Dell launches New Suite of Products for SDN

Dell has released a new suite of products designed for hardware and software defined networking. These products include support for Microsoft, VMware and OpenStack hypervisors, as well as OpenFlow-based virtual switches.

Along with this announcement, Dell has developed a single-interface design system for Active Fabric, called Active Fabric Manager (AFM). This product will offer role-based access to the central console, allowing workers from different departments to manage parts of the network relevant to them.  In addition, AFM will automate virtual network design, provisioning and configuration via custom GUIs.

Brad Casemore, Analyst, IDC, said, "Dell is responding to the need for scale-out networking that can accommodate virtualized workloads and the cloud. At the same time, Dell is seeking to provide network infrastructure that can provide converged networking for storage and data."

He further added, "Dell is taking its network sales pitch not just to networking professionals, but also to other constituencies within the data center, including the CIO, and the virtualization and storage professionals."

Dell is also rolling out the S5000 top-of-rack switch S5000 device. This device can support up to 64 10G ports in a modular chassis providing flexibility.