INTERCONNECTS

Force10 Networks today announced that B.A.G. Films and Media Ltd., also known as B.A.G. Films Ltd., has deployed C300 resilient switches and S50N access switches at their headquarters in Noida, India. The television producer and software provider for the Indian news and entertainment industry selected Force10 Networks as part of its initiative to implement a reliable, high performance network infrastructure to complement its existing storage area network. “The process-intensive nature of television production means our business cannot tolerate even seconds of downtime,” says Suraj Pal Singh, VP Technology, B.A.G. Films. “Force10 delivered a modular architecture that provided the line-rate, non-blocking Gigabit Ethernet reliability and performance we required for our media editors to do their jobs as efficiently as possible.” Due to the large, process-intensive nature of the video files they produce and edit, IT staff at B.A.G. Films could leverage the C300’s passive, non-blocking copper backplane capacity of more than 1.5 Terabits per second, ensuring reliability would not be compromised regardless of network traffic conditions. B.A.G. Films deployed one Force10 C300 resilient switch and four S50N access switches to anchor the build-out of two internal, but separate, networks. To ensure performance and reliability would not be compromised, B.A.G. Films installed the C300 as the backbone for its dedicated network of eight servers, which are accessed by 75 video editing workstations. With up to 384 line-rate 10/100/1000Base-T ports per device, coupled with 5 microsecond switching latency under full load for 64 byte frames, the chassis-based C300 answered their performance requirements, while providing the port density needed for future expansion. B.A.G. Films leveraged the Force10 S50N access switches to establish physical isolation from the higher-bandwidth applications. To provide additional flexibility and reliability, administrators stacked the switches, consolidating the products into a single functional device, enabling B.A.G. Films to increase capacity without adding more network management tasks. “B.A.G. Films maintains reliability and performance demands, which are indicative of a film editing industry that must face the challenge of having a growing number of huge, data-intensive files that can be efficiently accessed and stored,” says Stephen Garrison, vice president of Marketing at Force10 Networks. “Once deployed, Force10 solutions became a strategic business asset that enabled seamless expansion, and uncompromising reliability, and cost-effective performance.” The Force10 Reliable Networking product portfolio supports advances in reliability, network control and scalability that enable enterprises to lower their total cost of ownership. By building a flexible network that is ready to support emerging and evolving applications, enterprises can optimize their networks for current needs as well as future requirements.