Big Switch Networks released Big Cloud Fabric Release 2.5 and has extended support to VMWare vSphere server virtualization.
The vendor claimed that Big Cloud Fabric, initially released in third quarter of 2014, is the industry’s only bare metal SDN fabric designed to combat legacy box-by-box networking. It now supports VMware vSphere server virtualization by delivering the benefits of bare metal SDN to the majority of virtual workloads in the data center.
Unlike legacy box-by-box approaches, the BCF controller becomes a single point of integration with vCenter for the entire 16-rack leaf-spine Clos fabric, significantly simplifying programmatic interactions across virtual and physical networks. Integration of BCF with vCenter will also enable VM visibility, including VM mobility, directly through the BCF controller GUI. In addition, BCF supports vSphere-based cloud environments orchestrated by CloudStack.
Big Cloud Fabric was the first SDN fabric solution to support hardware and software disaggregation on Dell Open Network switches with the Big Tap Monitoring Fabric. With this latest release, Big Cloud Fabric now supports Dell Open Networking switches, including Dell S6000-ON, and will also support for future Dell Open Networking Switches.
An important operational benefit of software-defined networking is the increased network visibility that is possible with the adoption of an abstracted and centralized control plane. Big Cloud Fabric 2.5 includes a new module that delivers on this promise: Fabric Analytics. With a rich feature set that offers real-time analytics, data visualization, and correlation, Fabric Analytics processes aggregated logs and fabric-wide statistics to generate deep data insight, trends, and events identification. It also provides predefined filtering, failure detection, and log analysis.