The networking industry is undergoing disruptive change and Dell is leading the way. A few years back, we challenged the status quo with our Open Networking initiative, breaking the proprietary links between networking hardware and software. This opened the doors to a whole new market for networking hardware and software, granting enterprise, web and service providers more choice and capability than ever before.
Today, we continue to lead the industry with the announcement of new high-performance switching platforms and a new release of our Linux-based network operating system, OS10. These new, enhanced products for Open Networking will help customers enable flexibility, lower IT costs and speed return on investment. A recent total cost of ownership (TCO) from ACG Research, partially funded by Dell, showed how a prominent Tier 1 service provider was able to reduce the 5-year TCO on their infrastructure by using an open architecture.
For the data center, the new S5148F-ON switch is Dell’s first 25G top-of-rack Open Networking switch, part of the “Better Together” story with new Dell PowerEdge 14G servers shipping with native 25G support. Additionally, the 100G uplinks are designed for 100G fabric connectivity accelerating rack-to-rack (east-west) network traffic. This is ideal for cloud and web-scale customers looking to maximize application and service performance.
The new S4100-ON series is our latest family of multi-functional, top-of-rack data center Open Networking switches optimized for high densities of 10G fiber/copper or Fibre Channel 8/16/32 server and storage converged LAN/SAN within racks. All of these switches include the high-performance 100G uplink ports for inter-rack communications. Also included in this family is the S4148U, a new unified switch for both Ethernet and Fibre Channel traffic. This Open Networking switch pushes the upper limits of Fibre channel connectivity helping to optimize support with 32G Fibre channel for customers who want to further converge local area network (LAN) and storage area network (SAN) solutions.
The S5100-ON and S4100-ON are the first to ship standard with OS10 Enterprise Edition, Dell’s new flagship networking operating system. Leveraging open source technologies from the Linux Foundation and Open Compute Project, OS10 Enterprise Edition is a next-generation, modular and programmable network operating system designed for both traditional networking and DevOps environments.
The OS10 Enterprise Edition package provides complete layer 2 and layer 3 networking functionality but also allows customers to easily customize the software for different environments. Customer can integrate additional open source capabilities, add 3rd party Linux applications, or develop their own software using standard Linux and DevOps tools.
Complementing these announcements, Dell also expanded its Open Networking offerings for the campus with the Dell N1100-ON series, a new family of energy-efficient and cost-effective switches. The series includes a number of fanless switches in half and full width options, Power over Ethernet (POE) and non-POE versions, and port configurations from 10/100/1000Mbps to 1/10GbE. The N1100-ON series switches are designed to pair with Aerohive’s HiveManager NG – a next-generation cloud-based management solution that greatly simplifies end-user wired and wireless access, setting a new standard for network convergence by bringing enterprise-class management to the public or private cloud.
Our mission at Dell Networking is to ensure our customers – regardless of size – derive the fullest value out of their networking investments. As such, we will continue to introduce proven end-to-end open networking solutions, comprehensive global services and a vision that sets the pace in a rapidly changing industry. Find out how we can help you and your network.
