HP introduced new open standards-based software defined networking solutions this week at its annual Discover conference in Las Vegas. The vendor hopes to pair a new Virtual Cloud Networking SDN application and new FlexFabric data center 7900 switches with its recently announced HP Helion OpenStack offering.
"Our customers are looking to the cloud for business agility and efficiency that will ultimately drive revenue, but this is hindered by the complexity and disjointed architecture plaguing data center networks today," said Antonio Neri, senior vice president and general manager of networking at HP. "In helping modernize our customers' networks and transition to a cloud environment, HP is focused on software for the flexibility it brings. Cloud as it's meant to be can't be accomplished without SDN."
As a part of the HP Helion OpenStack solution the new Cloud Networking SDN application helps to meet the scalability demands to implement private and hybrid clouds, enabling on-demand application deployment with secure and isolated virtual networks. Helping to prepare a cloud and SDN-ready infrastructure, the new 7900 switch series combines the virtual and the physical as a unified resilient fabric to ensure network visibility, availability and support of changing workloads.
The application aims to help multitenant cloud providers and network-as-a-service offerings and is designed to add to the Neutron networking layers of OpenStack.
With the 7900 series switch HP looks to keep pace with similar offerings from Cisco, Juniper and Arista Networks by offering many of the same features, but with a modular, compact chassis and lower price point. HP Virtual Cloud Networking SDN Application will be available in August as a part of the HP Helion OpenStack, and the 7900 switches are available immediately.
The 7900 FlexFabric switches are built on open standards, such as OpenFlow, support VXLAN and NVGRE tunneling technologies, and in a 2U form factor can scale up to 48 40G ports. The switch supports full Layer 2 and Layer 3 features, nonblocking Layer 2/3 Clos and delivers up to 3.84Tbps switching capacity across four interface module slots.
