Juniper’s Smaller QFabric Puts Heat on Cisco

Home > Juniper’s Smaller QFabric Puts Heat on Cisco

Author: John Duckgeischel on June 12, 2012 - 11:36 PM

Juniper turned up the heat as it announced its latest fabric switches designed for the middle-size data centers. As the company unveiled extensions to QFabric and EX8200, it better positions customers to scale networks by-passing the need for additional tiers of switches. The low latency solutions make it possible to build single-tier fabrics for the data center where each switch is virtually one hop away. The new QFX3000-M features a fixed configuration interconnect which is well suited for mid-sized data centers and satellite facilities. It works with the QFX3500 10G nodes, which has been shipping for nine months.

Juniper makes a point that customers will be able to manage oversubscription access to interconnect by simply selecting the number of ports configured as server access through uplinks to interconnect. Available options for the QFX3000-G and QFX3000-M, allows it to work with QFX3600 as a node for 10G and for native 40G connectivity. Currently Juniper claims 150 QFabric customers. The EX8200 is well suited for mix environments made up of Gigabit Ethernet and 10G. Now using Juniper’s Virtual Chassis technology, up to eight switches can be linked logically up to 80 kilometers away. The latest enhancements makes it possible to manage as a single switch a combination of up to four core networks with two switches.