Coraid and Big Switch Networks Partnering

Coraid Inc., developer of Ethernet storage solutions with more than 1,700 customers worldwide, and Big Switch Networks, Inc., a platform-independent Software-Defined Networking company, announced a partnership to build a networked storage solution that delivers enhanced end-to-end security, dynamic flexibility and simplicity.

The solution will leverage the Big Virtual Switch, a data center network virtualisation application running on the Big Network Controller from Big Switch Networks. At VMworld earlier this year, Coraid and Big Switch demonstrated the power of combining software-defined storage (SDS) and software-defined networking (SDN) in the storage network.

 
"The modern datacenter is going through the biggest transformation it has seen in more than a decade," said Kevin Brown, CEO of Coraid. "Datacenter architects today are taking a fundamentally different approach to building infrastructure, one that combines scale-out commodity hardware, pooling and abstraction through software, and the ability to programmatically control every aspect of the infrastructure. This is the software-defined datacenter, combining the best elements of cloud self-service and enterprise capabilities."
 
In August, Coraid unveiled EtherCloud, a software-defined storage platform. Built on technology from Coraid’s 2011 acquisition of Yunteq, a provider of cloud orchestration software, EtherCloud delivers enhanced business agility to architects of the modern data center by simplifying delivery of scale-out storage. EtherCloud combines a policy engine and REST APIs to enable programmability and one-click provisioning of enterprise storage, and connect these resources to the networking, hypervisor, and application layers.
 
Big Switch Networks announced and shipped an Open SDN product suite that enables customers to quickly adopt new network applications, providing uniï¬?ed network intelligence, enterprise-class scalability and HA. The suite includes Big Network Controller, the Open SDN platform for network applications that uses industry standard protocols, like OpenFlow, to create a common abstraction and universal data model for the underlying network data plane elements. Big Virtual Switch, also part of the suite, is a data center network virtualization application that makes the network as agile and dynamic as cloud compute resources and enables provisioning automation.
 
Coraid storage uses connectionless, standard layer-2 Ethernet as the interconnection fabric between hosts and storage, which enables integration between technologies from the two companies. Using EtherCloud, administrators can serve up underlying storage capacity as flexible storage cloud services with one-click storage provisioning. Integration with the Big Virtual Switch allows administrators to flexibly define network flows that control storage traffic from the host down to the storage systems. These flows enable network traffic isolation in a multi-tenant environment for security, QoS, and resource management. Making storage aware of traffic patterns and hotspots in the storage network offers power and potential.
 
"The industry is just starting to understand the immense potential of software-defined networking to enable a range of novel networking applications, including software-defined storage," said Guido Appenzeller, CEO and co-founder of Big Switch Networks. "Big Switch is excited to partner with Coraid to further tap into the combined benefits that SDS and open SDN offer. SDN and SDS make it possible to control infrastructure programmatically in an integrated manner which radically simplifies network storage management and enables enhanced security, QoS and flexibility."
 
"The data center is absolutely going to be transformed from four walls containing poorly utilized, over-provisioned resources to one where everything – server, network, and storage operate dynamically to give applications exactly what they need, exactly when they need them," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "The Big Switch/Coraid example is an excellent example of where we are heading."