Big Switch to Showcase Cloud-First Networking Portfolio for VMware SDDC at VMworld 2018 U.S.

Demos of Big Cloud Fabric and Big Monitoring Fabric Interoperability with VMware vSphere 6.7, NSX-T and vSAN


LAS VEGAS, Aug. 27, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- VMworld -- Big Switch Networks, the Cloud-First Networking company, today announced it will showcase its Cloud-First Networking (CFN) portfolio, ideal for the VMware software-defined data center (SDDC), at Booth #1622 at VMworld U.S., August 26th - 30th, 2018.

Big Cloud Fabric (BCF) extends its recently announced Enterprise Virtual Private Cloud (EVPC), an AWS VPC-style logical networking construct for on-prem enterprise cloud, to the VMware SDDC portfolio, including vSphere 6.7, NSX-T and vSAN. At VMworld, Big Switch will demonstrate:

  • BCF EVPC support for VMware NSX-T, for enhanced visibility and troubleshooting, the demo will focus on NSX-T Manager interactions for transport nodes and VM visibility and tracing GENEVE Tunnel traffic through underlay fabric for rapid troubleshooting
  • BCF EVPC support for VMware vSAN visibility
  • BCF EVPC support for network automation and visibility for VMware vSphere 6.7

Big Switch will also demo data center visibility and security, via Big Monitoring Fabric (BMF), for dynamic VM monitoring, including:

  • BMF support for vSphere 6.7 to monitor VM-to-VM traffic for security and visibility
  • BMF vCenter plug-in for point and click configuration of SPAN and ERSPAN for rapid Virtual Machine (VM) troubleshooting and remediation

"As organizations adopt SDDC technologies, our deepening partnership with VMware offers mutual customers improvements in agility, as well as operational and cost efficiencies of enterprise cloud networks," said Prashant Gandhi, Chief Product Officer, Big Switch Networks. "With BCF’s EVPC-based logical networking extended to VMware's vSphere, NSX or vSAN, organizations can run their physical networks at the same pace as their virtualized environments, while dramatically simplifying operational workflows."

Big Switch’s CFN portfolio includes: BCF-EC for data center switching, BMF-EC for network analytics and monitoring, and Multi-Cloud Director, for consistent management and operations across on-prem, public-cloud and across on-prem/in-cloud combinations of networking and monitoring fabrics. The CFN portfolio offers best-in-class economics, automation, visibility and cross-cloud administration with VMware’s SDDC portfolio, via seamless interoperability with: VMware vSphere®, VMware NSX®, VMware vSAN™, VMware Horizon®, VMware vCloud® NFV™, VMware Integrated OpenStack, vRealize Log Insight, and VMware vSphere Integrated Containers™. The CFN portfolio is the ideal physical network underlay for the VMware SDDC.

"We are pleased to see Big Switch deliver further interoperability and deeper visibility with multiple VMware solutions to help accelerate production deployments of the software-defined data center. By providing additional automation of the physical network, Big Cloud Fabric-Enterprise Cloud enables our mutual customers to rapidly and cost-effectively deploy applications," said Kristen Edwards, director, Technology Alliance Partner Program, VMware. "Additionally, consistent visibility across physical network and virtualization environments is an important benefit that helps IT teams resolve issues faster."

BCF is an ideal physical network for the VMware SDDC, delivering unprecedented automation and visibility for vSphere, NSX and vSAN use cases. The BCF support for VMware SDDC is extremely flexible, allowing organizations to adopt physical network innovations aligned with their organizational structure. Both network and cloud teams are able to take advantage of rich automation and visibility options incrementally, or all at once. BCF abstracts the underlying switching fabric as tenant-based VPCs (Enterprise VPC), with open switches and a centralized controller, providing seamless EVPC interoperability with the VMware vCenter API, to provide physical network automation and end to end network visibility for all VMware vSphere based solutions, including:

  • VMware vSphere: the BCF controller directly integrates into VMware vCenter to simplify and automate application deployments on its physical network fabric; it also provides real-time visibility across both virtual and physical networks, including VMs, port groups, hosts and pNICs.
  • VMware NSX: BCF seamlessly supports VMware NSX, providing automatic transport-network provisioning and enhanced overlay visibility to network administrators, including NSX VMs, host (or transport) nodes, logical switches and Geneve tunnels; BCF also provides one-click troubleshooting of Geneve overlay traffic across the leaf-spine underlay fabric
  • VMware vSAN environments: BCF enables rapid vSAN deployments with automatic configuration of cluster networking. BCF’s vSAN-aware deployment tools simplify rollout and management, while a dedicated vSAN dashboard in Fabric Analytics provides real time & historical views of cluster events for rapid troubleshooting. Big Switch also supports VxRail deployments with Dell EMC hardware.

BCF-EC is the only networking fabric to support multi-orchestration (e.g. vSphere, NSX, Openstack, Kubernetes) environments via a Logical EVPC architecture, which enables multiple orchestrators to operate within logically isolated domains while sharing a common physical networking fabric. Logical EVPC is ideal for use cases such as rapid CI/CD driven application deployments, multi-tenant managed service environments to support varied customer workloads, and dev/test private clouds. By eliminating the need for dedicated infrastructure per orchestrator, BCF's EVPC provides an order of magnitude acceleration in application deployment and service enablement. As with server consolidation, BCF EVPCs offers single physical network consolidation for many different private cloud orchestrators.

According to **ACG Research, with BCF and VMware, IT users can achieve:

  • 8x faster initial network setup
  • 12x faster configuration, app deployment, and troubleshooting
  • 30x faster upgrading

Big Monitoring Fabric is an out-of-band network monitoring solution that enables traffic from vSphere hosts to be copied and forwarded non-disruptively to any monitoring or security tool. Big Switch offers this solution on industry standard open networking switches. The BMF controller includes a vCenter plug-in for point and click configuration of SPAN and ERSPAN for rapid Virtual Machine (VM) troubleshooting and remediation, with a simple to use interface. The solution also provides: an out-of-band, scale out monitoring fabric for non-disruptive traffic analytics, intelligent processing and filtering of traffic data for preventing over subscription to the analytic tools, and is applicable across all analytics tools with data reductions that optimizes efficacy of tool appliances. This solution is a controller-based fabric, with X86 appliances and industry standard data center 1RU multi-terabit switches.

To learn more about Big Switch Networks, and its Cloud-First Networking portfolio, ideal for the VMware SDDC, visit Booth #1622 at VMworld U.S.

Supporting Materials

About Big Switch Networks
Big Switch Networks is the Cloud-First Networking company, bringing public cloud-style networking and hybrid cloud consistency to organizations around the world. The company provides data center switching, monitoring, visibility and security solutions for on-premises enterprise cloud, public cloud and multi-cloud environments that enable companies of all sizes to increase operational efficiency and business agility, while reducing networking costs. Big Switch was founded in 2010, with roots in the original Stanford research team that invented software-defined networking. Big Switch has strategic partnerships with Dell EMC, HPE and Edgecore, delivering innovative software on industry-standard open networking hardware. Since its founding the company has been an active member and contributor to multiple open source communities. Big Switch Networks is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, with a dedicated presence across more than 25 countries. The company is funded from leading venture capital firms, including: Dell Technologies Capital, Index Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, MSD Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, Redpoint and Silverlake Waterman. For additional information: visit us www.bigswitch.com, reach us info@bigswitch.com or follow us on Twitter @bigswitch, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Copyright 2018 Big Switch Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Big Switch Networks, the Big Switch logo, Big Cloud Fabric, Big Mon, Big Monitoring Fabric, BMF, BigSecure, Big Switch Labs, Big Tap, BSN, Switch Light, ONL Certified, and ONL Certified Gold, ONLX are trademarks or registered trademarks of Big Switch Networks, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners. Big Switch Networks assumes no responsibility for any inaccuracies in this document. Big Switch Networks reserves the right to change, modify, transfer or otherwise revise this publication without notice.

Media & Analyst Contact:
Kate Lehman
media@bigswitch.com