How To Increase Switching Bandwidth AND Save Valuable Space In Public Sector IT Data Centers

Bob NilssonDirector, Vertical Solutions MarketingMay 18th 2017

How To Increase Switching Bandwidth AND Save Valuable Space In Public Sector IT Data Centers

New Ethernet Switching Platforms Provide High Performance Multi-Rate Networking

By moving to the ExtremeSwitching 870 Series, we were able to reduce our data center space from two racks to ½ rack – Fernando Calvelo Vazquez, network team leader, Systems & Communications Group, Technical Infrastructure Division (TID) at ESRF

The new high-performance, flexible multi-rate switches launched by Extreme Networks enable public sector university and government research customers to increased their performance, decrease their expenses, and especially reduce their footprint to free up valuable space in their data centers. The high end of the new switches is already in use at government and university research and HPC labs around the world.

ESRF, in Grenoble, France, is the world’s most intense X-ray source and a center of excellence for fundamental and innovation-driven research in condensed and living matter science. The center hosts 10,000 visitors per year, who have often waited 1-2 years to run experiments on basic material and conduct medical research in such areas as brain cancer. All this means their network must be highly reliable and always available.

The ExtremeSwitching X870 Series are high-density 100Gb switches designed for high-performance enterprise and cloud data centers. With 32 QSFP28 ports, the X870 can support a range of interface speeds, including 10Gb, 25Gb, 40Gb, 50Gb and 100Gb, all in a compact 1RU form factor. The X870 can be deployed in either spine/leaf or high-density top of rack designs.   Low-latency cut-through switching and advanced features make it ideal for high-performance data center applications. 

The other new products included in this launch are within the X620p and X460-G2 Series lines and  support variable-rate Ethernet ports (including 1, 2.5 and 5 Gb) for economical, dynamic connectivity of devices operating at speeds less than 10 Gb, but greater than 1 Gb. These models support the latest IEEE 802.3bz and NBASE-T Alliance multi-rate Ethernet standards and address the growing bandwidth demands of next-generation 802.11ac Wave 2 wireless access points.

At ESRF, they especially like the open design which streamlines interoperability. The multi-rate capability gives them a new ability to smoothly manage their upgrades. As FernandoFernando Calvelo Vazquez describes:

“It is very well known, that IT complex projects (like a network backbone upgrade) is carried out not in one shot, and it could last several months going through different phases. This licensing system allows us a better adaptation or budget evolution according with the real status of the project at each time. This enables an optimal control of expenses through the year in accordance with the real status of the project deployment.”

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