Brocade Intros OpenScript Engine

February 3, 2012

Brocade ServerIron ADX Series of cloud-optimized application delivery switches are designed to help customers gain greater application control and service scalability. The new Brocade OpenScript engine is an open platform for innovation, with the ability to intelligently predict the effect on the network before introducing scripts into production. This allows Brocade ADX customers to customize their service delivery for improved scalability and performance. Together with the OpenScript community, tools to enhance network management and performance enhancements to IPv6, this comprehensive set of new capabilities greatly increases the competitiveness of the entire Brocade ADX Series of application delivery switches.

"Application delivery performance, scalability and flexibility are critical requirements for our customers. These requirements have a direct effect on our ability to scale our business while exceeding customer expectations," said Rob Jackson, Solution Line Leader for Networking and Security at Rackspace. "With the Brocade ServerIron ADX, we look forward to continuing our success with the platform and implementing stable, customizable traffic management capabilities so that our new and existing customers can maintain greater application control."

Service customization and traffic manipulation are critical requirements for businesses to deliver new and differentiated cloud-based services. To foster innovation and enable the deployment of advanced capabilities in production environments, Brocade has introduced the OpenScript engine, a scalable and deterministic application scripting engine that allows network operators to customize the capabilities of their network to match their specific needs.

Built on PERL, a powerful and widely-accepted standards-based programming language, the OpenScript engine provides the programming framework for network operators to develop customized traffic management capabilities. The Brocade OpenScript Performance Estimator provides network operators the unique ability to estimate the performance impact of custom scripts before implementing them in live production environments. This deterministic visibility enables operators to better plan for service capacity requirements, and to deploy new services with confidence.

To enable application delivery professionals to learn, browse and share application scripts, Brocade has created the OpenScript community. It provides a social networking space for real-time discussions, solutions, technical guidance, and configuration examples for the OpenScript engine.

"A service provider's critical asset is its network; this makes reliability, scalability and performance critical factors for its success," said Alan Weckel, senior director for Dell'Oro Group. "The importance to predetermine the impact network load on their application delivery infrastructure is becoming critical as service providers not only create new revenue generating services but also mitigate network implications before any traffic passes through their application delivery infrastructure."

Facilitating IPv6 Internet Transformation for Cloud-Optimized Networks

IPv6 technology dramatically increases the pool of global IP addresses while simplifying network administration, resolving security and mobility issues and improving Quality of Service (QoS). Brocade ADX version 12.4 doubles the IPv6 performance of ADX and delivers consistent services across IPv4 and IPv6. The Brocade ADX switch also enables a seamless transition to IPv6 while preserving IPv4 assets through standards-based IPv4-to-IPv6 translation technology. Organizations can now migrate to IPv6 while offering consistent services to clients across both IPv4 and IPv6.

Tools to Simplify Network Management and Control

As network operators develop and deliver new cloud services, application delivery switches must seamlessly integrate with orchestration and automation systems. Brocade ADX version 12.4 enables automatic provisioning of application and network resources in a heterogeneous virtual environment. Coupled with Brocade Application Resource Broker 2.0, Brocade ADX simplifies the management of application resources within globally distributed data centers by automating on-demand resource provisioning of virtual machines within heterogeneous virtual environments, which include VMware, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Brocade has also delivered an all-new task-oriented graphical interface that offers an intuitive approach to configure, monitor, and maintain the ADX. The new ADX web interface also includes a real-time dashboard for quick access to essential application and system performance information. Brocade has also released extensions to the Brocade ADX XML/SOAP API, simplifying integration with custom and third party orchestration applications. The API extensions include the OpenScript engine support, as well as richer server load balancing, security, health check, and system management capabilities.

The Brocade ServerIron ADX software release version 12.4 is generally available now. This is a no-cost software upgrade for customers with valid service contracts.

As the growing usage of on-demand applications and cloud computing are driving the need for business partners to focus on the delivery of solutions and services within virtualized environments, the Brocade ADX family of application delivery switches presents a unique value proposition for channel partners. All products are available through dedicated Brocade partners.