Brocade Spruces Up for Data Centers

With a clutch of product announcements Tuesday, Brocade Communications Systems Inc. is trying to tie together some disparate product lines into one data-center architecture. Brocade is referring to the whole package as the On-Demand Data Center, and it includes the routers and application delivery controllers (ADCs) acquired with Foundry Networks, plus the virtual routers that come from the late-2012 acquisition of Vyatta. Here's some of what's being announced Tuesday:

• Brocade now offers a virtualized version of its application delivery controller (ADC), called the Virtual ADX.
• On any given router port, Brocade can run OpenFlow alongside traditional routing protocols. The company had already announced the ability to run both options in one router, but now it's bringing that flexibility to the port level.
• Brocade is adding 40Gbit/s to the MLX core router -- a card with four 40Gbit/s interfaces, to be precise.
• Release 6.6 of the Brocade Vyatta vRouter -- Vyatta's software-based router that runs on off-the-shelf server hardware -- adds support for multicast routing and for the Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN) standard.

Why this matters
Everybody needs an SDN or cloud announcement heading into Interop, right? Brocade's might not be as monumental as some, but noteworthy bits inside it include the first Vyatta software release since the acquisition and the virtualized ADC, which is an expected step towards network functions virtualization (NFV). The MLX already supports 100Gbit/s interfaces; the purpose of the 40Gbit/s cards is to sync up with the 40Gbit/s capabilities of Brocade's VCS data-center fabric. For more

• Ex-Juniper Exec Now Running Brocade
• Brocade Buys Vyatta for Software Routing Smarts
• One Problem With NFV
• Photos: Open Networking Summit 2013

— Craig Matsumoto, Managing Editor, Light Reading