Alcatel-Lucent Announces Datacentre Switching Solution Blueprint

Alcatel-Lucent has announced its new datacentre switching solution blueprint for enterprises. This solution provides a complete datacentre switching fabric that extends the boundaries of the datacentre through virtualisation of the network with a “mesh” architecture design. This reduces costs and allows an enterprise to leverage its IT resources and optimise application delivery to employees across sites and devices.

Leveraging scalability, low latency and low power consumption, enterprises can move beyond costly client server computing by managing applications as a service across a range of datacentre deployment models, including multi-site datacentres, dedicated departmental or workgroup virtual datacentres, and hybrid environments that can integrate service provider offerings. With its application services enabling approach, Alcatel-Lucent enables enterprises to leverage cloud service offerings from service providers to further extend the business value of the solution.

Alcatel-Lucent’s datacentre switching solution delivers two architecture breakthroughs: the datacentre “mesh” and the “pod”. Virtualisation in the datacentre requires enterprises to optimise server-to-server traffic while striving to reduce costs. Alcatel-Lucent’s “pod” architecture addresses this need with the new OmniSwitch 6900 by delivering a highly dense solution that allows enterprises to directly connect top-of-rack switches without relying on a core switch to carry server-to-server traffic.

Providing the ability to connect datacentre pods together across multiple sites, Alcatel-Lucent’s “mesh”“architecture delivers a complete switching fabric that can bring together more than 14,000 server 10Gig ports with only two core switches, delivering end-to-end latency of less than five microseconds and resiliency.

The datacentre switching solution blueprint also features the virtual network profile (vNP), which captures application prioritisation, switch provisioning, quality of service (QoS), and security requirements.

“The rise of virtualisation has made datacentre switching a critical piece of an IT strategy for the enterprise,” said Michel Emelianoff, Vice President and General Manager, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Networks. “As we build on our Application Fluent Network vision, our new datacentre switching solution is empowering enterprises to set up a virtualised network for their datacentres, allowing users to easily take advantage of real-time applications from any location across any device.”