Oncore IT, a cloud Managed Service Provider (cMSP), has deployed Brocade VDX 6710 and 6720 Data Center Switches and Brocade VCS Fabric technology at its Tier IV data centers in London and Amsterdam.
Specifically, Oncore IT has created two 10 GbE fabrics – one in London and the other at Oncore IT’s replicated data centre in Amsterdam – using eight Brocade VDX 6710 and two Brocade VDX 6720 switches. The equipment was supplied by Brocade partner, NetSumo.
“At peak times, network traffic was becoming a little ‘bursty’ and we would experience some packet loss that affected performance. The issue was most pronounced when servers were accessing our HDS BlueArc [NAS/iSCSI] storage platform over the network. Latency was too high and throughput wasn’t truly wire-speed. The upgrade to the Brocade VDX-based Ethernet fabric has solved this issue plus given us a scalable platform for future growth,” stated Mick Caney, Oncore IT’s technical lead.
“Brocade Ethernet fabric technology is allowing Oncore IT to begin the move away from spanning tree protocol, which can become difficult to manage as networks grow. These factors, combined with ‘virtual chassis’ technology and full support for next-generation network technologies, like Converged Enhanced Ethernet and Data Centre Bridging, were instrumental in Oncore IT’s decision to go with the Brocade VDX platform.”
