A new solution developed by network specialists Brocade and Ciena, which provides dynamic resource provisioning for cloud networking, is being showcased at EMC World 2014, Las Vegas.
With these capabilities, service provider and enterprise organisations could benefit from a more agile and automated cloud data centre infrastructure for greater IT agility and dynamic cloud application performance. For example, many businesses, such as retailers during holiday shopping or promotions, must manage unpredictable peak workloads. The Ciena-Brocade solution enables such businesses to maintain quality of service, while effectively handling peak workloads and online activity, by automatically flexing to adjust processing and bandwidth levels.
This jointly-developed solution is said to exemplify the attributes of Ciena’s OPn architecture by enabling data centre and WAN orchestration over open APIs (application programming interfaces), creating an ecosystem designed to provide an on-demand experience that addresses the need for changing architecture needs.
It also complements network-data centre orchestration integrations already supported by Ciena’s V-WAN solution and MyAdapter applications. Ciena’s OPn architecture is specifically structured to facilitate network integration with the data centre to transform connect, compute and store into a programmable platform for a variety of new services.
Ciena and Brocade say they will also show how seamless integration of virtual machine (VM) creation with network services helps ensure adherence to service level agreements (SLAs). In addition, the solution allows separate polices of each application to be maintained allowing fine-grained tuning of thresholds and actions, and the ability to expand or contract resources to align with changing conditions, under policy and with security.
Steve Alexander, senior VP and CTO, Ciena, said: "Organisations are just starting to embrace the cloud for mission critical applications. To ensure success, they need to automate the deployment of compute, storage and networking resources between data centres, and data centres to the cloud, with open networking solutions that deliver greater agility and dynamic application performance. Our work with Brocade complements the cost and operational benefits of our OPn architecture approach."
Ken Cheng, CTO and VP Corporate Development and Emerging Business, Brocade, added: "The demands placed on the network today are escalating at an astounding rate that requires organizations of all types to have a more agile and automated infrastructure. Brocade and Ciena have developed a joint, multilayer solution that leverages the Brocade Application Resource Broker to dynamically automate resources between data centres in seconds, increasing flexibility and controlling capital costs."
