Plexxi Rolls Out Latest SDN Switches

Plexxi officials say the future of networks are single-tier, low-latency infrastructures that can scale quickly and that first determine what resources the workloads require, then set about to pull those resources together dynamically.

To promote that vision, the company is launching its Plexxi Switch 2 Series, which officials said collapses the network into a single tier that needs only a single switch type and that is optimized for east/west traffic. The switch series works with what officials call the three pillars of the company’s approach: Plexxi’s Control software-defined networking (SDN) controller and Connect application integration technologies—including with VMware’s vSphere—to create a network that is designed for environments that run scale-out, virtualized, mobile and big data applications.

“The next era of IT is being forged by the evolution of virtualization, hyperconvergence, big data and scale-out applications,” Bob Noel, director of solutions marketing at Plexxi, wrote in a post on the company blog. “Storage and compute have rapidly evolved over the last decade to keep pace, but networking architectures have remained relatively unchanged.”

Customers have a number of options within the company’s second-generation switch family. The Entry Series (2e) offers a low-cost, high-density platform for big data and agile data centers, including 48 access ports, six QSFP fabric ports and 240GB per second of fabric capacity.

The Performance Series (2s and 2sp) offers 72 access ports, four Flexx ports and two LightRail optical fabric interconnect ports, providing 480GB per second of fabric capacity. It’s aimed at big data, agile data centers and distributed cloud environments, according to officials.

The Performance Plus Series (2 and 2p) is for the same environments and includes 48 access ports, 28 Flexx ports and four LightRail optical fabric interconnect ports, delivering 480GB per second fabric capacity.

The Plexxi Switch 2 Series is available now starting at $25,000. Volume shipment of the 2e switch will begin in September.