SDN start-up reaches for its "Wedge"
- 26 June, 2014 04:07
Pluribus Networks, the SDN start-up with the server/switch combination and network hypervisor/operating system, is looking to make a gradual exit from the hardware end of that market. Pluribus this week said distributor Arrow Electronics will now supply the Pluribus-branded, 1RU E-68 Server-Switch that combines Broadcom Trident II chips with Intel Xeon server-class, multi-core processors.
Pluribus announced its Freedom server/switch architecture with the Netvisor network hypervisor in February. The company's CEO is Kumar Srikantan, formerly vice president and general manager of hardware engineering in Cisco's Enterprise Networking Group, and caretaker of the Catalyst 6500 switch.
Pluribus says this move is consistent with the way the industry is heading with white box switching-based SDNs, and dovetails with its May announcement to add its Netvisor software to Supermicro's MicroBlade switches. The company said Facebook's announcement its "Wedge" open top-of-rack server/switch is a validation of Pluribus' initial E-Series strategy, and that Pluribus plans to adopt that Wedge Open Compute Platform architecture over time.
Under the Arrow arrangement, customers can order directly from the distributor the Pluribus Netvisor pre-installed on the server-switches at a street price point starting at $100 per 10G port. Netvisor provides traditional L2/3 switching as well as virtual/physical computing analytics, network virtualization and single point of management.
Pluribus plans to continue to offer its F-Series network computing appliances, however, for analytics and cloud orchestration. The company's Cloud Services Bundle runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux -- OpenStack Platform and includes enough storage to maintain the image store for a typical cloud deployment, Pluribus says. It is also designed for future Network Functions Virtualization support.
The Cloud Analytics Bundle supports cloud-scale analytics with 800 GB of high-speed flash storage for persistent storage of logs, Pluribus says.
North American customers can order the E-68 Software-Defined Fabric Switch from Arrow beginning in the third quarter, with a street price of $6,800 for the Pluribus Netvisor IPS license and $9,900 for the SDF license.
The F64-CLS Cloud Services Bundle and the F64-CLA Cloud Analytics Bundle are both available immediately from Pluribus at $80,000 list.
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