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South Korea’s Dong-Eui University Uses Brocade switches For virtualization

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Priyanka

To improve administration, teaching and research in the fields of oriental medicine and engineering, Dong-Eui University, a private university in South Korea, is virtualizing its data centre with Brocade VCS Fabric technology. This is part of the university’s phased plan to deploy cloud computing infrastructure to enhance its processes.

To get the infrastructure up in phases, the university wanted a scalable network that was capable of supporting the high-bandwidth requirements of multiple Virtual Machines running on VMware ESXi hosts. According to Jong-Yoo Kim, Head of IT at Dong-Eui University, the university wanted to avoid large upfront costs at the start of the virtualization program.

“Dong-Eui University clearly understands that data center virtualization is a long-term undertaking and that deploying an intelligent network infrastructure which can easily be grown in line with demand is a smart way to start. With South Korean university budgets under continual pressure, this is a great example of how to manage the transition to cloud computing,” said Mike Lee, Country Manager of Brocade Korea.

So Kim selected Brocade VDX 6470 Switches as the foundation of the new data centre network. “Compared to what our established network vendor was able to offer, Brocade VDX switches running VCS Fabric technology provide remarkable value without compromising capacity, performance, or stability,” said Kim. Strong integration with VMware solutions was also a key factor in the university’s choice.

The switches support up to 64 wire-speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, with the units being deployed with an initial 24 active ports and the option to activate more in eight-port increments under Brocade’s pay-as-you grow Ports on Demand (PoD) licensing model. The VCS Fabric technology embedded in the switches, it is easy for the IT team at the university to easily expand the infrastructure. The additional switches connected to the network can be auto-configured to become part of the Ethernet fabric, which acts as a single intelligent switch. And as Brocade VCS Fabric technology is VM-aware, it is able to look into the hypervisor, detect the presence of new VMs, extract the network profile information, and automatically apply it to every switch in the fabric.

“We’ve been extremely impressed with the advanced capabilities of the VCS Fabric technology and Brocade has enabled us to start with a small deployment, secure in the knowledge that we can easily scale in an incremental but linear manner,” added Kim.

In fact the system has been made so flexible that when the virtual machines are moved between servers, the fabric automatically migrates their profile as well. It maintains the visibility as traffic moves from a VM across a physical infrastructure to a physical endpoint. The Brocade VDX switches also support NSX, VMware’s network virtualization platform for the software-defined data centre.

According to Lee, the university has also deployed Brocade 6510 SAN switches to support this virtualization program.  “With Ethernet and Fibre Channel fabrics in place, Dong-Eui University has an extremely robust foundation for its virtual data centre operations, with duplex data and storage connectivity to every ESXi host in order to provide system redundancy across the technology infrastructure,” he added.

Author Bio: 

Priyanka is the Consulting Editor with HPC Asia. A prolific writer with around 18 years of journalistic experience in various fields of Information Technology. Started her career with Dataquest, one of the leading technology business magazines in India, and has covered every aspect of information technology industry. At HPC Asia Priyanka is your go-to person if you want latest applications or technology featured.

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