Brocade Delivers HyperEdge Architecture to Enable Agile, Application-Centric Campus Networks for the Mobilized Workforce
Pioneering HyperEdge Architecture Provides Holistic Wired and Wireless Edge Infrastructure to Support the Next Phase of “The Effortless Network”
Delhi, INDIA – 11 April 2013: To provide the agile, application and services-centric campus network organizations need today, Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) has delivered the Brocade® HyperEdge™ Architecture, an evolutionary approach to campus network design. By automating and simplifying the campus network, and creating a holistic wired and wireless infrastructure, the Brocade HyperEdge Architecture enables organizations to harness the productivity gains and competitive edge that mobility, cloud-enabled services and new applications can offer.
Brocade also announced the general availability of the Brocade HyperEdge features announced in 2012, including Distributed Services and Consolidated Management, along with additions and enhancements to the Brocade wired and wireless campus product portfolio. The new HyperEdge features include Centralized Access Point (AP) management, Distributed AP Forwarding, Self-healing Brocade Mobility APs and Active-Active links within individual and scaled HyperEdge Domains.
According to IDC, mobile workers1 will account for more than a third of the overall global workforce within the next few years2, and the adoption of services and applications to aid collaboration and increase productivity continue to grow. In addition, the deployment of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), Unified Communications (UC) and the increased use of video for business communications place additional burdens on current campus networks. Unfortunately, these overly complex, rigid, legacy campus networks are unable to support modern requirements for fast application deployment, instant information access and multi-device mobility.
“With more users dependent on services delivered over the network, an agile and resilient campus network is crucial to business productivity. If the campus network cannot support the organization’s application needs, the ability to compete, transform and even to perform can be impaired. Solutions such as Brocade HyperEdge Architecture help flatten the network and deliver automation to simplify deployment and manageability while delivering greater flexibility, making it easier and faster to deploy business critical applications that can scale,” said Rohit Mehra, VP Network Infrastructure, IDC.
A cornerstone of The Effortless Network™ vision, the Brocade HyperEdge Architecture provides unmatched levels of network agility and automation. It delivers a campus environment that can quickly and easily scale and respond to the demands of increased user mobility, while delivering instant access to services and applications.
Brocade HyperEdge Architecture features include:
Distributed Services: The advanced features and services of premium campus switches are extended to entry-level switches within a single HyperEdge Domain, delivering intelligence to all user and device ports at a vastly reduced cost per port. Premium Brocade ICX® campus switches can be added to existing Brocade ICX stacks in a HyperEdge Domain at any time to upgrade the service level of network infrastructure, providing unmatched investment protection.
Consolidated Management: As a single logical unit comprised of multiple devices within each HyperEdge Domain, configuration network management and maintenance updates become faster and simpler through dynamic sharing of software images and network policies with fewer management touch points. The wired Brocade ICX infrastructure supports powerful collapsed aggregation and access domains, and the Brocade Mobility products allow centralized wireless APs or controller-based management options.
Distributed Access Point (AP) Forwarding: Mobile traffic is secured and directed at the network edge, not tunneled back to a central controller, thereby preventing controller bottlenecks to deliver higher performance and reliability along with seamless mobile connectivity. Moreover, the self-healing capabilities of Brocade Mobility APs help ensure non-stop high-performance connectivity.
The Brocade HyperEdge Architecture integrates the access and aggregation campus network layers to simplify services deployment and increase performance. Intelligent wireless APs attach directly to the wired edge domains to provide secure wireless connectivity without overloading the wired infrastructure. All traffic is managed within the HyperEdge Domain, thus eliminating the need for complex legacy protocols such as Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and controller-centric tunneled wireless traffic. HyperEdge Domains can be scaled together and seamlessly integrate with a legacy campus network infrastructure. This design approach enables simplified device management, while providing an agile, application and services delivery-optimized infrastructure.
In addition Brocade Network Advisor centralizes management of the entire family of Brocade wired and wireless products by providing a unified management interface, including support for wireless APs and controllers. Organizations can use the CLI Manager and policy monitoring features across wired and wireless networks to check end-to-end VLAN consistency and to gain other insights. In addition, there are new software enhancements to Brocade Network Advisor, including a new, customizable performance dashboard. Administrators can choose out-of-box views or customize views to display all critical information in one screen, simplifying management and enabling proactive monitoring and troubleshooting.
