The world is moving away from traditional data centres to so-called "data centres". Today's "traditional" enterprise data centres are being augmented by distributed and virtualised "edge" datacentres where data is created and processed.
While datacentre networking has evolved over the past decade to provide higher performance 25/100/400G leaf-spine topologies to address the higher volume and speed of emerging application architectures, there has been no such progression in security and service architectures.
Centralized security devices were not designed to control and protect application traffic that moves in an east-west direction within the data centre. It is not operationally or economically practical to deploy a set of security appliances in every server rack and connecting traffic to equipment located in centralized services is associated with large performance and cost losses.
Delivering network and security services at scale is an increasing challenge for enterprises, whether it is expanding an existing data centre to meet the growing demand for digital services, or deploying new infrastructures in colocation facilities to support new innovative applications.
According to surveys, up to 70 % of organizations are running or planning to run cloud and container-based applications in hybrid environments. Enterprises need modern distributed services environments to better support modern, cloud-native applications.
Aruba brings further evolution in switch architecture
Recognizing the need and urgency to address these new realities, Aruba has partnered with AMD Pensando to create a new category of network switches - the Aruba Distributed Services Switch.
The Aruba CX 10000 Series represents the next evolution of datacentre switch architecture, combining powerful L2/L3 datacentre switching with a single fully programmable data processing unit (DPU) from AMD Pensando. The Aruba CX 10000 delivers software-defined, inline, large-scale services with wire-speed performance and orders of magnitude improvements in scale and performance over traditional L2/L3 data centre switches at a fraction of their total cost.
The Aruba CX 10000 enables advanced networking and security services to be deployed as close to the application processing site as possible - at the boundary between the server and the network, rather than at the perimeter as in traditional data centre networking architectures. With firewall, encryption, tunneling and other services running directly on the distributed services switch, organizations can deliver new service capabilities faster.
The innovative Aruba Distributed Services Switch provides wire-speed routing and switching with L4-L7 stateful software services including firewall, DDoS, encryption, network address translation (NAT), load balancing, and network telemetry - for any workload, any server, or any deployment. Automation is enabled by the powerful and programmable Aruba AOS-CX operating system.
The Aruba CX 10000 is designed to optimize network bandwidth and performance, delivering 100x more range, 10x more performance at one-third the cost of legacy switching and security solutions.
Unification of network and security policies and automation
Aruba Fabric Composer is a unified network and security management tool for the Aruba CX 10000. It manages all switch and network configurations and all firewall policy definitions for both switches and distributed firewalls. Aruba Fabric Composer interacts with the switch itself and the built-in security policies as needed.
The Aruba CX 10000 also integrates via a REST API to provide flow data to a wide range of network security and performance tools, including tools for advanced ML security (XDR), application dependency mapping (ADM), network performance management (NPM), SIEM/SOAR, firewall compliance rules, and identity group mapping.
Distributed Services Switch Use Cases
The Aruba CX 10000 provides a clear choice for enterprises whose existing data centres want to take advantage of a distributed services model. For example, if you are adding a new server rack, you can deploy the Aruba CX 10000. Over time, you can also replace other leaf switches in your infrastructure with the Aruba CX 10000.
The new switch is also suitable for deployment at the edge of colocation, where an organization may want security or encryption features but face space and/or power constraints. Rather than having to place security devices and additional infrastructure, the Aruba CX 10000 provides security and encryption at line-rate routing, embedded in the network fabric (top of the server rack) rather than deploying costly security devices or backhauling traffic to a centralized local security appliance.
It's time to reimagine data center switches
Enterprises accelerating their digital initiatives and cloud application development need an agile, scalable and high-performance foundation. Aruba's next-generation data center switches are changing the game, enabling enterprises to deliver unparalleled digital experiences to their customers and employees with unprecedented scalability, performance and operational efficiency.
About Aruba
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is a global leader in secure, intelligent edge-to-cloud network solutions that use artificial intelligence to automate the network while leveraging data to drive greater business results. With the Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) and "as-a-service" capabilities, Aruba takes a cloud-centric approach to help customers meet their connectivity, security and financial requirements across campuses, branch offices, data centres and remote worker environments, covering all aspects of wired, wireless LAN and WAN networks.
About eGroup Solutions, a. s.
The year 2009 brought the establishment of an independent company eGroup Solutions. While searching for answers to the questions of using any solutions and systems for data management and protection, we came across an important fact that almost 90% of companies, as well as private individuals, do not have their important data protected to the necessary extent, and at least half of them do not even know why they should do it at all. This is where the focus and specialisation of eGroup Solutions comes from.
Learn more about the evolution in data center switch architecture:
https://blogs.arubanetworks.com/corporate/the-next-evolution-of-switching-architecture-is-here/
To find out more, visit the Aruba page:
Information on data centre modernisation:
Aruba Blog:
The Next Evolution of Switching Architecture is Here
If you want to know more, write to us at the email address marketing@egroup.sk