Company's Data Center Portfolio Upgrades to 40GbE Without Need for Forklift Upgrade

Extreme Networks today announced highly scalable 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) network solutions at Interop Las Vegas. The VIM3-40G4X adds four 40 GbE connections to the award-winning Summit X650 Top-of-Rack stackable switches for $3,995, or less than $1,000 per port. The new module is fully compatible with the existing Summit X650 and Summit X480 stackable switches, preserving customers' investments while providing a smooth upgrade to greatly increased scalability of both virtualized and non-virtualized data centers.

"As data centers increase in server density through consolidation efforts and the use of virtualization, 40 GbE connectivity from the network core to Top-of-Rack switches becomes critical to providing the performance and scale required of the network," said Shehzad Merchant, senior director of strategy for Extreme Networks. "Furthermore, as servers move to native 10 GbE connectivity, the need for 40 GbE at the top-of-rack becomes even more acute."

At Interop Las Vegas, Extreme Networks is demonstrating the VIM3-40G4X installed in a Summit X650 stackable switch in a "Top-of-Rack" configuration connected to the BlackDiamond 8800 chassis with a four port 40 GbE module configured as the Data Center core. All of the industry-leading features of the ExtremeXOS modular operating system, including Layer 2/Layer 3 forwarding, redundancy and resiliency features such as EAPS, and the ability to bond together multiple links, are implemented at 40 GbE speeds.

Extreme Networks recent announcement of its XNV VM Lifecycle Management and the Direct Attach network virtualization architecture, named a Best of Interop Finalist in the virtualization category, are fully supported with 40 GbE at their release.

40 GbE is poised to become a data center infrastructure requirement, where it serves as an aggregation technology necessary to build data centers with high performance servers that are supporting virtualized services, video, storage and traditional applications.

"The debut of 40 GbE at Interop highlights the scalability of our existing data center solutions while enabling a 'no forklift upgrade' for customers," continued Merchant. "As servers and storage quickly migrate to higher density 10 GbE connectivity, a compelling need arises for increased scalability in the data center. With the introduction of 40 GbE, Extreme Networks furthers its commitment to cost-effectively scaling data center, as customers migrate from physical networks, to virtual networks and on to the cloud."

These high performance data center network solutions are being showcased at Extreme Networks Interop booth #2143 and include the new VIM3-40G4X module for the Summit X650 Top-of-Rack switch. Working with Ixia, Extreme Networks is demonstrating wire-speed 40 Gigabit Ethernet interface modules for its Summit X650 and BlackDiamond 8800 switches at its Interop booth. Utilizing Ixia's IxYukon and IxNetwork test solutions, Extreme Networks demonstrates wire-speed 40Gbps performance and can process 60 million packets per second (120Mpps full duplex) of data center traffic between ToR and EoR switches.

Pricing and Availability: Extreme Networks VIM3-40G4X for the Summit X650 series switch will be in customer trial in the third quarter of 2010 and customer shipment follows at the U.S. list price of $3,995.