Plexxi Drives Network Innovation with New Switch and Software Releases

NASHUA, N.H., June 13, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Plexxi, a pioneer of Hyperconverged Networking (HCN), today announced the introduction of its new Switch 3eq Ethernet (for 25/50/100 GbE) switches, and the latest versions of its Plexxi Control (software-defined network fabric control) and Plexxi Connect (integration and workflow automation) software, including an enhanced Nutanix Integration Pack. Now Nutanix customers can fully integrate Plexxi's HCN^TM fabric with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud environments to create a single, seamless solution that includes scalable compute, storage, and networking for both VMware and Nutanix Acropolis environments.

"Our latest releases of Plexxi Control and Plexxi Connect, together with our new Switch 3eq offers customers even greater performance and finer-grained network control and security for their converged and hyperconverged infrastructure," said Rich Napolitano, Plexxi CEO.  "As organizations streamline their datacenter operations and move to consolidate their IT assets, they need a network that provides them with the agility to quickly deploy and easily scale their infrastructure. Plexxi's HCN fabric provides this agility in a way that tightly integrates into the native hyperconverged infrastructure environment for ease of use, enhanced visibility, and optimal cluster performance."

Plexxi Connect 2.3 adds the same network automation of VM lifecycle events that Plexxi brings to VMware environments to Nutanix Acropolis AHV environments. With the addition of this new Nutanix Acropolis AHV Integration capability, customers can deploy an HCN fabric that is "Nutanix aware."

"Plexxi allows us to deliver unique value to our customers, who are modernizing their IT infrastructure to remove significant complexity and cost," said John Moser, Network and Security Practice Lead at  Plexxi partner, AE Business Solutions. "Plexxi's integration with Nutanix is game-changing. It enables us to deliver a complete, tightly integrated, easy-to-manage, infrastructure solution that converges compute, storage, and networking --  all configured and controlled through a single pane-of-glass." 

Plexxi Connect Integration Pack eliminate resource intensive, time-consuming system integration and testing efforts, providing off-the-shelf integration between Plexxi and industry-leading applications and infrastructure, like Nutanix. Plexxi's Nutanix integration harvests all the elements of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform configuration, including: cluster nodes, hypervisors (Nutanix AHV or VMware ESXi), and Nutanix Controller Virtual Machine (CVM) information. As the environment evolves, Plexxi Control software dynamically configures and adapts the Plexxi network fabric in response to compute and storage events. One of the key capabilities is automatically detecting VMs that comprise the critical storage subsystem and allocating a secure, dedicated high-speed network on the converged fabric. This ensures the highest performance and service quality for diverse applications workloads, while making optimal use of networking resources.  The Plexxi software also builds a graphical representation of the network topology that integrates with Nutanix Prism, and displays its state and status for quick and simple analysis of the network. All of this is done automatically through existing Nutanix Prism APIs.

Plexxi Control 3.1 delivers several key enhancements for increased control and security of the Plexxi HCN fabric. Control 3.1 introduces users, roles, and authentication for secure user access to Plexxi switches. It also delivers the ability for users to easily tell the fabric that a specific VLAN carries mission critical traffic such as storage. The Control software then uses this information to create isolated fabric paths dedicated for this traffic, significantly reducing the potential for congestion that could impair all workloads' access to data. This capability is critical in both HCI and Converged Infrastructure (CI) deployments to ensure storage workload performance and integrity. Plexxi is also making advanced NVMeoF support available to strategic partners for testing.

Plexxi Switch 3eq is the first switch in Plexxi's new Switch 3 Entry Series family offering support for 25GbE/50GbE/100GbE interface speeds. Based on the Broadcom leading-edge Tomahawk chipset, Switch 3eq provides new levels of high-speed datacenter port density up to 128 - 10GbE or 25GbE interfaces; 64 – 50GbE; or 32 – 40GbE or 100GbE interfaces in a 1U form factor. Plexxi Switch 3e provides a solid foundation for high-performance storage and compute fabrics and hyperconverged infrastructures. Plexxi software also runs on whitebox switches available from several vendors.

Switch 3eq, Plexxi Control 3.1 and Plexxi Connect 2.3 software, and the enhanced Nutanix Integration Pack are available immediately. For more information or to order these products, please contact [email protected].

About Plexxi Inc.

Plexxi is a pioneer in converged and hyperconverged network infrastructure for public and private cloud deployments. Plexxi solutions enable Cloud Builders to harness the power of a single, simple platform to create private/public/hybrid cloud and data center networks. Plexxi HCN^TM  offers an easy-to-manage, cost-effective hyperconverged network for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions. Headquartered in Nashua, N.H., Plexxi investors include GV (formerly Google Ventures), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. For more information, visit www.plexxi.com or follow us on Twitter @PlexxiInc.

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Media contact:
Jackie D'Andrea
(781) 966-4143
[email protected] 

SOURCE Plexxi

Related Links

http://www.plexxi.com/plexxi-hcn/