Enterasys, PCM Partner For Cloud Wi-Fi

Enterasys Networks and PCM have teamed up to provide a cloud-based wireless LAN service that incorporates Enterasys’ IdentiFi Wi-Fi access points (APs) and OneFabric management system.

The PCM Cloud Wireless Service includes AP hardware, software, and day-to-day management for a monthly fee. Security capabilities are embedded in the service, which is designed to maintain WLAN availability even if Internet connectivity is lost.

Enterasys’s IdentiFi APs support up to 900 Mbps of 802.11n capacity for HD video, Voice over WLAN, and data. They are also semi-autonomous and able to distribute data directly to a switch through a centralized controller. OneFabric Connect includes OneFabric Control Center Advanced and the OneFabric Connect API, which supports centralized management and control for both wired and wireless networks.

Bob Laliberte, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, said there is a big push by vendors toward cloud-managed wireless networking, but he noted that cloud WLAN services revolve around WLAN management. “The WLAN APs still need to be located on premise. There is only so much you can actually do in the cloud.”

[Read Network Computing blogger Lee Badman's analysis of Aruba Networks' new cloud-managed WLAN service in "Aruba Debuts Bare-Bones Cloud WLAN."]

Laliberte said the biggest impact of the cloud on wireless networking is pricing. Organizations can now consume all hardware as a monthly recurring charge rather than an upfront CAPEX model and subsequent OPEX for maintenance. “The Enterasys-PCM cloud-based wireless model provides everything for a monthly fee,” he said. “It is a true managed service.”

Like any outsourcing scenario, cloud-based networking services aren’t without risks, including potential or perceived loss of control of the environment, particularly a loss of connectivity to the cloud, he added. Other concerns for enterprises are performance and feature functionality. Laliberte said the Enterasys-PCM cloud Wi-Fi service would appeal to organizations as it is an enterprise-class, full-featured service, rather than being a stripped-down product.

Ultimately, he said, customers need to determine what their needs are and understand how each model is constructed to determine what might be the best fit, depending on the size of the company and the intended deployment.

Fortinet Launches Compact Firewalls

Fortinet rolled out two new firewall appliances for enterprise data centers, large service providers, cloud providers and carriers; both use the company’s latest FortiASIC network processors.

The FortiGate-3700D includes four 40 GbE (QSFP) and 28 10GbE (SFP+) and is capable of up to 160 Gbps throughput; the FortiGate-1500D includes eight 10 GbE (SFP+) ports, 16 GbE (RJ45) ports and 16 GbE (SFP) ports for up to 80 Gbps firewall throughput.

Fortinet said the new appliances are designed to deliver high performance while being compact, with improved price per port density, power dissipation per gigabit and space per gigabit. The new custom NP6 ASIC supports low latency and IPv4 to IPv6 performance parity.

Tintri Doubles VM Capacity

Tintri, a provider of storage products for virtualized environments, added a new line to its VMstore family with the T600 Series and also introduced a control platform to support a scaling architecture that enables management of multiple, geographically distributed VMstore systems.

The T650 supports as many as 2,000 VMs in 4U of space, which Tintri said makes it suitable for large-scale virtualization deployments, including virtualized Tier 1 applications, virtual desktop infrastructure and server consolidation. The vendor said the product can provide storage for up to 2,000 virtual machines per system, which is twice the number of VMs per system compared to earlier versions.. The T620, meanwhile, supports up to 500 VMs for deployment in midsize organizations to support Microsoft applications, server consolidation and desktop virtualization.

Tintri’s Global Center can support centralized administration, control and reporting for up to 32 VMstore systems and their resident VMs.

KEMP Debuts LoadMaster 2400

KEMP’s latest load balancer, the LoadMaster 2400 appliance, supports 1,000 SSL transactions per second, 45,000 requests per second, and 1.2 Gbps throughput while managing Web traffic distribution across both physical and virtual servers.

The 4GbE-port appliance supports multiple scheduling and balancing methods, including Round Robin, least connection, agent-based adaptive and chained failover. The LoadMaster 2400 also features application health checking so user requests are directed to the best servers and applications in the network. It also supports Layer 7 content switching for up to 1,000 servers and 256 virtual clusters.

The LoadMaster 2400’s SSL acceleration and offload capabilities support 2048bit RSA keys, extended validation certificates, and up to 256 SSL certificate features. The hardware itself includes an Intel Dual-Core Processor, four 1Gb auto-negotiating, full duplex Ethernet ports and 1GB of RAM with a 200W ATX power supply.

Last month, KEMP introduced a Layer 7 application delivery control (ADC) for Windows Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), a virtual load balancer than can be provisioned within the Azure platform.