Brocade has announced the upgrade and expansion of its ICX portfolio with a new distributed chassis solution based on the Brocade ICX 7750; a new Brocade ICX 7450 enterprise campus stackable switch; and the availability of OpenFlow 1.3 support for emerging campus Software-Defined Networking (SDN) applications. These advancement to the company’s HyperEdge Architecture, the foundation to Brocade’s ‘Effortless Network’ strategy, are meant to help customers transform their edge networks to support mobility, social and cloud data traffic as they transition to the New IP.
“Enterprise campus networks are today the platform for enhancing productivity, improving customer service, deploying new services and creating competitive advantage,” said Yarob Sakhnini, regional director, MEMA at Brocade. “But to realise their potential, organizations need to ensure that their networks are easy to provision and manage and are easily scalable. Especially with growing interest in the Middle East in 3rd platform technologies, the significance of the network cannot be understated.”
Key features of the new distributed chassis technology available with the Brocade ICX 7750:
- 10/40 GbE port density and high availability combined with a distributed deployment architecture
- Scale-out architecture enabling up to 12 Brocade ICX 7750 switches to be stacked across the campus in a more flexible topology for network aggregation and core layers
- Consolidated management touch points and support for SDN to automate network configuration tasks
Key features of the new Brocade ICX 7450 switch:
- Stacking scalability with up to 12 switches per stack, 160 Gbps of stacking bandwidth, and long-distance stacking using open-standards QSFP+ ports to enable single-point management across the campus
- Modular design with three expansion slots for a choice of 1, 10, or 40 GbE uplinks, offering flexibility and pay-as-you-grow scalability
- Power over HDBaseT (PoH), to power video surveillance and video conferencing equipment, VDI terminals, and HD displays directly from the switch
Key features of OpenFlow 1.3 support:
- Brocade OpenFlow Hybrid Port Mode supports both OpenFlow forwarding and normal routing traffic forwarding
- Universal support for OpenFlow in all Brocade ICX switches whether deployed individually, in mixed stacks, or in distributed stacks
The company also announced its collaboration with Aruba Networks, a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise, resulting in new product releases of Brocade Network Advisor 12.3, Aruba Airwave 8.0, and Brocade FastIron 8.0.20 with Aruba ClearPass CoA support. According to Luke Saintignan, Systems and Network Administrator, Kilgore College, these best-of-breed products work ‘as well or better’ than single-vendor solutions and are ‘significantly less expensive’ than the competition.
