brocade-mlxe-enterprise-switches-ds0 pages

DATA SHEET

Brocade MLXe Enterprise Switches

Multiservice IP SDN Switches

Highlights

••Optimized for the increasing

business needs in the data center and
campus of commercial enterprises,
higher education, and public sector
organizations

••Fully distributed, non-blocking, and

programmable architecture with up to
3.84 Tbps fabric capacity for maximum
performance and investment protection

••Wire-speed forwarding performance for
all software features, including Ethernet,
VLAN, IPv4, IPv6, IPsec, MACsec, and
OpenFlow capabilities

••High-availability design with redundant

management modules, switch fabrics,
power supplies, and fans; hitless failover
and hitless software upgrades

••Hardware support for OpenFlow 1.3

in the industry’s only true hybrid port
mode, enabling Software-Defined
Networking (SDN) to seamlessly
interwork with existing network
forwarding

The way enterprise organizations communicate and conduct business has
changed dramatically in the past decade. Services such as high-definition
video streaming, hybrid cloud services, and anytime/anywhere mobile
connectivity not only consume an enormous amount of network capacity,
but also create a greater degree of complexity for network operations. As
a result, today’s network planners are seeking solutions that provide the
right mix of scalability, performance, programmability, and operational
simplicity.
The Brocade® MLXe Enterprise Switches are built with a state-of-the-art,
sixth-generation, network processor-based architecture and terabit-scale
switch fabrics to provide a rich set of high-performance Layer 2, IPv4,
IPv6, wire-speed encryption, and Software-Defined Networking (SDN)
services. As a result, these switches address the increasing business
needs in the data center and campuses of commercial enterprises, higher
education, and public sector organizations.
Flexibility, Scale, and Investment
Protection without Performance
Compromise

Industry-Leading SDN for
Programmatic Control
of the Network

The Brocade MLXe Enterprise
Switches are optimized for IP Ethernet
deployments, providing symmetric scaling
with chassis options that include 4- and
8-slot systems. These switches offer
industry-leading wire-speed port capacity
without compromising the performance of
advanced software capabilities. Support
for dense wire-speed 100 GbE, 40 GbE,
10 GbE and 1 GbE, flexible MAC and
route scale and port-level hardware based
encryption (IPsec and MACsec) in these
multiple modular chassis sizes support
the needs for campus and data center
core and border in all organizations.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN)
is a powerful new network paradigm
that promises breakthrough levels of
customization, agility, and scale, enabling
more open, automated, and efficient
networks. The Brocade MLXe Enterprise
Switches enable SDN through support
for the OpenFlow protocol. This open
protocol allows communication between
an OpenFlow-enabled controller and
an OpenFlow-enabled switch for
the purpose of controlling network
forwarding behavior. Using this approach,
organizations can separate fine-grained
flow control from the