TOP 3 NETWORK CHALLENGES

LIMITING IT AGILITY

Chip Copper, PhD, Principal Engineer, Brocade

Andre Kindness, Principal Analyst, Forrester, Guest Speaker

Jim Malone, Executive Editorial Director, IDG Enterprise

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Making Leaders Successful

Every Day

© 2014 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 3

IT Organizations closer to business have slightly different priorities

Source: “Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2013”

“How important were the following benefits in your firm's decision to use SaaS?”

49%

54%

57%

59%

60%

62%

63%

67%

68%

69%

69%

72%

75%

Lack of in-house IT staff to maintain a traditional…

Ability to substitute upfront costs with regular…

Having access to a wide ecosystem of solutions…

Iterative deployment model supports a higher level…

Gaining functionality that is not available in a…

To support a large number of mobile and remote users

Improve collaboration with business partners

Lower overall costs

Support business innovation with new capabilities

Allows us to focus resources on more important…

Faster delivery of new features and functions from…

Speed of implementation and deployment

Improved business agility

"Important" or "Very Important"

Base: 1417 North American software decision-makers

Speed

And

Agility

© 2014 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 4

Today’s operations challenge today’s business

100ms

Hey, it’s

100ms

Increase

MBG

We have too much

latency

10 ms too much

Source: Engineersgateway

(http://engineersgateway.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/engineer

s-gateway/)

Stop the heroics!

Current Service Delivery

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Susie

IT for Marketing Dept

Raj

Service Desk

Bob

Server Admin

Kay

Storage Admin

Joe

Network Admin

3 Tickets

Reserve Compute Resource

Reserve Storage Resource

Reserve Network Resource

Ine

ffic

ien

cie

s

Coordination

Errors

You are #12 on the list, and you have an

estimated wait time of three weeks.

Commit Resource Commit Resource Commit Resource

I need two VMs with 1 GHz, 8 GB memory, 40 GB HDD storage, and two networks

with load balancing.

Ethernet Fabrics vs. Legacy Networks Conventional data centers

Classic, Hierarchical Architecture C

ore

A

ggre

gati

on

A

cces

s

Complex

Inefficient

Expensive

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Ethernet Fabrics Ideally suited for modern data centers

Ethernet Fabric Architecture

Ed

ge

Co

re

Scalability

Automated

Efficient

Evolutionary

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Source: Forrester Research

Exponentially Increasingly complex system

MPLS Internet

Private DC Private DC

XaaS

Consumer resources

(Gmail, Dropbox, etc.)

© 2014 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 10

Network automation a key element in the DC “In which of the following areas is your firm currently using or planning to use IT automation software?”

Base: 154 global IT executives and technology decision-makers from firms with 1,000 or more employees

Source: Forrsights Hardware Survey, Q3 2013

1%

1%

15%

20%

25%

31%

36%

38%

39%

40%

40%

41%

42%

51%

61%

Other

Don't know

Service brokering

Converged infrastructure

Public cloud management

Hybrid cloud management

Release management

Problem management

Change management

Private cloud delivery

General IT processes

Incident management

Network administration

Storage administration

Server administration

5/7/2014 11

Automation

• Zero-touch VM discovery, configuration, and mobility

• Self-forming trunks

• Minimal configuration to add links or switches

• Five times faster to deploy additional network capacity

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Brocade VCS Fabrics Are Self-Forming

• Automatic fabric creation and expansion (two steps, 1 to 2 minutes)

• Automatic trunk creation

5/7/2014 12

30 GbE Data Center

Bridging (DCB)

trunk (3×10 GbE)

10 GbE DCB link

RBridge 1 RBridge 2

RBridge 3 GEHA reduced basic

network management

time by 20 percent,

or over 1000

man-hours per year.

SunPower reduced setup

time by over 80 percent

compared to its

three-tier network.

© 2013 Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. Company Proprietary Information

• Brocade VCS Fabric technology,

with 10 Brocade VDX 6720

Switches:

• Step 1: Turn switches on

• Step 2: Configure RBridge IDs (Not

Needed July, 2014)

• Step 3: Connect cables

• Step 4: There’s no step 4

• Cisco FabricPath, 10 Nexus 7000 Switches: • Step 1: Create two portchannels between a Nexus pair

• Step 2: Activate Virtual PortChannel (vPC) between them

• Step 3: Activate FabricPath on the vPC pair

• Step 4: Activate vPC+ in the pair (~7 commands per switch)

• […]

• Step 19: Configure Media Access Control (MAC) learning mode for FabricPath Virtual LANs (FP VLANs)

• Step 20: Activate FabricPath in the defined portchannel

• Step 21: Repeat the previous 20 steps for the four other vPC+ pairs

• […]

• Step 101: Configure two portchannels between each edge vPC pair and the core vPC pair

• […]

• Step 106: Activate FabricPath on the eight defined portchannels

• […]

• Step 114: On each Nexus 7000 in the core vPC, define eight portchannels

• […] 5/7/2014 13

USE CASE: 10-Node Fabric Setup Brocade VCS Fabric technology vs. Cisco FabricPath

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• Simplified Brocade VCS Fabric deployment,

scalability, and management of the network

• Enable VCS fabric capabilities on each

switch (on by default)

• Connect the switches

• Fabric automatically forms

• Common configuration across all switches,

Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Trunks auto-form

• Managed as a single logical chassis

14

Logical Chassis Details Auto-configuration

VCS

VCS

VCS

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5/7/2014 15

Brocade VM-Aware Network Automation and

Migration Dynamic configuration and secure communication

• No need for manual

configuration of MAC

addresses and port profiles;

less error-prone

• Minimizes procedural delays

between the server and

network IT teams

• Eases integration of multiple

Brocade VCS fabrics with

VMware

• Protects against VM/MAC

spoofing via secure vCenter

communication

Brocade Network Advisor

NAS iSCSI FCoE FC iSCSI InfiniBand

vCenter

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Business Benefits and Results Brocade Customers

THANK YOU

For more information, visit www.brocade.com

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