Brocade interoperability with the new VMware vRealize Operations 6.0 enables higher data centre performance, reliability and availability.
Brocade has announced the company is collaborating with VMware to advance solutions that support the New IP by allowing enterprises to more easily transition to software-defined data centers (SDDCs) and adopt network virtualisation. Brocade Ethernet and Fibre Channel fabrics will be interoperable with VMware vRealize Operations 6.0 (formerly the VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite) announced at VMworld Europe 2014.
This interoperability will help enterprises to realise higher performance, automation, reliability and application and data availability in their data centere. Brocade also announced VMware is participating in Brocade Network Subscription, which enables organisations to acquire both network infrastructure and VMware platform solutions on a subscription basis with pay-as-you-go flexibility.
Building on the companies’ half-decade relationship creating innovative, interoperable SDDC solutions, Brocade and VMware will now deliver intelligent and powerful analytic capabilities for both Fibre Channel SAN and IP networks. Previous work on Fibre Channel integration into VMware vRealize Operations is now being leveraged by next-generation data centers.
At VMworld 2014 Europe Brocade showcased the company’s latest collaboration with VMware—the Brocade IP Management Pack for VMware vRealize Operations and vRealize Log Insight, which are two key components of VMware vRealize Suite 6. Available for download next month from the VMware Solutions Exchange, the new management tools provide end-to-end visibility across physical and virtual networks. Diagnostics information from Brocade VDX Ethernet fabric switches can be used in conjunction with information from the VMware NSX network virtualization platform to quickly pinpoint network problems. Once an issue is identified, the tools also suggest recommended actions that IT staff can take to avoid or fix the potential problem, before network performance is affected.
The Brocade IP Analytics Management Pack extends co-development efforts announced last year for the Brocade SAN Analytics Management Pack, which also will support proactive management and diagnostics of Fibre channel storage fabrics with VMware vRealize Operations 6.0. The latest release of the Brocade SAN Management Packs for vRealize Operations 6.0 and vRealize Log Insight (formerly vCenter Log Insight) will also be available for download next month from the VMware Solutions Exchange.
“Our collaboration with Brocade on vRealize Suite 6 has resulted in an interoperable solution that delivers an agile, scalable network infrastructure and enables a seamless migration to cloud architectures,” said Sanjay Katyal, Vice President, Strategic Alliances and OEM Partnerships at VMware. “Working with companies such as Brocade allows for the creation of better hybrid cloud architectures for the evolving software-defined data center. This includes delivering a more unified and comprehensive management experience, and helping customers integrate physical and virtual infrastructures that can be viewed and managed as a single unified infrastructure.”
“Leveraging both Ethernet and Fibre Channel fabric technologies to support The New IP, Brocade shares VMware’s vision for a simplified and automated data center environment that allows our mutual customers to say goodbye to the status quo of inflexible, legacy network and data center designs,” said Jason Nolet, vice president, Data Center and Campus Networking, at Brocade. “Our partnership continues to expand in uniting the best aspects of virtual and physical networking across a cloud orchestration framework to enable SDDCs that deliver greater simplicity, higher scalability and more efficient resource utilization.”
Interoperable solution for vRealize management suite
The Brocade IP Analytics Management Pack provides intelligent and powerful analytics capabilities for IP-based networks supporting cloud environments using vRealize Operations. This initiative complements the jointly developed vRealize solution developed for Fibre Channel networks that was announced last year and is now shipping.
The IP-based solution will significantly reduce the overall mean-time to problem identification. Like its Fibre Channel counterpart, users will be offered predefined topology views, queries, alerts, and fields that can also be customized to specific environments. IP network events will be intelligently classified based on Brocade best practices and incorporated into risk, health and efficiency metrics within vRealize Operations to ensure proactive responsiveness in maintaining IP network uptime.
Simplifying and Automating Network Infrastructure for VMware NSX Deployments
Brocade and VMware have also collaborated on developing solutions to simplify and optimize their entire networking infrastructure including physical and virtual environments. Last year, Brocade launched the Brocade VCS Gateway for VMware NSX, which allows customers to connect their virtual network with the physical assets in the data center. The solution has been well received by enterprises, with deployments now in test and development environments. New solutions based on VMware NSX are planned for release in 2015.
Brocade’s unique VCS Fabric technology combined with VMware NSX drive new levels of network automation and industry best performance and availability. With Brocade’sintegration of hardware enabled VXLAN Tunnel Endpoints (VTEPS) and the VMware NSX network virtualization platform, support for a SDDC for both enterprise and cloud service provider customers is now a reality.
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