Big Switch Networks' Big Cloud Fabric Achieves Red Hat Certification for Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Dec 16, 2014) - Big Switch Networks, the company bringing hyperscale networking to data centers worldwide, announced today that its flagship product, Big Cloud Fabric, has achieved certification with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5. With this certification, Red Hat customers can now deploy a modern bare metal SDN fabric to bring greater operational simplicity and dramatic cost reduction to their OpenStack Clouds. In order to meet certification requirements, Big Cloud Fabric passed a comprehensive list of tests to determine compatibility with OpenStack APIs and other functions implemented in Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5.

"Red Hat partners with innovative companies like Big Switch Networks to create a 'better together' solution and deliver flexible and effective SDN fabric for the hybrid cloud," said Mike Werner, Senior Director, Global Technology Ecosystems, Red Hat. "This collaborative approach of engineering, testing and certification between our two companies allows our mutual customers to confidently deploy next-generation private or public clouds."

The certification of Big Cloud Fabric for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5 enables customers to replace complex and costly legacy box-by-box networking with SDN fabric. The Big Cloud Fabric plug-in for OpenStack Neutron provides dynamic creation of network segments on the physical leaf/spine SDN fabric. Additional support for OpenStack Nova networking provides increased flexibility to customers. To speed up diagnostics, online fabric connectivity testing is exposed directly into OpenStack Horizon GUI, so each tenant can verify workload connectivity without involving a cloud operations team. Such self-service diagnostic tools, enabled through Big Cloud Fabric's native REST APIs, further reduce the customer's operational expenses.

Big Cloud Fabric is the industry's first and only data center switching fabric that combines the speed and simplicity of SDN software with the economics of bare metal switch hardware. It is architected for scale and resiliency, featuring headless-mode high availability, zero-touch fabric operations, simplified application provisioning with logical networks using distributed routing, application-centric policy and service chaining.

Big Switch's Big Cloud Fabric is tested across a broad set of Red Hat products for deployment flexibility:

• Certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a commercially-supported, enterprise-class OpenStack cloud solution
• Foreman installer for rapid deployment of OpenStack clouds
• RDO -- a community driven OpenStack distribution leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS and PackStack installer
• Big Switch Networks enables multiple OpenStack use cases for Red Hat customers, including:
  • Private/public cloud infrastructures for enterprise and service provider customers
  • Big data analytics with virtualized compute workloads -- a rapidly accelerating trend that efficiently utilizes 10G/40G servers and adds significant operational simplicity
  • Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) -- where cost and operational efficiency are paramount

"OpenStack is gaining momentum for building on-premise and off-premise clouds due to its openness, extensibility, and economics," said Prashant Gandhi, VP Product Management and Strategy. "With Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5 certification, our SDN-powered Big Cloud Fabric becomes an easy choice for deploying modern hyperscale-style networks for OpenStack clouds." 

Tweet this: Excited to announce that @BigSwitch has achieved @RedHatNews Certification for Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5

About Big Switch Networks
Big Switch Networks is the market leader in bringing hyperscale data center networking technologies to a broader audience. The company is taking three key hyperscale technologies -- open Ethernet switch hardware, sophisticated SDN control software, and core-and-pod data center designs -- and leveraging them in fit-for-purpose products designed for use in enterprises, cloud providers, and service providers. The company's Big Tap Monitoring Fabric is an entry level solution to monitor existing networks, and the flagship Big Cloud Fabric is the industry's most advanced bare metal switching fabric intended for new data center pods such as private cloud, big data, and VDI. For additional information, email info@bigswitch.com, follow @bigswitch, or visit www.bigswitch.com.

Big Switch Networks, Big Cloud Fabric, Big Tap, Switch Light OS, and Switch Light vSwitch are trademarks or registered trademarks of Big Switch Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.

Red Hat and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. The OpenStack mark is either a registered trademark/service mark or trademark/service mark of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries, and is used with the OpenStack Foundation's permission. Red Hat is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.