Cloud Computing? Real value or just more hype?

Are you trying to figure out what cloud computing means, and whether your organization or customers can benefit?   It seems we see another new acronym or marketing term emerging every six months in networking – is cloud computing any different?  And how does cloud networking fit into the equation?

Register for an educational webinar on cloud computing to be held on Wednesday, December 17 at 11:30 a.m. PST.  From definition of terms, to how this trend might be the next big thing, you will learn that you probably already have the building blocks in your data center today to try cloud computing without significant re-architecting or costs.   Best practices and lessons learned will be key themes of this 45 minute webinar.  

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World’s Fastest Cluster Supercomputer Powered by Force10 Networks

Force10 Networks® is powering the world’s first petaflop supercomputer and world’s fastest cluster supercomputer as listed by Top500.org.  The “Roadrunner” supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico also ranks as the third “greenest” worldwide, based on its efficient footprint, cooling, and power usage.  With the ability to move up to 1 billion packets over each of its 1.6875 Tbps non-blocking switch fabrics, the 15 Force10 E1200 switch/routers played a pivotal role in the IBM-based system reaching 1.026 petaflop per second, becoming the first supercomputer ever to reach this milestone.

“The Force10 E-Series® switch/routers have efficiently and reliably provided the extremely high performance and reliability needed to support the thousands of I/O operations of storage in our clustered environment,” said Dr. Andy White, Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for Theory, Simulation and Computation, Los Alamos National Laboratory.  “Architecting and deploying a new scale of supercomputer is a tremendous accomplishment and one of the pleasant surprises was the system’s stability as it scaled up in size.  Force10 architecture plays a pivotal role in distributing the incredible amount of compute power harnessed by this machine that will further the country’s national security initiatives and aid in new scientific discoveries.”

See http://www.force10networks.com/news/pressreleases/2008/pr-2008-11-17.asp for complete story.

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Force10 Networks has introduced its VirtualView™ traffic management and provisioning technology. A set of standards-based software tools enabled through the company’s industry leading modular operating system, FTOS, VirtualView provides real-time network traffic analysis and management designed to facilitate troubleshooting and benchmarking performance in virtualized environments. Available across the versatile Force10 switch/router product portfolio, VirtualView delivers core-to-edge network visibility through data sampling, and subsequent analysis by a wide range of third-party tools and automated monitoring mechanisms designed to establish both baseline and ongoing application performance statistics.

More than ever, CIOs and data center managers are striving to maximize network performance and minimize infrastructure and management costs. Data centers are also facing server sprawl and the difficulty it creates for effectively managing these growing and increasingly complex environments. To gain an upper hand on consolidating their infrastructure, businesses are turning to virtualization technology, and while this strategy may be resourceful, network administrators are finding it difficult to manage and diagnose specific application or infrastructure behavior. The VirtualView technology was created based on the premise that a network infrastructure must be able to automate network behavior, while ensuring the flexibility required to both co-exist and contribute to the virtualized data center environment.

See http://www.force10networks.com/news/pressreleases/2008/pr-2008-11-03.asp for full story and http://www.force10networks.com/products/virtualview.asp for additional details.

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Asian Paints Deploys Force10 to Power Next-Generation Data Center

Asian Paints has deployed the C-Series® resilient switch at its data center in Mumbai, India.  The Force C150 switch serves as the network backbone for India’s largest paint company, supporting its growing application landscape and its expanding global distribution network. 

“Organic growth, several acquisitions throughout Asia, and inferior legacy equipment left our network in a position that was not up to the challenge of continuing expansion,” says M.R. Parasuram, chief manager of IT, Asian Paints.  “Deploying the C-Series gave our network the reliability, performance, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness we required to improve existing network services and implement new capabilities that could best support our business, both today and in the future.”

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German Internet Exchange Deploys Force10 C-Series Resilient Switch to Deliver Cost-Effective 10 Gigabit Ethernet Services

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Force10 Networks S-Series Improves Performance for Leading Managed Service Provider

Xand Corporation has deployed Force10 S-Series® access switches at their primary data center located at the company’s headquarters in Westchester County, NY.  The managed service provider (MSP) deployed Force10’s S50 technology because of its optimum price/performance ratio and ease of deployment enabled through the industry-standard command line interface (CLI) of the Force10 operating system (FTOS).

Xand’s core business is in delivering enterprise server hosting and colocation, functioning as a business’s primary data center for their critical applications such as E-mail, ERP, accounting and web systems.  In addition, Xand provides hot site, or disaster recovery services for many firms in the tri-state area.
 
 “The reliability and speed of our network is critical to our business,” said Jim Kramer, vice president of Sales for Xand Corporation.  “The majority of Xand’s clients operate in highly regulated industries, such as financial services. With zero tolerance for downtime, these organizations require extremely reliable mission-critical data center services. Incorporating Force10 as part of the network fabric guarantees us the type of high performance, low latency communications our clients demand.”

See http://www.force10networks.com/news/pressreleases/2008/pr-2008-11-24.asp for full text.

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Tricon Geophysics Selects Force10 Networks to Power its Network Infrastructure Upgrade

Tricon Geophysics Inc. has deployed Force10’s C300 resilient switches and S50 access switches at their data centers in Houston and Denver.  The seismic data processing services provider chose Force10 as part of a companywide initiative to upgrade its infrastructure to power more efficient data movement while gaining greater transparency into network traffic for its clustered server environment.  

“Because we deal with huge data volumes from the field and our oil and gas clients, ensuring a proper flow of information between systems is our biggest challenge,” said Rizwan Toor, Tricon’s IT director.  “Replacing our legacy switches with Force10 Networks has helped us answer this challenge while providing us with a cost-effective solution that ensures optimal productivity today, while providing the scalability we need to enter new markets and offer new services in the future.”

 Tricon deployed one Force10 C300 switch at each of their Houston and Denver data centers. With up to 384 line-rate 10/100/1000Base-T ports per device, coupled with 5 microsecond switching latency under full load for 64 byte frames, the chassis-based switches provided the port density and performance Tricon required.  With nearly 1,000 nodes in Houston and more than 250 nodes in Denver, Tricon leverages the switch’s passive copper backplane capacity of more than 1.5 Terabits per second and more than 950 Megabits per second of L2/L3 packet forwarding capacity.  To bring Gigabit Ethernet connectivity and core-like resiliency to their network edge, Tricon also deployed two S50 access switches in both data centers.

See http://www.force10networks.com/news
/pressreleases/2008/pr-2008-09-30.asp
for full text.

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