Cisco Expands Cloud-Scale Solutions

Cisco expanded its Cloud-Scale Networking solutions aimed at helping service providers and web companies leverage SDN and NFV as they transition their central offices to next-gen data centers. The idea is to create a unified Network-as-a-Fabric across central office, metro, core, and data center environments.

Cisco said it is committed to implementing OpenConfig data models in Cisco IOS XR to support the operational needs of our customers. The new capabilities launched today, enabled by Cisco IOS XR include:

• EVPN (Ethernet Virtual Private Network) which provides separation between the data plane and the control plane, creating a unified, centralized overlay control plane based on border gateway protocol (BGP) and industry standards.
• Segment Routing End-to-End that creates a unified, common-forwarding underlay to further simplify network operations
• Model-Driven Telemetry that delivers increased, granular, real-time visibility via native, open, common data models for automation and efficient operation of physical and virtual resources

Cisco also announced the following new hardware platforms in its Network Convergence Series (NCS) family:

• NCS 5501/5502  – A small form factor router for leaf-spine data center/WAN topology
• NCS 5516 – A modular router for more scalability in leaf-spine topology
• NCS 1001 – A compact, programmable interconnect with integrated optical amplifiers and protection

“Our continued progress with the Cloud Scale Networking platform is proof of our commitment to NFV and SDN solutions for open, programmable and automated networks,” said Yvette Kanouff, senior vice president, Service Provider Business, Cisco.

 “Central office transformations are part of our customers’ top priorities worldwide, and we are in a unique position to help them with easy upgrades to their existing routing platforms using the Cisco IOS XR software.” Cisco is building the simplified, automated and virtualized network platform of the future through based on industry leading software, systems, silicon and services.  This enables service providers, media and web companies worldwide to reduce costs, speed time-to-market, secure their networks and sustain profitable growth.

http://www.nokia.com/en_int/news/releases/2016/12/05/nokia-cloudband-open-templating-system-enables-automation-of-virtualized-network-function-lifecycle-management

Read More

Equinix Seals Deal to Buy 24 Data Center Sites from Verizon for $3.6B

Equinix reached a definitive agreement to acquire a portfolio of 24 data center sites and their operations from Verizon Communications for $3.6 billion in cash.

The acquired portfolio includes approximately 900 customers, with a significant number of enterprise customers new to Equinix's platform, and it adds approximately 2.4 million gross square feet.  It will bring Equinix's total global footprint to 175 data centers in 43 markets and approximately 17 million gross square feet across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific markets.

Some highlights:

• The transaction includes 29 data center buildings across 24 sites in 15 metro areas, including Atlanta (Atlanta and Norcross), Bogotá, Boston (Billerica), Chicago (Westmont), Culpeper, Dallas (Irving, Richardson-Alma and Richardson-Pkwy), Denver (Englewood), Houston, Los Angeles (Torrance), Miami (Miami and Doral), New York (Carteret, Elmsford and Piscataway), São Paulo, Seattle (Kent), Silicon Valley (Santa Clara and San Jose), and Washington, D.C. (Ashburn, Manassas and Herndon).
• The addition of the new data center assets will greatly expand Equinix's global platform for enterprises by adding new markets and Fortune 1000 enterprise customers. It expands capacity in existing markets, such as Atlanta, Denver, Miami, New York, São Paulo, Seattle and Silicon Valley, and it provides a platform for the future expansion of the acquired data centers.
• The NAP (Network Access Point) of the Americas facility in Miami is a key interconnection point and will become a strategic hub and gateway for Equinix customer deployments servicing Latin America. Combined with the Verizon data centers in Bogotá and the NAP do Brasil in São Paulo, it will strategically position Equinix in the growing Latin American market.
• The NAP of the Capital Region in Culpeper, VA is a highly secure campus focused on government agency customers, strengthening Equinix as a platform of choice for government services and service providers.
• Approximately 250 Verizon employees, primarily in the operations functions of the acquired data centers, will become Equinix employees.
• Equinix was advised by Evercore, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.
  

Equinix said benefits of the acquisition include increasing its platform's interconnections in the U.S. and Latin America; opening three new markets in Bogotá, Culpeper and Houston; and accelerating its penetration of the enterprise and strategic market sectors, including government and energy.

