PayPerCloud(TM) Revamps Network With Ethernet Fabric and 10 GbE to Meet Growing Demand

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PayPerCloud(TM) Revamps Network With Ethernet Fabric and 10 GbE to Meet Growing Demand

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Brocade Helps Cloud Hosting Company Increase Orders by 160 Percent After Displacing Incumbent Networking Vendor

SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 07/31/2012 -- (NASDAQ: BRCD) Cloud hosting provider PayPerCloud ran its business on a mix of servers and storage connected with various network switches operating at 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), but the aging infrastructure was unable to scale with its growing business. The company was running out of physical ports and experiencing performance issues. It needed a 10 GbE solution.

After evaluating several solutions, PayPerCloud replaced its infrastructure with a Brocade® Ethernet fabric that includesBrocade VDX® 6720 Switches and Brocade MLX® Series routers. The comprehensive solution from Brocade delivered the performance, scalability and reliability PayPerCloud needed, as well as the design, installation, service and support.

PayPerCloud relies on Brocade VDX 6720 switches for 10 GbE top-of-rack server connectivity. These connect to Brocade MLX-16 routers in a Multi-Chassis Trunking (MCT) configuration, enabling network-level virtualization and enhanced network reliability. A Brocade MLXe-4 chassis resides at the edge of the network and supports connections between servers and storage, as well as 10 GbE Internet connectivity. SAN storage arrays connect to Brocade MLXe-16 chassis to provide storage connectivity to the various environments.

California-based PayPerCloud -- specializing in creating a high-availability, cloud-hosting infrastructure and cloud-enabled applications -- has since launched VaultScape™, an online backup service, based on its new storage capabilities. The Brocade network infrastructure allows PayPerCloud to easily support new customers on the bandwidth-intensive backup service as it continues to grow. PayPerCloud subsequently grew its customer base 81 percent in 2011, and orders are currently up 160 percent for 2012.

PayPerCloud also increased its server-rack density from eight servers per rack to 12, a 50 percent increase, and expects to reduce power consumption by approximately 60 percent. "Now we have half as many cables to manage," said Miles Feinberg, president of PayPerCloud. "And VM management takes a lot less time with Brocade Network Advisor."

The Brocade Automatic Migration of Port Profiles (AMPP) feature ensures that a consistent port profile is applied to all VDX switches in the fabric. Whenever there is a VM motion event, it dynamically configures the switch ports to ensure that VM traffic experiences consistent policies and configurations. PayPerCloud is leveraging AMPP with Brocade Network Advisor, a graphic user interface (GUI) based network management tool, to automate a previously manual process.

This incredible growth was almost upended by the company's aging network. "When we moved to pure hosting services, we discovered our weak points," said Feinberg. "Brocade helped us architect a plan that fulfills our business goals, and service and support have been great."

What Is an Ethernet Fabric?

Compared to classic hierarchical Ethernet, Ethernet fabrics provide higher levels of performance, utilization, availability and simplicity. Moreover, they have the following characteristics:

• Flatter: Ethernet fabrics are self-aggregating, enabling a flatter network.
• Intelligent: Switches in the fabric know about each other and all connected devices.
• Scalable: All paths are available to help ensure high performance and reliability.
• Efficient: Traffic automatically travels along the shortest path.
• Simple: The fabric is managed as a single logical entity.

"The interest in Ethernet fabric offerings and customer adoption are all on the rise. Customers want to migrate to an Ethernet fabric with minimal disruption to current operations. An access layer-based approach addresses the pains that drive many to look at fabrics to begin with: the latency and unnecessary load on core switches that is incurred without the risk associated with a 'rip and replace' strategy. The right fabric does not require an entirely new set of skills and training to manage, and solid solutions do exist," said Zeus Kerravala, founder ZK Research.

In the PayPerCloud environment, Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter cards installed in Dell servers enable 10 GbE connectivity to the Microsoft Hyper-V hosts and security systems, which provide 10 GbE backup performance. Brocade Network Advisor gives PayPerCloud end-to-end visibility through an integrated interface that manages the Brocade devices, the remaining incumbent devices and third-party monitoring tools.

PayPerCloud has noticed significant performance and bandwidth improvements as a result of the network upgrade. "We went from eight- to nine-millisecond latency to the Internet backbone to sub-millisecond latency. Our rack-to-rack latency is in the nanoseconds, whereas before it was three to four milliseconds," said Feinberg.

The Brocade network infrastructure also has enabled increased capacity and scalability. "Our capacity originally was 48 servers per row and 30 VMs per machine, and we were maxed out. Today, the Brocade architecture allows us to support 72 servers per row and 540 possible VMs in a rack. If we need more 10 GbE capacity, we can scale out easily," said Feinberg.

