Juniper promises to revolutionise data centre networks with QFabric

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 24 February 2011 10:11

Juniper has unveiled the fruits of its four year $US100m R&D Stratus project to develop a new single tier architecture for data centre networks, claiming not only that it enables massively increased efficiencies and lower costs but that it will usher in huge increases in available computing power by removing the limitations on multiple computer networks imposed by present day network topologies.

 

The technology now has the official name of QFabric and has three physically distinct components that operate as a single logical entity: the QFabric nodes which are responsible for interfacing to external data centre devices such as servers and storage, via standard interfaces up to 100GBE, the QFabric Interconnect - which transports the traffic between the nodes and the QFabric director which oversees the operation of the system and which provides a single management interface.

Although QFabric has been developed primarily to address the scale limitations of the present three tier data centre network hierarchy, Juniper says it is suitable for, and can deliver performance and efficiency improvements to data centres of all sizes.

According to Juniper there are two primary, inter-related drivers that are pushing current data centre networks to their limits: mobile Internet and cloud computing.

CEO Kevin Johnson said: "We address two of the market trends unfolding this decade: the mobile Internet and cloud computing'¦In 2013 it is expected that 40 percent of IT spend will be on cloud computing and by 2015, 70 percent. And Internet access from mobile devices is exceeding that from PCs."

According to Johnson, "Capacity of compute power and storage is increasing exponentially'¦Dedicated servers and dedicated storage have given way to virtualised serves and storage, but networking has not kept pace. This exponential demand creates a new approach that we call the exponential data centre.

"Today we would argue that people building data centres today have to either optimise for speed, scale or overall efficiency - capex and opex. We are trying to change that paradigm to enable customers to think in new ways."

Juniper claims that its QFabric architecture is up to ten times faster, uses 77 percent less power, requires 27 percent fewer networking devices, occupies 90 percent less data centre floor space, and delivers a nine fold reduction in operating resources than the nearest competitive offering.

CONTINUED