SCIENCE

Brocade has announced the three winners from the Brocade and Network Computing Magazine Ultimate Network Challenge: M Resort, Penn Genome Frontiers Institute and KMTelecom. The winners were selected from numerous detailed entries and recognized at the Brocade Conference in Las Vegas on Sept. 21, 2010. The annual Ultimate Network Challenge awards outstanding achievements across three solution areas: high-performance IP networks, next-generation storage, and advanced convergence applications.

Winners of the Ultimate Network Challenge Awards have scaled to new networking and storage heights to deliver outstanding business value as well as reducing overall infrastructure capital and operational costs. Even during difficult economic times, these organizations have looked to IT services to overcome obstacles and advance business success. Their IT infrastructures consistently met their organizations' demands for performance, availability and security, placing them at the pinnacle of networking ingenuity.

"Network Computing Magazine and Brocade partnered in the effort to find the architects of the Ultimate Network, and the field was highly competitive," said Elliot Kass, vice president of content, UBM TechWeb and chief judge of the Ultimate Network Challenge. "Many organizations presented stories of overcoming huge obstacles, especially given the difficult economy, to deliver greater business value through IT."

High-Performance Networks

At the M Resort, a 90-acre Las Vegas casino-resort, a fully optimized and converged IP infrastructure helps the resort provide VIP amenities that attract new guests and create loyal customers to keep returning. The M Resort designed its IP network with an emphasis on reliability, flexibility and scalability. A major design goal was to allow virtually any type of device to connect to the network, which meant a fully converged IP network was necessary. A converged network also delivered significant cost efficiencies and speed advantages. M Resort saved more than $3 million in construction costs and built out a greenfield network in only 107 days. The high-performance Brocade network supports more than 5,000 devices, including Voice over IP (VoIP) phones, PCs, slot machines, guest room mini-bars, digital signage, doors and air conditioning controllers. With a flexible, high-performance network, The M Resort can keep ahead of the latest gaming trends, including server-based gaming and mobile gaming.

Next-Generation Storage

The Penn Genome Frontiers Institute (PGFI) is at the forefront of science. Based at the University of Pennsylvania, PGFI is a university-wide institute dedicated to the advancement of the interdisciplinary field of genomics research. PGFI fosters collaborations and scientific exchange across biology, veterinary medicine, pharmacology, medicine, genetics, microbiology, engineering, physics, chemistry and psychology. Penn scientists depend on high-performance computing (HPC) to further their discoveries in genomics and bioinformatics, and achieving that level of power requires pushing the technology envelope. The challenge is not just capacity and performance, as is often the case, but the massive throughput requirements must be met because of the large number of small files being processed. PGFI's HPC cluster has about 100 nodes and more than 92 terabytes of shared storage. Optimizing the clusters for the workload is critical, as is overall system redundancy. The core switches are redundant, so that in the event of a switch failure, the file systems and cluster are accessible to the Penn researchers, so they can continue their scientific discoveries unimpeded.

Advanced Convergence Applications

KMTelecom has been providing telephone services to Minnesota residents since 1901, and today it offers its customers the very latest technology. When KMTelecom rolled out triple-play services to its customers, it needed a highly available, secure network that would maintain clear separation among the services, including multicast video, voice, Internet access and network management. KMTelecom employed a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) architecture for maximum service flexibility. It implemented an MPLS transport and resilient ring network using Brocade advanced routers. KMTelecom success is measured by network operational simplicity, security, reliability and performance. As a result of their finely tuned infrastructure, subscribers of KMTelecom's video service experience high quality entertainment through today's most advanced delivery model. Ultimately, the network's ease of use, security and performance has allowed KMTelecom to focus on creating new services and new business opportunities.