"This unique opportunity complements and extends Equinix's strategy to expand our global platform. It enables us to enhance cloud and network density to continue to attract enterprises, while expanding our presence in the Americas. The new assets will bring hundreds of new customers to Platform Equinix while establishing a presence in new markets and expanding our footprint in existing key metros. The deal will also provide significant value for shareholders as the proposed transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to our adjusted funds from operations per share upon close," stated Steve Smith, President and CEO, Equinix.

http://www.equinix.com

Equinix Silicon Valley Expansion - Interview with Karl Strohmeyer

Wednesday, June 22, 2016  Data Centers, Equinix, Video  No Comments

Equinix has just broken ground on its eight data center in the San Francisco Bay area. The new building, Equinix SV10, joins two other data centers on the company's campus in south San Jose.  The first phase is expected to come online in 2017 with capacity for about 800 cabinets. Karl Strohmeyer, President of the Americas for Equinix, says this first phase of expansion represents an investment of about $125 million. Equinix is aiming for 100%...

READ MORE

Equinix to Sell 8 European Data Centers to Digital Realty

Sunday, May 22, 2016  Data Centers, Digital Realty, Equinix  No Comments

Last week, Equinix announced plans to sell eight of its European data centers to Digital Realty Trust for the amount of $874.4 million. These facilities include: TelecityGroup's Bonnington House, Sovereign House, Meridian Gate and Oliver's Yard data centers and Equinix's West Drayton data center in London; TelecityGroup's Science Park and Amstel Business Park I in Amsterdam; and TelecityGroup's Lyonerstrasse data center in Frankfurt.

The sale of these assets was a pre-condition set by the European Commission in November 2015 for Equinix's acquisition of TelecityGroup plc.

Additionally, Equinix has separately negotiated with Digital Realty a binding option for Equinix to acquire Digital Realty's operating business including its real estate and facility in St. Denis, Paris where Equinix has an established presence with its PA2 and PA3 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers.

http://www.equinix.com

• On January 15, 2016, Equinix completed the acquisition of TelecityGroup plc in a transaction valued at approximately $3.8 billion (£2.6 billion). The addition of TelecityGroup's 34+ data centers, net of the divestment, more than doubled Equinix's capacity in Europe, fortifying its position as the largest retail colocation provider in the region and in the world.

Read More

Brocade Expands its Data Center Switching Line

Brocade expanded its SLX family by releasing new automation software and introducing the Brocade SLX 9140, SLX 9240 and SLX 9540 data center switches for leaf, spine and edge connectivity.

New automation suites, including Network Essentials, Data Center Fabrics and Internet Exchange Points for the BROCADE WORKFLOW COMPOSER platform, powered by StackStorm, provide automated network provisioning, validation, troubleshooting and remediation workflows. Brocade Workflow Composer is a server-based, DevOps-style network automation platform that integrates across IT domains for end-to-end workflow automation.

The new Brocade SLX 9140 and 9240 feature a programmable ASIC that provides Visibility Services from the physical wire to virtual networks and workloads.

"Organizations that are going through digital transformation need networks that are extremely agile, extensively automated and highly visible," said Jason Nolet, senior vice president, Switching, Routing and Analytics Products Group, Brocade. "Brocade is delivering the breadth and depth of flexibility and agility that sets us apart from other network providers. We do so vertically across the data center stack, and horizontally across domains within the data center -- while being open at every layer."

Some highlights:

• The new Brocade SLX 9140 leaf switch provides native 48x25 GbE server-facing ports and 6x100 GbE ports in a 1U fixed form factor. It also features flexible 1/10/25/40/100 GbE configuration options.
• The new Brocade SLX 9240 spine switch delivers high density 32x100 GbE ports in a 1U fixed form factor.
• The Brocade SLX 9540 switch delivers carrier-class features in a cost-effective 1 RU fixed form factor optimized for data center interconnect, WAN edge and Internet exchange point deployments. It offers 48x10 GbE ports and 6x100 GbE ports.

http://www.brocade.com

Read More

Radisys’ CG-OpenRack-19 Spec Accepted by Open Compute Project

Radisys announced that its CG-OpenRack-19 specification has been accepted by Open Compute Project Foundation.  The design is a scalable carrier-grade rack level system that integrates high performance compute, storage and networking in a standard rack.

Radisys said the specification provides a high level of modularity and simplicity by defining interoperability requirements, thereby reducing system set-up time and operator costs. Radisys’ contribution addresses key requirements needed to extend the base Open Rack model into telecom environments to accommodate the needs of existing central offices, including physical conditions, content/workload elements, management needs and networking/interconnect options. CG-OpenRack-19 promotes an agile approach to creating deployable system instantiations. It is based on a standard 19” rack width to leverage traditional telecom common equipment practices, while also being well suited for new virtualized data centers.

