The Dell’Oro Group predicts in its most recent five year market forecast that 10GBase-T copper switches, as a ratio of global ports shipped, will become the primary choice for cloud and data centre network upgrades in the next two years. Extreme Networks new high-density copper switches are optimised to take advantage of servers based on the Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 Family and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) LAN on motherboard (LOM) devices.
"Investment protection is critical to new data centre operators," said Huy Nguyen, senior director of product management at Extreme Networks. "Data centre operators are always looking for ways to reuse cabling infrastructure, when upgrading their networks to 10 GbE. Rip-and-replace is the last option for most data centre operators. The new BlackDiamond X8 blade and Summit X670 copper switch allow data centre customers to deploy the most cost-effective 10 GbE options using standard RJ45 copper jacks.”
“Intel and Extreme Networks believe 10GBase-T copper switches will be a driver for cloud and data centre upgrades because of their simplicity, backwards compatibility with one gigabit switches, and low-cost copper cabling,” said Steve Schultz, director of marketing, Intel LAN Access Division. “We are committed to driving 10GbE adoption, and the new 10GBASE-T products from Extreme Networks will help with that evolution and serve as an excellent complement to our new 10GBASE-T controller, the Intel® Ethernet Controller X540.”
Driving 10 GbE’s adoption in virtualized data centres has been a focus of Extreme Networks since 2009, when the company began working with Intel on Ethernet switching for Intel server platforms; The Intel® Ethernet Controller X540 is the industry’s first single-chip, fully integrated 10GBASE-T controller and is designed for cost-effective, low power LOM and converged network adapters solutions. Extreme Networks offers Gigabit, 10 and 40 Gigabit Ethernet networking solutions for Layer 2/3 switching. These products can be used by data centre and cloud operators in modular and fixed configurations.
The new Summit X670 switch will support 48-ports of wire-speed 10 GbE copper RJ45 with 40 GbE uplink capabilities and is expected to begin shipping this calendar year. The new BlackDiamond X8 copper blade will support 48-ports of wire-speed 10 GbE copper RJ45 with 384 total ports inside the chassis. In independent tests conducted in November by the Lippis Report, existing versions of the switch families were up to 10 times faster and used less half the power of other network vendors. Wide adoption of 10GbE servers is important because it is expected to drive a new wave of 40GbE network upgrades for next generation data centres over time.