), and the Packet Data Network-Gateway (P-GW). A VNF Manager from Netcracker, a wholly owned NEC subsidiary, handles lifecycle events, such as creation, activation, termination and update of virtualized Network Functions (VNF).

"I'm delighted that we have developed and deployed NFV with NEC and other leading vendors in the NFV domain. To maximize benefit of NFV, DOCOMO expects to virtualize many other key components of its mobile network, aiming to eventually establish a fully virtualized network. I'm convinced that our multi-vendor NFV is the first step toward our goal," said Mr. Seizo Onoe, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, NTT DOCOMO.

"We are delighted to contribute to DOCOMO's successful deployment of network virtualization technologies for their commercial networks," said Mr. Shunichiro Tejima, Executive Vice President, NEC Corporation. "With this success, NEC will further expand commercial deployment of NFV based solutions globally, which enable telecom operators to introduce innovative services to the market more quickly and efficiently."

http://www.nec.com/en/press/201603/global_20160311_02.html

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Lenovo and Juniper Collaborate on Data Center Infrastructure

Lenovo and Juniper Networks announced a global strategic partnership focused on the next generation of converged, hyper-converged, and hyper-scale data center infrastructure.

Lenovo offer an extensive portfolio of x86 based servers and switches. Juniper's portfolio encompasses routers, switches, network management software, network security products and software-defined networking technology.

The companies expect to collaborate to offer simplified management and orchestration in the datacenter leveraging Lenovo’s xClarity management software as well as Juniper’s Network Director and Contrail SDN software.

“Lenovo is on a mission to become the market leader in datacenter solutions. We will continue to invest in the development and delivery of disruptive IT solutions to shape next-generation data centers. Our partnership with Juniper Networks provides Lenovo access to an industry leading portfolio of products that include Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions – essential for state-of-the-art data center offerings,” stated Gerry Smith, Lenovo executive vice president and chief operating officer, PC and Enterprise Business Group.

“Partnering with Lenovo expands Juniper’s strategy to deliver a full-stack solution for a wide-range of data centers, from the mid-range enterprise to private cloud and to hyper-scale customers. We are excited about collaborating with Lenovo to leverage the full power of our IP-networking portfolio based on JunosOS and Contrail, in delivering the next generation of converged, hyper-converged, and hyper-scale solution to customers in China and globally,” said Rami Rahim, chief executive officer at Juniper Networks.

http://www.juniper.net

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Cavium's XPliant Switching Silicon Supports OpenSwitch

Cavium announced support for the OpenSwitch open source network operating system (NOS) on Cavium XPliant switches.  Additionally, Cavium introduced Open APIs for the XPliant Programmable Switch (OpenXPS) open source software.

OpenSwitch is an open source, community-led Linux-based network operating system, launched by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and other industry leaders in October 2015, optimized for the scale and architecture requirements of modern next-generation data center networks. It enables a developer ecosystem with the ability to accelerate innovation and realize investment protection, allowing IT organizations to rapidly build data center networks customized for unique business applications.

“Cavium’s support of OpenSwitch is another example of expanding the open source community effort,” said George Tchaparian CEO Edgecore Networks. “Cavium’s OpenXPS support for these open initiatives including OpenSwitch, SAI, and ONL enables rich ecosystems of differentiated solutions, including those open software options on the Cavium’s XPliant based Edgecore AS7500-32X switch, an open hardware design contributed to the Open Compute Project (OCP).”

OpenXPS APIs map the XPliant Software Development Kit (XDK) rich feature-set to an open software interface enabling integration of custom applications on the extensible XPliant switch hardware platforms.  Users now have more freedom to select their software control plane in disaggregation with the hardware, boosting application innovation. OpenSwitch can now use OpenXPS APIs to control the XPliant switch hardware platforms, leveraging a high degree of extensibility.

http://www.cavium.com/newsevents-Cavium-Seamlessly-Connects-OpenSwitch-Software.html

Cavium Shows New Xpliant Silicon Driving SDN-enable Ethernet Switches

Tuesday, June 16, 2015  #SDN, Cavium, OpenFlow, Silicon, Switching  No comments

Cavium is demonstrating OpenFlow and OpenFlow-Hybrid Ethernet switches based on its new XPliant silicon.

Cavium's XPliant Ethernet switches deliver full line rate support in OpenFlow through XPliant's SDK APIs and integration of Open vSwitch (OVS) at an aggregate switching capacity of 3.2 terabits per second.

