Servers.com, a global hosting platform part of XBT Holding, has completed the roll out of a new software-defined network using Brocade IP Fabric. The network connects four data centers across two continents to ensure Servers.com can flexibly scale to meet the growing demand for its cloud, content delivery (CDN), and dedicated servers at competitive price-points.
Leveraging the Brocade IP Fabric as the foundation, Servers.com‘s new software-defined network is built on Brocade VDX switches, which provide the OpenStack support, and programmable REST APIs required to enable the automation. These switches also offer 40 GbE ports that can be broken into four independent 10 GbE ports. This would give Servers.com high flexibility.
The SDN advantages for Servers.com customers include:
Offering up to 40Gbps to each server the new network would be fast and fast to deploy – customers can order their server from a self-service portal and get exactly what they need spun-up and connected “within 40 minutes.”- Customers can configure virtual connections anywhere freeing switches from having to physically connect to specific servers. This would mean that customers can quickly and dynamically scale their private networks.
- Security would be high, while customers are guaranteed their own isolated network.
- Automation of the data centers would reduce ongoing maintenance, costs, and the risk of human error associated with manual configuration.
- Adoption of open standards for SDN software and the supporting hardware would give Servers.com the ability to rapidly incorporate new capabilities without reengineering the network.
“This is a strategic investment, we had to completely re-think our infrastructure,” said Konstantin Bezruchenko, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at Servers.com. “And although we wanted to deliver powerful capabilities, the network itself had to remain simple to scale and manage. The combination of our own version of OpenStack with the Brocade IP Fabric allows us to offer customers anything from bare-metal dedicated networking to multi-continent cloud. I’m looking forward to seeing what our customers create with the new systems.”
