Aruba releases end-to-end switching portfolio

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has announced that it is changing the rules of networking with the introduction of switching and software features designed to address the needs of today's modern enterprise campus, branch and data center.

The Aruba CX Switching Portfolio now includes the Aruba CX 6300 Series fixed configuration and CX 6400 Series modular access, aggregation and core switches, while delivering the latest advancements in the AOS-CX operating system.

This gives network operators one simple, end-to-end switching platform to improve business outcomes.

Aruba is the first company to offer a single switching platform that runs on a modern network operating system – AOS-CX – from the enterprise edge to the core to the data center.

This cloud-native platform is optimised by Aruba's Network Analytics Engine (NAE), which utilises embedded analytics and automation to simplify management, accelerate troubleshooting of application performance issues and remediate common network problems.

"AI-powered automation must be at the heart of a modern, edge-to-cloud architecture and, in order to be truly useful, it requires an intelligent infrastructure as the foundation," says Aruba president and founder Keerti Melkote.

"We believe that AI is the key to analysing data, providing actionable insights, and automation at scale to optimise network operators' ability to quickly troubleshoot, remediate and proactively resolve some of IT's most pressing challenges.

"Our vision for the future is a cloud-native architecture that delivers business agility and new digital experiences, and today's introduction is a step in that direction.

Today's enterprises cannot remain competitive by relying on greater performance and increased bandwidth alone.

The modern enterprise requires an advanced architecture that is self-validating and self-tuning through closed-loop automation to intelligently support mission-critical applications, circumvent new security attack vectors, and deliver the agility that today's enterprises require.

Until now, network operators have had to contend with inflexible, disparate architectures especially when managing branch offices, enterprise campuses and data centers.

These architectures require manual processes across multiple operating systems, resulting in fragmented operating models, networks incapable of modern functions and a plethora of unstructured data that isn't actionable.

Gartner states, "As update speed increases, it is no longer viable to manually plan for and deploy tens, hundreds or thousands of network changes each time an application change occurs. Making these changes manually is not only impractical but is likely to result in significant errors.

Manual processes can significantly hinder an organisation's ability to move quickly, innovate and thrive in a competitive marketplace.

Moreover, many of these hurdles can be overcome with a cloud-native infrastructure. According to Gartner, a cloud-native infrastructure exhibits the following characteristics:

• Modularity – It provides abstractions for independent packaging of services (such as containers or serverless functions).
• Programmability – It supports provisioning and management via declarative APIs and policies.
• Elasticity – Resources can be scaled up and down dynamically in an automated and policy-driven manner using orchestrators.
• Resiliency – Services are loosely coupled units that are independent and fault-tolerant.

Modern enterprises need an edge-to-cloud network running on a common platform to benefit from automation and increased operational efficiency, freeing up network operators to focus on business-critical activities.

Stemming from its CX 8400 Series core switches running the AOS-CX operating system, Aruba is addressing these challenges with a switching portfolio that delivers a single operating model from the enterprise campus and branch access layer to the data center, simplifying network operations.

The new platforms in the Aruba CX Switching Portfolio incorporate the key elements of a modern networking infrastructure and include:

• Aruba CX 6300 and CX 6400 Series switches featuring Aruba's 7th Generation ASIC architecture: The Aruba CX 6300 Series is a family of stackable switches that offers flexible growth via a 10-member virtual switching framework (VSF) and provides built-in 10/25/50 gigabit uplinks to meet the bandwidth needs of today and the future. The Aruba CX 6400 Series modular switches offer both a 5-slot chassis and a 10-slot chassis with a non-blocking fabric that scales from Gigabit POE access to 100G core, allowing customers to standardise on one platform across the enterprise, including hybrid use cases.
   
• AOS-CX 10.4: The new version of AOS-CX introduces rich access features to the OS while extending CX differentiators to the access layer of the network. These include Aruba Dynamic Segmentation to provide secure, unified policy across wired and wireless down to every user and IoT device, Ethernet VPN (EVPN) over VxLAN for simplified and secure connectivity from enterprises to data centers, and Virtual Switching Extension (VSX) live upgrades for no downtime during maintenance cycles.
   
• Aruba NetEdit 2.0 with Network Analytics Engine (NAE): Aruba's NetEdit software now integrates with Aruba's NAE. This enables centralised visualisation of network health leveraging NAE distributed analytics across every switch in the network to reduce troubleshooting cycles from days to minutes. New automation capabilities simplify common tasks such as implementing configuration changes or initial system set-up which can now be completed via the CX Mobile app.

"The new Aruba CX Switching Portfolio comes to market as demands on the enterprise network continue to increase, with more users, devices and things requiring higher speeds and lower latencies," says IDC network infrastructure senior research analyst Brandon Butler.

"Enterprises are looking for powerful platforms with simplified operations to keep up with the current and future needs of the business.

He says, "Aruba's CX switching portfolio allows customers to use a single platform for Ethernet switching from the data center to the access layer, providing a consistent, cloud-native OS, helping enterprises achieve easier management, more consistent operator experience and higher levels of quality assurance."

The CX Switching Portfolio, including the Aruba CX 6300 and CX 6400 Series switches, the new version of AOS-CX and Aruba NetEdit 2.0 will begin shipping in November 2019.

List pricing for the Aruba CX 6300 and CX 6400 Series starts at $9,400 AUD or $10,237 NZD and $21,510 AUD or $23,426 NZD respectively