Based on Huawei’s SDN-ready Cloud Fabric architecture, the new cloud data centre network was put into use in September 2014. Thanks to Huawei’s fully virtualised data centre network solution, Abraxas has significantly improved its ICT resource utilisation. Huawei’s Cloud Fabric helps Abraxas provide highly efficient, flexible, and reliable cloud computing services for enterprises, government agencies, and scientific research institutions in Switzerland and in Europe.
Since 1998, Abraxas has been offering ICT outsourcing and data centre cloud services, as well as ICT solution consulting and deployment services. It serves the government sector and medium-sized enterprises. Riding on the global megatrends of cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data to rapidly deploy and update services has become increasingly important for data centres in order to support emerging applications. Due to the complexity of data centre infrastructure and the need for professional skills, a growing number of enterprises are choosing to pick cloud service providers in order to reduce the cost of operations and infrastructure investments. As a result, the demand for cloud services continues to increase, which has brought both opportunities and challenges to Abraxas.
In order to accommodate its customers’ requirements, Abraxas decided to improve its cloud data centre network efficiency in three aspects. “First of all, we want to improve the overall efficiency of IT resource utilisation by integrating data centre resources. Second, we have to implement data centre interconnections to guarantee flexible deployment and the migration of services among data centres. Last but not least, in order to fulfil sustainable service development, our data centre network architecture has to be flexible enough to evolve into SDN-enabled architecture,” said Olaf Sonderegger, ICT Architect, Infrastructure Management, Abraxas. “After making a comprehensive evaluation, we found that Huawei’s Cloud Fabric Data Centre Network Solution fully satisfied our requirements.”
Huawei’s Cloud Fabric Data Centre Network Solution is able to build a fully virtualised fabric using Huawei CloudEngine series high-performance data centre switches, enabling Abraxas to construct a highly efficient, reliable, and scalable multi-tenant cloud data centre.
1. A Fully Virtualised Fabric Flexibly Schedules VM Resources
The fabric, built by Huawei through Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) and Ethernet Virtual Network (EVN), has helped Abraxas build an ultra-large cross-DC Layer 2 network, implementing flexible deployment and scheduling Virtual Machine (VM) resources. The TRILL-based large Layer 2 network allows connections to a vast amount of servers, and supports flexible VM deployment. The EVN solution enables Layer 2 interconnections across the IP WAN, thereby virtualising three data centres into a super large IT resource pool. Additionally, VMs can freely migrate across data centres.
2. “1:N” Virtualization of a Core Switch Lowers the TCO
The Virtual System (VS) technology used by Huawei’s Cloud Fabric implements “1:N” virtualisation of a core switch. Thanks to this technology, Abraxas is able to implement a variety of service functions using different Virtual Switches (vSwitches), thereby achieving service isolation. The VS technology helps Abraxas lower its Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for network equipment, while substantially improving its network resource usage efficiency.
3. A Smooth Network Evolution into SDN Ensures a High ROI
Huawei’s CloudEngine series data centre switches work seamlessly with Huawei’s Agile Controller. Together they help Abraxas build an SDN-based data centre. Abraxas is also able to develop its data centre network for its own service demands through SDN. Based on an advanced hardware and software architecture design, Huawei’s CloudEngine 12800 is currently the world’s best-performing core switch. The entire device supports a switching capacity of up to 160 Tbps, and provides a high-density of 100GE and 40GE line-speed cards, meeting Abraxas’s requirements for long-term network capacity expansion and ensuring it achieves a high Return on Investment (ROI).
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Photo Caption: Mr Wu Chou, CTO, Switch & Enterprise Communications Product Line, Huawei, launches Cloud Fabric 3.0.
“We appreciate Abraxas selecting Huawei’s Cloud Fabric Data Centre Network Solution to build the best-in-class cloud data centre. Huawei’s Cloud Fabric has been deployed in more than 100 data centres in over 80 countries and regions around the world, including multiple world-renowned corporations such as Telefonica, Alibaba, Tencent, and 21Vianet Group, Inc., etc.” said Wu Chou, CTO, Switch & Enterprise Communications Product Line, Huawei. “As a leading global ICT solutions provider, Huawei will continue to devote itself to building a better connected world by carrying out customer-centric innovations.”