“The Brocade HyperEdge Architecture recognizes the challenges we face from inherently complex campus network environments, and provides a platform for resolving the problems of having separate wired and wireless infrastructures by addressing network manageability, maintenance and application deployment and availability,” explained Nicoel Henderson, Technical Director at Becker College.
“There is a growing need to reduce complexity in campus network environments, to ensure fast application deployment, reliable connectivity and to make management an easier and less manual task. By increasing automation and simplifying the structure of campus networks, Brocade HyperEdge Architecture offers an alternative with the necessary agility and the required simplicity of management,” said Stijn Koster, CEO at Interactive 3D (i3D.net).
“The Brocade HyperEdge Architecture offers a way of addressing many of the challenges related to campus management and maintenance. The automation features help increase agility and reduce complexity to make application deployment and network management faster and simpler,” said Rob Wilson, Network Manager at Daramalan College.
Chuck Bartlett, vice president and general manager, AIS Division at Tech Data, said, “As customers struggle with increasingly complex campus environments, while under increasing pressure to reduce downtime, speed up application deployment and improve access and availability, the Brocade HyperEdge Architecture and the Brocade campus portfolio offer a very welcome resolution to this day-to-day challenge. With an attractive cost-ratio for improvements in performance and productivity, it delivers a real opportunity to VARs and end users alike.”
Extension of Brocade Campus Network Portfolio
Brocade also announced enhancements to its extensive campus networking portfolio, including new switches, wireless AP models and a new wireless controller. All these new platforms are designed to scale and support new standards such as 802.11ac.
The Brocade ICX 6430-C Compact Switch is a full-featured device in a compact form, offering low power consumption and a quiet fan-less design. A 12-port version of the popular Brocade ICX 6430 already deployed in hundreds of customer sites across the enterprise, education and healthcare sectors, the Brocade ICX 6430-C delivers enterprise-class features in a small form factor directly in the workspace. Ideal for use in the classroom, hospital patient rooms or federal deployments, the Brocade ICX 6430-C offers all of the trusted security and performance features of full-size Brocade ICX switches.
The Brocade ICX 6650 Switch extends the product line further at the high end, with high-density 10 and 40 GbE port configuration options. Designed for demanding campus aggregation or non-fabric data center Top-of-Rack (ToR) deployments requiring cost-effective connectivity, the Brocade ICX 6650 offers flexible Ports on Demand (PoD) licensing for up to 64 10 GbE ports and four 40 GbE ports in a single rack unit form factor to enable non-disruptive, pay-as-you-grow scalability.
Brocade also announced three new wireless APs to deliver better wireless performance, range and reliability. The Brocade Mobility 1220 and Brocade Mobility 1240 Access Points offer more automation, improved resilience and higher performance, with the Brocade Mobility 1240 supporting throughput up to 450 Mbps. The Brocade Mobility 1250 Access Point, available later in 2013, will add 802.11ac support to the portfolio, offering speeds up to 1 Gbps for wireless users. Brocade also announced the availability of the new Brocade Mobility RFS9510 Controller, which supports up to 10,240 APs and 200,000 devices.
Finally, Brocade introduced new hardware options for the Brocade FastIron® SX, Brocade FCX and Brocade ICX switch families. This includes a new high-performance management module for FastIron SX switches that offers up to eight times the performance of the current modules, to dramatically improve scalability and provide advanced feature support, including Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF). Brocade also introduced a new uplink module for the Brocade FCX switch as well as new direct current (DC) power supplies for the Brocade ICX 6610 Switch for enhanced availability.
Pricing and Availability
Brocade HyperEdge Architecture Distributed Services, Consolidated Management and Distributed AP Forwarding features are available now with the latest releases of Brocade FastIron 8.0 and WiNG 5.4.2. No additional licenses are required to enable these services. The Brocade ICX 6430-C will be available June, 2013 with a starting list price of $1,095 USD. The Brocade ICX 6650 is available now with a starting list price of $19,200 USD. The Brocade Mobility 1220 and 1240 Access Points will be available in May, 2013 at starting list prices of $625 and $1,245, respectively. The Brocade RFS9510 controller will be available in June with a list price of $39,995 USD. The new Brocade FastIron SX management module, shipping in June 2013, will be available at a starting list price of $3,995. The new Brocade ICX 6610 DC power supply and Brocade FCX uplink modules are available now at list prices of $1,100 USD and $1,795 USD, respectively.
1 IDC segments the mobile worker population into three core categories: office-based mobile workers, non-office-based mobile workers and home-based mobile workers
2 IDC (Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2011-2015 Forecast) 2012
