SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 22, 2016) - Brocade (
In particular, ASU needed a more powerful network with OpenFlow 1.3 capabilities to move forward as an industry-leading research hub. To meet that requirement, ASU deployed a Brocade-powered network that enables various departments to conduct high-volume, data-driven research in their areas of focus.
"Brocade's software-defined networking capabilities enable us to support global research that has purpose and impact," said Jay Etchings, director of research computing at ASU. "Now we can aggressively pursue funding opportunities that demand built-in, software-defined functionality. Unlike competing institutions that are focused on papers and theoretical components, we're actually doing these things. Brocade is instrumental in helping ASU drive down cost while driving up innovation."
In the past, network latency was less predictable and slowed down research processes. But the high performance of the Brocade networking solution has enabled ASU to spend more time focusing on research and developing unique approaches to a variety of initiatives. For example, before the new Brocade infrastructure, a climatology research scientist connected to peers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Yellowstone Cluster for climatology projects through switches, access control lists and a traditional firewall -- which degraded performance. The best performance that a researcher could expect was approximately 2 Gbps. Now, the university connects this lab directly to the Internet through Brocade routers, automatically applying traffic encryption and delivering network performance that exceeds the 10 Gbps speeds offered by the scientist's lab equipment.
Other benefits of the Brocade network include increasing the effectiveness of Global Security Initiative (GSI), a university-level group at ASU that supports national defense, development and diplomacy communities. GSI empowers decision makers as they confront complex, interconnected global challenges such as the web of climate change, water security and national security. Researchers in this group have built cybersecurity solutions powered by software-defined networking (SDN) which helps to ensure a secure, agile network for Internet of Things smart grid technology.
The Brocade SDN Solution The SDN solution is based on Brocade ® MLXe routers that deliver powerful, high-performance network capabilities with seamless access to resources and workload flexibility for researchers. The Brocade Flow Optimizer allows ASU to observe latency that may be introduced and remove certain traffic flows before they interfere with the rest of the network. In addition, the Brocade SDN Controller makes managing the network easier, and in turn, has enabled further development of the university's OpenFlow firewall and met the directive to create a distributed SDN firewall service. ASU has also implemented the Brocade Topology Manager and the Brocade Flow Manager applications to help administrators manage network topology, devices and flows in an SDN environment through the Brocade SDN Controller interface.
Additional Resource:
- Arizona State University Success Story: Extend Innovation with a Research Environment Based on Industry-Leading SDN Capabilities
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