"Historically, large scale data center customers were only interested in the speeds and feeds of networking silicon. Now customers are looking for standards based vendor interoperable features that enable them to effectively control their networks, scale and grow over time," said Eric Hayes, VP/GM, Switch Platform Group at Cavium. "The XPA architecture is the ideal solution available today with all of these capabilities simultaneously in a cost effective manner."

Cavium noted its XPliant packet architecture XPA Software APIs expose the OVS control abstractions, enabling users to benefit from OVS rich management and networking features, such as L2 pipeline (VLANs, LAGs, FDB, STP etc.), bonding modes (LACP), and advanced tunneling protocols (Geneve, VxLAN, NVGRE) as well as future yet-to-be-defined standards. Now, through XPA Software and APIs, these open and industry proven features can be seamlessly invoked representing a truly hybrid switch optimized for virtualized environments, in a single hardware.

http://www.cavium.com

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Vapor IO Ups its Open Data Center Runtime Environment

A new release of the Vapor Open Data Center Runtime Environment (OpenDCRE) adds supports for AppliedMicro X-Gene server family and BASELAYER Anywhere modular data center (MDC) products. 

Vapor's OpenDCRE is an infrastructure automation and DevOps platform for connecting IT and physical infrastructure. These partnerships highlight Vapor IO’s goal of furthering development of hyper converged data center architectures within the open source community.

OpenDCRE provides a secure, RESTful API for monitoring and completely controlling your entire data center and IT equipment. It can be used as an open platform for monitoring and managing data center hardware, software and environmental characteristics. The OpenDCRE API enables easy integration with third-party monitoring, management and orchestration providers. An alternative to proprietary interfaces and custom silicon, it provides a simple, curl-able interface for common and custom DevOps tasks. There are a wide variety of possible applications, deployments, physical mounting strategies, and network connectivity options for which Vapor IO is working to foster community support.

“Data center environments are becoming increasingly complex and filled with a myriad of hardware and software solutions and tools from various vendors. In order for IT organizations to succeed they need to run efficient and agile environments. The collection of resources that make up today’s data centers must work together seamlessly, but at the same time exist as independent components so they can be replaced, repaired or upgraded as necessary,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO, Vapor IO. “Our mission is to take the disaggregated data center, and turn it into a highly efficient, well-connected but intentionally decoupled IT system.”

http://www.vapor.io/

Vapor IO Secures Series A Funding for Hyper Modular Data Center

Thursday, December 03, 2015  Data Centers, Funding, Start-ups, Vapor IO  No comments

Vapor IO, a start-up based in Austin, Texas, announced a Series A funding round for its intelligent, hyper modular data center solution.  The funding was led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from AVX Partners, but the amount was not disclosed.

Vapor IO is focused on new design for maximizing density and energy efficiency in data center design.

“For the past nine months we’ve been singularly focused on building a telemetry optimized data center analytics company whose mission is to modernize today’s legacy infrastructure and design,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO. “Recognizing the need for innovation and the now standard deployment of open source technologies, we’re thrilled to partner with Goldman Sachs and AVX Partners to drive full stack data center automation in an industry that has traditionally bifurcated the physical assets from the application.”

http://www.vapor.io

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NEC Selected for Submarine Cable Connecting Guam and Saipan

DOCOMO PACIFIC awarded a contract to NEC to build ATISA, an optical submarine cable system that will connect Guam with the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands.

ATISA, a state-of-the-art six fiber pair optical fiber submarine cable system measuring approximately 280 kilometers in length, will connect the islands of Guam, Saipan, Rota and Tinian. Completion is expected in early-2017.

http://www.nec.com

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Red Centroamericana Deploys Coriant

Red Centroamericana has deployed the Coriant hiT 7300 Multi-Haul Transport Platform to scale its regional transport network and its carrier-class services, including wavelength, Carrier Ethernet, Points of Presence (POP) inter-connectivity, and cloud computing services.

REDCA is a private company that was created under the Panama’s Law to operate and market the Optical Ground Wire (OPGW) fiber installed on SIEPAC’s cable (Sistema de Interconexión Eléctrica de los Países de América Central). Providing coverage of over 2,150 kilometers and scalability to 1 Tbps and beyond, the Coriant hiT 7300 solution is part of REDCA’s end-to-end DWDM transport network built along the SIEPAC infrastructure, an interconnection of the power grids of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. The Coriant solution offering includes a range of world-class support services designed for rapid network deployment and always-on service availability.

http://www.coriant.com

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