Data Centers Featured Article

As the demand for increased network capacities is on the rise, network service providers are trying to find new solutions that could satisfy these demands. Old methodologies are simply insufficient to meet the new demands, so there are needs to new technologies that help the service providers to cope with the new demands of network hungry customers.

Force10 Networks, a global technology provider, has teamed up with ecosystem partner VMware to demonstrate interoperable network automation technologies at an upcoming event. Here, the company will demonstrate next-generation solutions for dynamically changing network configurations

According to experts, uses are expected to make greater use server and network virtualization as proven methods to boost applications and server processing. This is mainly because of the demand greater network performance and agility by the users. To help data center managers dynamically allocate network resources by orchestrating configuration and management tasks, VMware vSphere complements the scalable, line-rate performance of Force10 Networks (News - Alert)chassis-based switches.

"To fulfill the promise of cloud computing, virtualization technology must see widespread adoption in the network," says Steve Garrison, vice president of marketing, Force10 Networks. "Our demonstration with VMware illustrates that standards-based network automation architecture is already solving tangible business problems by increasing availability, agility and efficiency in the data center - all while lowering opex costs."

Based on changes to the VMware environment, a Force10 C150 resilient switch using the VMware vSphere SDK for Perl will, in real time, automatically provision new VLANs, or reconfigure existing ones during demonstrations at Interop (News - Alert)2010. When creating, moving or removing virtual machines, server and network configurations are synchronized.

In December last year, the company upgraded its switch/router line with multi-protocol label switching, or "MPLS," functionality enabling users to expand the capacity within their MPLS core infrastructure in order to more cost effectively support the rapid growth of best effort multimedia traffic. Earlier, the company had designed the ExaScale E-Series family of switch/routers to meet the stringent performance, management and cost requirements of today's virtualized data center.

Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Alice Straight