As the efficiency of datacenters increase by virtualization, the
need for network speed becomes more pronounced. To address this
challenge, and to speed up virtualized datacenters, Juniper
Networks has launched QFabric, a networking solution to address
latency problems.
Coping with the growing cost of scaling datacenters to drive
revenue and to meet rising demands driven by cloud computing and
mobile Internet, QFabric was engineered. Juniper claims that the
fabric is ten times fast, uses 77 percent less power, requires 27
percent fewer networking devices, occupies 90 percent less data
center floor space, and delivers a nine times reduction in
operating resources than the nearest competitive offering.
“Datacenters have evolved from traditional datacenters
to virtualized datacenters but no improvement has been seen in the
network space. Speed was never an issue earlier but as the traffic
on the network increases, the need for speed becomes more
prominent,” says Sridhar Sarathy, Vice President, India
operations, Juniper.
Explaining about datacenters, Sarathy adds that datacenter is a
collection of boxes. There are many hubs. If data has to travel
from one server to another in the datacenter, it would have to go
through multiple hubs or from one machine of the network to
another. QFabric flattens the network by reducing the number of
hubs. The sub-networks in the datacenter will not have to be
maintained and applications on datacenters can be easily
upgraded.
“Enterprises and service providers must look beyond
traditional multi-layered, complex and inflexible data center
networks to deliver on the business requirement for a more agile IT
infrastructure and technical solutions for virtualization and cloud
services," says Mark Fabbi, Vice President, Analyst, Gartner
Research. "We are seeing the emergence of a new concept we call
‘Fabric Computing’ and a new round of network
innovation that better meets the needs of the next generation
datacenter.”
Juniper claims that QFabric’s flat architecture also enables
an integrated security solution that provides visibility,
enforcement and scale across the entire physical and virtual
datacenter fabric.
NYSE Euronext and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have opted
for Juniper’s QFabric solution and are slowly migrating to
this solution.
“Traditional architectures can’t deliver the type of
mission critical, high-speed performance our business demands in
order to operate most effectively,” commented Andrew Bach,
senior vice president, technology, NYSE Euronext.
“Juniper’s reduced layer model has shown the capability
to provide outstanding results in the rigorous trading environment
of NYSE Euronext’s data centers and we’re confident
this is the right solution for our business and the millions of
customers that rely on our systems every day.”
Juniper partners IBM, NetApp, CA Technologies and VMware also
believe that the QFabric architecture will help address market
requirements for datacenter networking and cloud.
“Our clients have been turning to the IBM Communications
Service Provider Platform to rapidly create new cloud-based
development environments and offer new services. Juniper’s
push to simplify the network aligns with IBM’s vision to
provide customers with a more intelligent and connected business
infrastructure,” said Scott Stainken, general manager, global
telecommunications industry at IBM.