Brocade VDX 6720 switches are among the lowest power consuming top-of-rack switches on the market.

Additional Assets:

Case study: Hosting Company Finds Success in the Cloud with Brocade  

Tags: PayPerCloud, Ethernet Fabric, Brocade, VDX, MLX, Brocade Network Advisor

About BrocadeBrocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)

International Law Firm Enhances Virtualization Performance With Brocade VDX Data Center Switches

International Law Firm Enhances Virtualization Performance With Brocade VDX Data Center Switches

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Watson, Farley & Williams to Tackle Data Growth and Reduce Server Footprint Through a Brocade Data Center Networking Solution

LONDON -- (Marketwire) -- 04/24/2012 -- To address IT challenges resulting from business growth and international expansion, Watson, Farley & Williams has turned to Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) to deliver a high-performance data center networking solution based on Brocade^® VDX® 6720 Data Center Switches. Deployed at the law firm's London headquarters, the new infrastructure delivers 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) performance and underpins the firm's virtualized data center strategy.

Watson, Farley & Williams employs 630 staff located across 13 worldwide offices that provide a wide range of legal services in various industry sectors such as finance and investment, maritime, energy, natural resources, transport, property and technology. The firm has seen a strong rate of growth over the past three years and has, on average, opened one new office every 18 months since 2006. The new data center network deployment will provide the performance and resilience needed to support higher traffic and daily data volumes, but will also give Watson, Farley & Williams the long-term flexibility and capacity it needs as the business expands.

Richard Latham, the firm's IT manager, explains, "Every three years, we replace our storage to add more capacity given we are supporting more users and more locations. During this particular cycle, all three elements were upgraded -- storage, servers and the network -- in order to improve the performance of our virtualized data center."

Watson, Farley & Williams' virtualization programme has reduced its hardware footprint and saved cost with five physical IBM servers installed -- and associated Net App fabric-attached storage -- running 88 virtual servers using VMware vSphere. However, the law firm was finding that the 1 GbE links between servers and associated storage were reaching their capacity.

Watson, Farley & Williams network analyst Graham Kirk says, "A solution could have been to trunk four Gigabit Ethernet connections together to solve this, but we wanted to avoid this by going straight for 10 Gigabit Ethernet, which means we don't have to address the server/storage network equipment for the next three years, which is our typical refresh cycle."

The importance of this is considerable as the infrastructure is common to all IT services provided to the firm's staff both locally and internationally. This includes Watson, Farley & Williams' e-mail solution, electronic document management, office applications, knowledge management and CRM systems, time recording and practice management software.

Data growth in the business has been vast. Latham says, "Our data vault is now about 44 terabytes of which a huge proportion is e-mail, which is the lifeblood of any law firm given documents are sent to and from clients all the time. We use a multilayered, clustered solution, which is mirrored offsite to ensure availability, the knock-on effect being servers and their storage need to be high-performing."

The firm deployed two Brocade VDX 6720 switches for resiliency. Kirk explains, "We did a side-by-side comparison with [a competitor] and the Brocade VDX 6720 switches won hands-down given they deliver far better price/performance benefits and are much easier to install. We estimate time savings of 30 to 40 percent on the whole project of six weeks."

Latham concludes, "We are obsessed with removing risk. If the core server/storage infrastructure in London had become unavailable, then all 630 staff worldwide would be impacted in some way. The [Brocade VDX] upgrade could have been a risk, but it simply wasn't, which is a credit to Brocade."

Marcus Jewell, country manager UK/Ireland at Brocade, stated, "The Brocade VDX 6720 Data Center Switches have solved Watson, Farley & Williams' storage network performance issues with the virtualized servers now responding much better. The firm's requirements have been met and the feedback we have received is that the installation has practically been an 'install and forget' process -- a perfect outcome given law firms can't tolerate any systems downtime."

About Brocade Data Center Networking SolutionsNetwork architects are now looking for ways to build more powerful, flatter networks that can support higher traffic loads and increased east-to-west traffic in virtualized environments, all while avoiding network congestion. Collapsing network layers also reduces complexity, which lowers overhead costs and reduces risk. This type of design, however, requires high-density, high-bandwidth network components that deliver full wire-speed connectivity. With its Ethernet fabric technology and the industry's most powerful routers for enterprise data centers, Brocade can help organizations build flatter, simpler networks today -- and at measurably lower cost than the competition.

For more information, please visit www.brocade.com.

About Brocade

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)