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Brocade Announces SDN Enhancements with New Switch
A new switch and software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities highlight enhancements to the Brocade VCS fabric portfolio announced today by Brocade Communications Systems Inc.
The news comes shortly after the company announced a free, one-year license for its new Vyatta Controller, designed to help enterprises test the new SDN technologies. The company said it was the first commercial product built directly with OpenDaylight source code without any added proprietary extensions or platform dependencies.
Emphasizing the SDN capabilities of its fabric, the company unveiled its new Brocade VDX 6940 switch that it said would integrate with the Vyatta SDN controller when the upcoming Brocade Network OS 6.0 network operating system is released. Leveraging support of the OpenFlow 1.3 communications protocol, Brocade said the switch will also work with other, third-party controllers based on OpenDaylight.
Along with the switch and SDN enhancements, the company also announced new cloud orchestration improvements, support for DevOps tools and expanded VMware integration.
"SDN is enabling network infrastructure to deliver capabilities such as automated provisioning, programmatic management, service chaining, and integration with cloud orchestration, which is helping the network overcome long-standing limitations that made it an inhibitor to business agility, IT efficiency, and overall productivity," the company quoted IDC analyst Brad Casemore as saying. "By adding these SDN and orchestration capabilities to its Ethernet fabric portfolio, Brocade is helping its customers better align network architecture and operations with applications and developers."
The SDN enhancements and new switch will be available in early March, the company said, with the latter starting at $27,995.
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David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.