17th October 2011
Brocade Ethernet Fabric Technology Enables Cloud Managed Service Provider to Open First Tier IV Data Centre in Spain
Tissat selects new Brocade VDX 6730 Data Centre Switches to deliver a cloud-optimised network that meets increasing customer demand
With its existing facilities in Madrid and Valencia close to reaching capacity, and the demand for cloud IT environments continuing to rise, Spanish cloud managed service provider Tissat has turned to Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD) to deliver a data centre networking solution based on Brocade® Ethernet fabrics and VCS™ fabric technology. The new deployment creates the foundation for Spain’s first commercially available Tier IV data centre, an award-winning 4,000 square metre facility (called Walhalla) in Castellón de la Plana, 350 km east of Madrid and nearby Valencia. Tier IV data centres conform to the Tier Classification System standard, certified by the Uptime Institute, and represent the industry’s highest certification level for IT organisations.
Utilising Brocade VCS technology to build a highly virtualised cloud-optimised data centre, Tissat will be the first company to leverage the extended family of Brocade VDX™ Data Centre Switches as part of an environment that includes the newly launched Brocade VDX 6730 Data Centre Switch and existing Brocade VDX 6720 Data Centre Switch. The Brocade VDX 6730 is a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switch that protects existing SAN infrastructure investments by seamlessly bridging Ethernet fabrics to Fibre Channel SAN fabrics. With this addition to the Brocade VDX product family, Brocade now provides a complete solution for future-proofing data centre networks, cost-effectively supporting 1 GbE to 10 GbE server transitions and LAN/SAN bridging.
Tissat’s business model is focused on providing highly available IT services for mission-critical environments and cloud-based solutions to public and private sector organisations. With services offered throughout Spain, Tissat designs, operates and manages its clients’ total IT assets while providing infrastructure services (such as hosting, data storage, back-up and recovery), application development, database management, business continuity, Web and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. These services are based on pay-to-use IaaS, SaaS and PaaS models. To meet growing customer demand, Tissat’s new Tier IV data centre allows the company to scale operations and deliver dynamic and differentiated services, such as video streaming, high-speed data recovery and multi-site data synchronisation.
To deliver these types of services, the firm needed an agile, high-performance network foundation that could deliver on both a technical and commercial level: “In our business, complex IT means higher cost to the customer. When building our new facility, we wanted to be able to provide both Ethernet and Fibre Channel support across a common network to support virtual machine (VM) mobility, but at the same time radically simplify management and operational processes. Brocade Ethernet fabric technology met, and even exceeded, our requirements,” said Jorge Montoto, Tissat’s chief technology officer.
The Brocade Ethernet fabric solution, and in particular the new Brocade VDX 6730, will allow Tissat to fundamentally re-engineer its approach to network design. Tissat wanted to avoid the new data centre having islands of technology dedicated to different systems (i.e. racks just for servers or storage), and to ensure that rack space and compute resources were utilised efficiently. The new Ethernet fabric solution will enable the firm to increase network efficiency, performance and reliability while reducing management complexity—in turn ensuring that customer costs stay at competitive levels.
Manuel Escuin, Tissat’s general manager, said: “When you make as big as investment as we have to build a Tier IV data centre, you need a partner who will closely support you and has a common view how to develop business together. Brocade has done this and provided a strong commercial and technical commitment to us.”
In addition to the Ethernet fabric deployment, Tissat has also installed Brocade MLX Series Core Routers in the network core to deliver 10 GbE performance and scalability, while providing a seamless, cost-effective path for high-density deployment of 100 GbE technology. Tissat is replicating data across its three data centre sites to ensure resilience and uptime for customers.
“By standardising on Brocade and its Ethernet fabric technology, we have simplified management while increasing performance and agility by an order of magnitude. Today, we solve 96 percent of customer service requests using first-level support, thereby freeing up specialised resources for other tasks and making operations more efficient. Brocade VDX switches are pivotal in enabling Tissat to remain competitive in a busy marketplace,” added Montoto.
Escuin concludes: “The new facility has transformed our business, enabling us to charge 40 percent less for services than ‘traditional’ operators thanks, in part, to the efficiency of the network. We are radically reducing operating costs, with the new data centre receiving a PUE [power usage effectiveness] rating of 1.1, half that of ‘normal’ data centres and we are able to pass the financial savings onto our customers. Put another way, we can offer Tier IV service at Tier II data centre prices. Brocade offered us the price/performance ratio to help make this possible.”
About Brocade Data Centre Networking and Ethernet Fabric Solutions
Network architects are now looking for ways to build more powerful, flatter networks that can support higher traffic loads and increased east-to-west traffic in virtualised environments, all while avoiding network congestion. Collapsing network layers also reduces complexity, which lowers overhead costs and reduces risk. This type of design, however, requires high-density, high-bandwidth network components that deliver full wire-speed connectivity. With Ethernet fabric technology and the industry’s most powerful routers for enterprise data centres, Brocade can help organisations build flatter, simpler networks today – and at measurably lower cost than the competition.
For more information, please visit www.brocade.com
Video
Jorge Montoto, Tissat’s chief technology officer, talks about the Brocade deployment: http://bit.ly/oxQPpO
About Brocade
Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD) networking solutions help the world’s leading organisations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)
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