Big Switch Networks, the leader in bringing hyperscale networking to
data centers worldwide, continues its march to modernize data center
networking with the availability of Big Cloud Fabric Release 2.5. Big
Cloud Fabric, initially released in Q3 2014, is the industry's only bare
metal SDN fabric designed to combat legacy box-by-box networking. BCF
transforms customer experience with tremendous agility, unprecedented
simplicity, and hyperscale economics. This release continues Big
Switch's "land and expand" strategy, and introduces robust features that
will help expand footprints within existing customer environments and
appeal to mainstream data center customers.
Support for VMware Environments
Big Cloud Fabric now supports VMware vSphere® server
virtualization by delivering the benefits of bare metal SDN to the
majority of virtual workloads in the data center. The BCF controller
directly integrates into VMware vCenter™ to automate network creation on
the physical SDN fabric. Unlike legacy box-by-box approaches, the BCF
controller becomes a single point of integration with vCenter for the
entire 16-rack leaf-spine Clos fabric, significantly simplifying
programmatic interactions across virtual and physical networks.
Integration of BCF with vCenter will also enable VM visibility,
including VM mobility, directly through the BCF controller GUI. In
addition, BCF supports vSphere-based cloud environments orchestrated by
CloudStack.
Support for Dell Open Network Switches
Big Cloud Fabric was the first SDN fabric solution to
support hardware and software disaggregation on Dell Open Network
switches with the Big Tap™ Monitoring Fabric. With this latest release,
Big Cloud Fabric now supports Dell Open Networking switches, including
Dell S6000-ON, and will have support for future Dell Open Networking
switches. Dell now resells both Big Cloud Fabric and Big Tap Monitoring
Fabric -- providing customers with proven and supported reference
architectures and a "one throat to choke" business relationship for the
entire solution.
Best in Class Fabric Analytics
An important operational benefit of software-defined
networking is the increased network visibility that is possible with the
adoption of an abstracted and centralized control plane. Big Cloud
Fabric 2.5 includes a new module that delivers on this promise: Fabric Analytics.
With a rich feature set that offers real-time analytics, data
visualization, and correlation, Fabric Analytics processes aggregated
logs and fabric-wide statistics to generate deep data insight, trends,
and events identification. It also provides predefined filtering,
failure detection, and log analysis.
Network operations teams can now rapidly troubleshoot network
issues and failure conditions throughout the fabric. Fabric-wide
configuration changes (via CLI, GUI, or REST API) are visible directly
in the controller to identify inappropriate access and/or root cause
issues occurring due to network misconfiguration.
Fabric Analytics serves as a platform for advanced analytics
and correlations. It dramatically reduces time to issue identification
and resolution compared to the traditional physical box-by-box
management approach, without the need for expensive third-party
analytics tools or repositories.
Enhanced Cloud Orchestration and Hypervisor Support
With this release, BCF fully supports multiple
hypervisor environments, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V,
KVM, and Citrix XenServer. Within a fabric, both virtualized servers and
physical servers can be attached for complete workload flexibility. For
cloud environments, BCF 2.5 continues OpenStack support for Red Hat and
Mirantis distributions. Additionally, it now supports CloudStack and
Citrix CloudPlatform, thus providing choice of cloud orchestrations to
data center operators.
Expanded Topologies and Use Cases
Big Switch has seen real-world deployments increase
significantly for private cloud, big data analytics, and virtual
desktops. With support for 40G leaf switches, BCF 2.5 now supports
high-performance storage arrays as well as emerging software-defined
storage and ultra-high performance computing use cases. This deployment
flexibility enables customers to deploy very low cost fabrics (with 10G
leaf and 10G switches) to storage-aware clouds (with a mix of 10G and
40G leaf switches connected to 40G spines) to very high performance
fabrics (40G leaf and spine switches).
"Our initial customers deployed Big Cloud Fabric on
OpenStack. With the remarkable traction we've seen since the product's
introduction, customers have challenged us to expand to other use cases,
topologies, hypervisors and orchestration environments," said Douglas
Murray, CEO of Big Switch Networks. "Our support for VMware and Dell
Open Network Switches will significantly expand the adoption and
addressable market of Big Cloud Fabric."
Significant Customer Traction and Momentum
This announcement follows a breakout 2014 for Big
Switch, which included the company's expansion into Japan in Q4. Big
Switch has had four straight quarters of 30+% growth and secured its
first two $1MM+ customers in 2014 with more in flight. Big Switch has
customers in production in data centers across APAC, EMEA, and the U.S.,
and its customer base includes government, higher education, financial,
service providers, and tech verticals.
Availability
Big Cloud Fabric 2.5 is shipping and available today. VMware vSphere integration available later in Q1 2015.
Pricing
- Big Cloud Fabric 2.5 software is licensed on a per-switch subscription basis
- Existing BCF customers can upgrade to BCF 2.5 without any additional cost
- Big Switch offers $39K and $99K BCF starter kits, inclusive of HW switches, SW, support and cables/optics