In a move to compete with rival Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks has rolled out what it’s billing as the world’s first true data-center fabric. Dubbed QFabric, the new product comes out of Project Status, Juniper’s multiyear data-center network research and development initiative.
Juniper partners IBM, NetApp, CA Technologies, and VMware are giving QFabric a thumbs-up. That’s because QFabric promises improvements in data-center performance, operating cost, and business agility for both enterprises and cloud providers. Juniper said QFabric does away with the trade-off between a quality experience and economics by collapsing the traditional three-layer network to a single layer.
“Data-center compute and storage technologies have advanced over the last decade, and the legacy approach to networking has not kept pace,” said Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper. “As cloud computing and the mobile Internet accelerate, demand is intensifying for a quantum leap forward in data-center capabilities.”
Faster, More Efficient, Less Power
Essentially, QFabric removes legacy barriers with a flat architecture that paves the way for an integrated security solution that offers visibility, enforcement and scale across the physical and virtual data-center fabric. The cost savings to enterprises come at a high cost to Juniper, which invested $100 million in research and development to make the QFabric architecture a reality.
Here are the numbers Juniper is touting with its QFabric architecture: Up to 10 times faster, uses 77 percent less power, requires 27 percent fewer networking devices, occupies 90 percent less data-center floor space, and delivers a ninefold reduction in operating resources than the nearest competitive offering.
QFabric is composed of three components. The QF/Node acts as the distributed decision engine of the fabric. The QF/Interconnect is the high-speed transport device. And the QF/Director delivers a common window, controlling all devices as one.
Introducing Fabric Computing
“Enterprises and service providers must look beyond traditional multi-layered, complex and inflexible data-center networks…