Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Aruba's new category of data center switch powered by Broadcom + Pensando

Aruba unveiled a new category of spine-leaf data center switch powered by Broadcom's Trident 3 switching silicon and Pensando Elba (7nm) DPU processors, which extend intelligent services into the data center network fabric.

Aruba's CX 10000 Series Distributed Services Switch leverages the Broadcom silicon for data center L2/3 switching and the Pensando programmable DPU silicon to deliver software-defined stateful services inline and at scale. Advanced services enabled by the DPU include distributed stateful segmentation, east-west firewalling, NAT, encryption, and telemetry services. 



The Aruba CX 10000 will be generally available in January 2022 with pricing starting at $45,000 USD which will include accelerated Stateful Firewall, Zero Trust Segmentation, ERSPAN, Telemetry, and DDoS protection.

Aruba said its new switch enables the advanced networking and security services where it is impractical and costly to force traffic back and forth across the network to a centralized policy enforcement point. Instead, enterprises can now simply apply these services at the network access layer edge where the applications are running. Key initial use cases include:

  • On-premises Enterprise Data Centers and Private Cloud - optimizes network bandwidth and performance by not having to hair-pin local traffic to a centralized chokepoint, helping improve security posture while limiting appliance sprawl, complexity and cost.
  • Co-location Edge – Securely Interconnecting Cloud Providers -  edge routing, line-rate encryption, firewall and NAT, with end-to-end telemetry for public cloud dedicated connections from either on-premises or co-location data centers. This solution radically lowers the total cost of ownership, provides an optimized security architecture​ and reduces an organization’s IT blast radius and risk.

“Markets in transition create new opportunities for disruption. As the Cloud moves to the Edge, distributed services are disrupting everything from AI/ML, to 5G and virtualization,” said John Chambers, chairman of Pensando, CEO of JC2 Ventures, and former CEO of Cisco Systems. “This new category – the Distributed Services Switch, enabled by Pensando software-in-silicon, makes the process of deploying distributed services, previously only available to hyperscalers like AWS, in the enterprise both simple and more cost-effective. By eliminating legacy appliances and host software, enterprises can deliver 100x the scale and 10x the performance at 1/3 the TCO of traditional approaches.”

Aruba also notes that the new switch complements the previously announced Pensando Distributed Services Platform (DSP) for HPE Servers, delivered as a factory option in HPE ProLiant servers, HPE Apollo systems, and HPE Edgeline Converged Edge systems.

The Aruba CX 10000 extends the implementation of these intelligent services into the data center network fabric, addressing a wider range of use cases including brownfield deployments or infrastructure agnostic/heterogeneous environments to complement or augment SmartNIC deployments. As part of the joint relationship, Pensando also gains access to HPE’s patent portfolio through its Defensive Patent Purchase Program.

“Today’s announcement further extends the partnership between HPE and Pensando – by incorporating Distributed Services from Pensando into the industry-leading Aruba switching platform, the elimination of legacy technologies needed to build a zero-trust private cloud has never been easier or more cost-effective,” said Prem Jain, CEO at Pensando Systems. “I look forward to continuing our relationship and to bringing additional solutions to market.”

https://hpe.events.cube365.net/hpe/aruba-pensando

HPE CEO Antonio Neri and John Chambers discuss the announcement.

https://hpe.events.cube365.net/hpe/aruba-pensando

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