Dell Accelerates Network Fabric Deployment with New Software, Hardware

Dell has expanded its data center network offerings with the release of hardware and software under the umbrella of its Dell Active Fabric Architecture. The company said it addresses the growing amount of East-West traffic in virtualized data centers and private clouds. Active Fabric creates a flat network using high-density and low-latency 10/40GbE switches.

The Active Fabric approach is also an open one, Dell said, by supporting networking virtualization overlays using hypervisors from Microsoft, VMware and OpenStack; Open Flow-based controllers; and programmatic interfaces including Telnet/CLI, TCL, REST, SNMP, Perl and Python scripting.

The software aspect of Dell's SDN approach is Dell Active Fabric Manager v1.5, which includes a design wizard to simplify the mapping process while automating provisioning, validation and configuration to take a fabric from the design to a working deployment. On the hardware front, Dell's new S5000 switch is its first 1U 10/40GbE top-of-rack LAN/SAN switch. It includes native FC and FCoE support and has a maximum of 64 10GbE ports, or 48 Ethernet/FC ports with 16 10GbE ports.

Active Fabric Manager v1.5 will be available in late May, while the S5000 will be available in July.

Array Adds Four ADC Appliances

Array Networks unveiled four new application delivery controller appliances to address enterprises of all sizes and traffic volumes. They each support 10GbE interfaces, multi-core processing and multi-core SSL acceleration. All four ADCs feature the company's ePolicy Scripting tool, which lets administrators create custom logic to control application traffic, as well as its eCloud API and scripting tool, which lets cloud providers integrate APV Series ADCs with cloud management systems.

The APV2600, aimed at SMEs, is a compact 1U appliance that supports 10 Gbps of throughput, 5,000 2048-bit SSL transactions per second and 3 Gbps of SSL throughput. The APV5600 is a 2U appliance that supports 15 Gbps of throughput, 25,000 2048-bit SSL transactions per second and 10 Gbps of SSL throughput.

The APV10600 is a 2U appliance that supports 80 Gbps of throughput, 45,000 2048-bit SSL transactions per second and 15 Gbps of SSL throughput and targets large enterprises and service providers. Finally, at the top end is the APV10650, supporting 120 Gbps of throughput, 70,000 2048-bit SSL transactions per second and 25 Gbps of SSL throughput.

All four appliances are available now.

Palo Alto Extends Firewall Policies to Android

Palo Alto Networks unveiled an app that lets enterprises extend their firewall policies to Android device users inside and outside the corporate network. Global Protect for Android Mobile OS securely connects users to the corporate network with either an SSL or IPSec-based VPN connection depending on the device's location and configuration; it can be authenticated through one of several mechanisms, including RADIUS, LDAP, Active Directory or Kerberos.

Available now from Google Play, GlobalProtect for Android requires a Palo Alto firewall with a gateway license to support the mobile app, which lets organizations to enforce security policies based on the user, their applications, content and device regardless of their location. Already available for Apple iOS 5.1 and up, GlobalProtect can also secure laptops running Windows XP, Vista, Windows and Windows 8 as well Mac OS X 10.6 and up.

BoxTone Manages ActiveSync

BoxTone has updated its Enterprise Mobility Management platform to help enterprises monitor and support their Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync environments. BoxTone's EMM already supports real-time, centralized control of Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone devices; BoxTone for Exchange ActiveSync provides real-time performance monitoring, proactive alerts and automated support diagnostics.

Features of BoxTone's EMM for ActiveSync include real-time performance monitoring of all mobile connections and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync synchronizations; dashboards and reports for ActiveSync operations teams that provide QoS status across all devices, carriers and servers; and, consoles with automated diagnostics for service desk teams supporting ActiveSync devices.

BoxTone for ActiveSync is available now.