NETWORKS

Brocade has announced that Cardiff University has made major additional investments totaling around GBP 1 million in high-performance switching and routing platforms. The deployment underpins strategic IT projects and supports the growth of the institution since its 2004 merger with the University of Wales College of Medicine (UWCM).

Cardiff University, based in the UK and founded by Royal Charter in 1883, is a dynamic center for higher education in Wales with nearly 27,000 students, 6,000 staff and an annual income of GBP 393.5 million. The university is a member of the Russell Group, an association of the top 20 research UK universities. It is also a center of research excellence engaged in groundbreaking biomedical research, which is illustrated by the award of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Medicine to Professor Sir Martin Evans.

The university has been working with Brocade for more than six years. Cardiff University has spent GBP 5 million on Brocade core, distribution and edge networking solutions that now service 201 buildings and 286 wiring closets since 2003, when Brocade switches were first installed. This includes deployment of more than 1,000 switches with 51,000 edge ports available on the network today.

When it came time to expand the network's capabilities, the team turned to Brocade. This resulted in installation of two 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) Brocade BigIron(R) RX-16 series backbone switches to network the university's twin data centers, which underpin ambitious server consolidation initiatives and enable the functioning of a portal-based solution called the Modern IT Working Environment (MWE). This IBM hardware and software platform allows all university staff, students and researchers to access personalized online resources and content such as e-mail, instant messaging, search tools, news feeds and relevant applications and files via a Web browser. This supports all aspects of learning, teaching, research and administration.

Bob Dew, Cardiff University's network infrastructure manager, explains, "Our goal over the next few years is to reduce our physical server footprint by 90 percent with servers previously dispersed campus-wide now being centrally located in our two data centers. To support this, in conjunction with the MWE initiative, a chassis-based data center switch solution was needed to provide faster connectivity while offering a 'future-proof' upgrade path when more bandwidth is required. The new Brocade BigIron RX deployment in the data centers, and the purchase of the Brocade NetIron MLX router and FastIron edge switches continues this upgrade process, and we are now able to support campus-wide Wi-Fi and unified communications."

The university replaced an older-generation site access router with Brocade NetIron MLX-32 routing technology, to provide 1 GbE connectivity between Cardiff University's campus network and JANET, the UK's education and research network. Dew says, "This is vital to the university's continued day-to-day business and will facilitate the vital continuity of service and availability of data to home workers should this be necessary."

In addition, the university installed nearly 70 Brocade FastIron edge switches at various student halls of residences to complete a LAN upgrade process. This means that 5,000 students in 14 residences access the Internet and MWE portal via Brocade technology.

Cardiff University has also migrated from a flat Layer 2 architecture - with in excess of 20,000 IP addresses - to a segmented Layer 3 network to improve network performance. This migration took place in the last 12 months, leveraging the advanced capabilities of the Brocade switches.

Dew explains, "We've taken the 20,000 block of IP addresses and broken it up into addresses based on school and department, assessed current and future requirements and then allocated an address range for each. It means that if one department installs equipment on the network - and there is an issue with it - it won't bring the network down and impact everyone else."

The upgrade has improved network stability enormously and resulted in enhanced service availability and easier management. The risk of outages at the institution has therefore been massively reduced - a crucial advancement since the university has become so reliant on the network for day-to-day operations. Dew says, "Our aspiration for network uptime is 99.99 percent. Prior to implementing a segmented Layer 3 network, achieving this would have been an impossibility."

Dew concludes, "I have found Brocade switching infrastructure to be both reliable and capable. I'm a great believer in the adage 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' and, while due diligence demanded that we investigate other manufacturer options in the context of our recent projects, it is clearly significant that Brocade solutions won in competitions that were focused on delivering high performance and resilient network services to the university under what are financially challenging times for all."

Alberto Soto, vice president, EMEA at Brocade, stated, "Given Cardiff University's continued and substantial expansion of its network, it is extremely satisfying that our technology continues to be chosen so that technical staff can deliver and react to the university's requirements in a seamless and timely manner. It demonstrates our engineering leadership when it comes to networking."