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Brocade has plunged deeper into the software-defined networks (SDN) pool with a couple of virtual networking products and a switch software revision.

It's presenting this stuff under an "On-Demand Data Center" marketing blanket which, it says "represents another major evolution in networking toward a highly virtualised, open and flexible network infrastructure."

Credit where it's due, you do get good and creamy marketing spiel from Brocade. But enough sweet-talking; what are its products?

• Vyatta vRouter update - release 6.6 of this virtual router will include support for Multicast routing and Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN), two technologies Brocade says "that are critical for large enterprises and cloud service providers."
• Virtual ADX Application Delivery Switch - a virtual application delivery platform in Brocade's ADC (Application Delivery Controller) product set.

What's an ADC? Brocade pre-sales engineering manager Duncan Hughes said: "An application delivery controller pools multiple client connections into one or more virtual machines hosting the virtualised web, application, and database servers."

"This," continued Hughes, "reduces the workload on the virtual machine, resulting in improved server efficiency. An ADC also improves server efficiency via SSL offloading, traffic shaping, and load balancing of multiple client connections."

Brocade announced physical networking products as well:

• MLXe 4×40 GbitE Core Router interface module with wire-speed performance for large datacentres
• NetIron CES/CER Carrier Ethernet Switch/Router modules with up to four ports of 10 GbitE for network edge deployment

There is a NetIron OS update which, according to the brochure, supports: "OpenFlow Hybrid Port Mode technology, to help customers simultaneously deploy OpenFlow and traditional routing on the same port for a seamless migration path to SDN. This enables customers to optimise specific data flows using OpenFlow without disrupting the existing production traffic. Additionally, new software features support multi-tenant data centre environments to improve cloud service delivery and enforce tighter service level agreements."

Brocade has also indulged in some OpenStackery with a VCS fabric switch plug-in included in the Grizzly release of OpenStack, plus a Fibre Channel blueprint for storage networking with OpenStack. ®

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