Extreme's Open Fabric Architecture Validated for VSPEX

You have to look under the hood to see the significance of Extreme Networks’ EMC VSPEX validation announcement and its global reseller alliance with Lenovo (News - Alert).  But first, we should summarize the three core components of data centers and the three deployment options that are available to IT management.  

The three components are compute, store and communicate. The three deployment options are: (1) build your own, using best-of-breed components; (2) buy a converged infrastructure package from Vblock systems; or (3) go for a proven EMC (News - Alert) VSPEX infrastructure employing best-of-breed components that have been certified and validated. 

Building your own takes time and significant integration resources, but the resulting solution can be used as a competitive differentiator.  Buying a converged package is an attractive option, particularly when the components come from Cisco (News - Alert), EMC and VMware, but it’s a closed box – you can’t change or add functionality.  The next option is VSPEX: This is an open, flexible concept the components of which are pre-validated and that deliver predictable performance. EMC provides the storage component; Extreme claims to have the best-in-breed communication switches; and Microsoft (News - Alert) does computing. 

EMC VSPEX has been designed to streamline the deployment of cloud and virtualization technologies. It allows customers to make informed decisions about their choice of hypervisor, computing, networking, and storage components, thereby reducing complexity and risk for IT teams.  This is a solution that scales to known capacities and can be deployed in a rapid and reliable manner with minimal IT resources.

In addition to a portfolio of high-performance Ethernet switches, Extreme brings its Open Fabric architecture to the table (see figure 1). Open Fabric, which supports OpenFlow and OpenStack, has now been validated for deployment in VSPEX-compliant infrastructures. 


Figure 1 – The open fabric architecture of Extreme Networks (News - Alert): The company has implemented OpenFlow and OpenStack across its Summit and BlackDiamond Ethernet switches.  ExtremeXOS is the open, programmable operating system that provides the requisite network abstraction functionality.  

The alliance with Lenovo should be seen as an important part of Extreme’s go-to-market strategy. Lenovo has a network of channel partners that address customers in more than 60 countries, and the company is now entering the converged infrastructure space as a result of this agreement.  The resulting best-of-breed networking components from Extreme will complement Lenevo’s ThinkServers in end-to-end cloud-ready solutions for their customers and also bring Stoneware webNetwork into the equation. 

Stoneware, which is a Lenovo company, allows companies to create a unified cloud, making it easier for IT to deliver services. IT no longer needs to stitch together a variety of point products (SSO, Portal, Remote File Access, Security, Remote Access, Reporting, Management) to create a unified cloud experience.