Vendor-neutral fabric improves Software Defined Networking (SDN) management, supports five major hypervisors with 56 Gbps server-to-server connections

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 5 — Xsigo Systems, Inc., the data center fabric deployment and technology leader, today announced the general availability of the Xsigo Data Center Fabric product line. The new product line features improved hardware and software products currently used in 300 fabric deployments.

"Today's announcement is in response to a sharp uptake in demand for complete, vendor-neutral fabric solutions," Lloyd Carney, CEO of Xsigo, said. "Unlike closed systems from companies like Cisco, our open approach is the most cost-effective way to move to a fabric architecture because only Xsigo lets data center managers use existing server, virtualization and storage equipment and gives them the freedom to choose the best vendor in the future."

Recent Xsigo fabric deployments include a 55,000-seat VDI fabric at Royal Bank of Scotland by Fujitsu and a large enterprise public cloud deployment by Canadian telecommunications giant TELUS (see links below for more information).

"As enterprises move to virtualized data centers and cloud architectures, traditional network architecture and operations are increasingly becoming bottlenecks," Mark Fabbi, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, said. "Fabric technologies are designed to overcome these problems and by delivering a more flexible infrastructure that can quickly adapt to changing business and application demands."

Xsigo Data Center Fabric is the only open fabric solution designed to work with equipment from all server, storage and virtualization vendors. The primary products in the new line consists of:

• Xsigo Fabric Director – Hardware and software solution to build fabrics using both 10G Ethernet or InfiniBand. Supports Fibre Channel connections to existing SANs;
• Xsigo Fabric Manager – Software Defined Network (SDN) solution to manage all I/O connections in a data center from a single graphical interface. Works with x86 servers, storage and network equipment from multiple vendors using an open, standards-based architecture;
• Xsigo Fabric Accelerator – Software solution to manage both Ethernet and Fibre Channel traffic within the Xsigo fabric.

New features of the Xsigo Data Center Fabric product line include:

• Support for all five major hypervisors: Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle Virtual Machine, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, and VMware vSphere;
• Support for new generations of servers optimized for virtualized data centers: HP Gen 8, Dell 12th Generation and IBM M4 series servers;
• Improved connectivity with up to 56 Gbps server-to-server communications using InifiniBand and a new 4 x 10Gb Ethernet module;
• New software performance manager to optimize data center efficiency.

Quotes about Xsigo Data Center Fabric

"As the world's leading risk-consulting company, Kroll Factual Data supplies timely, accurate information to our clients hundreds of thousands of times a day," Russ Donnan, CIO of Kroll Factual Data, said. "We depend on the Xsigo Data Center Fabric to provide a fast, highly reliable platform so we can deliver a great user experience while getting the greatest possible efficiency from our Microsoft Hyper-V servers."

"dinCloud's hosted virtual desktop services have run on the Xsigo Data Center Fabric from the start," Saad Shahzad, Chief Strategy Officer at dinCloud, said. "Through our cloud transformation process, our customers get the user experience of a local computer at an unbeatable price, a performance vs. cost equation that Xsigo's revolutionary architecture helps us to deliver."

"Xsigo Data Center Fabric enabled Farrer and Company to deploy a Software Defined Network (SDN) architecture and move away from an inflexible hardwired solution," Andy Beech, IT Operations Manager at Farrer and Company, said. "Prior to Xsigo, each server had direct attached storage and ran a specific application. With Xsigo, we can now quickly match resources to workloads."

"We love our Xsigo products, which help us connect our systems with speed and pricing competitors can only dream of," Dan Shipley, IT Architect at Supplies Network, said. "At the same time, we enjoy the only open, standards-based fabric available, and it has been proven in extremely large installations. Add on the superior Xsigo support and ease of use, and their products can't be beat."

"Xsigo Data Center Fabric is an integral part of our high-performance Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud and continues to enable us to offer our customers the fastest possible performance at a lower cost than our competitors who employ expensive proprietary gear, whilst maintaining the high levels of security and segregation demanded by the financial services industry," Gjalt van Rutten, CTO of Bitbrains, said. "With the Xsigo Data Center Fabric Bitbrains is able to lead the industry in cost and flexibility."

More information
Xsigo will host a live webinar with noted virtualization expert, blogger and educator Mike Laverick on the data center fabric at 10 a.m. PT and 3 p.m. GMT on June 13, 2012.

Use one of the links below to register for "Introduction to Data Center Fabrics: The Path to a Faster, Simpler, More Agile Data Center."

10 a.m. PT:
https://www3.gotowebinar.com/register/659033910

3 p.m. GMT:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/592536182?Portal=www3.gotowebinar.com

Other Resources

Royal Bank of Scotland 55,000 seat VDI deployment
http://www.xsigo.com/blog/2012/04/citrix-vdi-xsigo-fujitsu/

TELUS enterprise public cloud
http://www.xsigo.com/blog/2012/04/telus-public-cloud-xsigo/

XSIGO Software Defined Network (SDN) technology
http://www.xsigo.com/blog/2012/05/software-defined-network/

About Xsigo Systems

Xsigo Systems, Inc., is the data center fabric deployment and technology leader, with more than 300 enterprise customers and numerous patents around virtualization and fabric connections. Xsigo's hardware and software products are specifically designed to maximize the efficiency of a virtualized data center. The entire product family is vendor-neutral, working with existing storage, server and network equipment. The privately held company, founded in 2004 and based in San Jose, Calif., is funded by Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, Greylock Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. For more information, visit http://www.xsigo.com.

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Source: Xsigo Systems, Inc.