“Service providers are transitioning their network infrastructure from closed proprietary platforms to next-gen data centers built with open source software and hardware components,” said Andrew Alleman, CTO, Radisys. “Radisys is actively contributing to open systems and networks, with open source contributions in both software and hardware. With OCP, we saw a great approach and technology that is bigger than just one company. We worked closely with service providers and other vendors on the CG-OpenRack-19 contribution to bring a carrier-grade version of OCP Open Rack hardware to service provider networks. We are pleased that the specification is OCP-ACCEPTED™ and already achieving traction in service provider data centers.”

http://www.radisys.com/

Read More

Nokia CloudBand Offers Open VNF Templates

Nokia is introducing a templating system for Virtualized Network Function (VNF) lifecycle management based on NFV specifications.

Nokia said its open templating system builds upon the ETSI NFV specifications (IFA011 and IFA014), Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) specifications and OpenStack tools. It provides key functionality to service providers, including VNF definitions for better integration and added support of complex structures, and eliminates the need for customization when providing VNF information to a generic VNF Manager and NFV Orchestrator. This allows service providers and VNF suppliers to take advantage of the automated lifecycle management capabilities of the Nokia CloudBand Application Manager.

"One of the goals of NFV has been to foster an open ecosystem of VNF suppliers to give service providers maximum choice in the capabilities they integrate, and to offer subscribers the best available services. By creating an open system that improves the management of VNFs, we aim to make it easier for service providers to quickly add new value-added services to differentiate their offerings, generate new revenue opportunities, and deliver better user experiences," stated Ron Haberman, head of Nokia's CloudBand product unit.

https://networks.nokia.com/solutions/cloudband

Read More

Mellanox NPS-400 Processor Deliver 400 Gbps

Mellanox Technologies reported unprecedented packet processing performance of its NPS-400 Network Processor when using its newly released Deep Packet Inspection and Stateful Packet Processing software libraries.

Mellanox said these new software libraries, coupled with the hardware acceleration capabilities of the NPS-400, enable Deep Packet Inspection processing for application recognition at record breaking processing rates of up to 400Gbps, in conjunction with handling of 100 million flows with an average packet size of 400 bytes.

These processing capabilities could be used for Intrusion Detection Systems and Intrusion Prevention Systems and to accelerate processing capabilities for switch routers.

“Qosmos is very excited to collaborate with Mellanox providing a record breaking performance of Stateful Packet Processing and Deep Packet Inspection at 400Gb/s on the Mellanox NPS-400 solution,” said Thibaut Bechetoille, CEO of Qosmos. “Deep Packet Inspection drives L7 applications intelligence in the network and we expect further deployment of L7 services at more and more places in the network.”

http://www.mellanox.com/

Read More

Google to Reach 100% Renewable Target in 2017

Google expects to be using 100% renewable energy for its global operations, including data centers and offices, during 2017.

With current purchase commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts of wind and solar energu, Google now ranks as the world's largest corporate buyer of renewable power.

Google's newly-published, 72-page Environmental Report is here:

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//green/pdf/google-2016-environmental-report.pdf

Read More

Spark New Zealand Installs 200G Wavelength with Nokia PSS 1830

Spark, New Zealand's leading communications service provider, has deployed the country's first 200G per wavelength production fiber link using Nokia's PSS1830 Optical Transport Network (OTN).

Spark's new 200Gbps network link connects its core network with the global gateway, and enables the service provider stay ahead of the data demand curve for both residential and enterprise customers.

Nokia said it has now shipped its 200G solution to more than 88 customers worldwide.

"Like many operators, Spark has faced relentless growth in bandwidth demand, largely driven by an increase in video streaming by business and consumer users. By taking a flexible approach to this challenge with New Zealand's first 200Gbps fiber link, together with Nokia, Spark is well placed to meet continued demand growth while meeting existing user expectations," stated Ray Owen, head of Oceania at Nokia.

http://www.nokia.com

Read More

Telia and Ericsson Hit 2.2 GBps with Microwave hop in Oslo

Ericsson and Telia achieved a throughput of 2.2 Gbps over a microwave hop on the carrier's live network in Oslo, Norway. The test was performed in a 112MHz channel utilizing 4096QAM in a 2+0 XPIC configuration in the 38GHz frequency band.

Ericsson was recently chosen by Telia as a single supplier of Microwave Radio equipment nationwide for Telia Norway. The new agreement is based on Ericsson’s MINI-LINK microwave portfolio, including the latest MINI-LINK 6600 series.

http://www.ericsson.com

Read More