QFabric data centre architecture

QFabric is claimed to be the first true data centre fabric and is claimed to deliver improvements in data centre performance, operating cost and business agility, from the enterprise to the large-scale cloud provider. It is a simplified, highly scalable data centre network solution for building and securing virtualised data centres.

The architecture enables exponential improvements in data centre speed, scale and efficiency, by removing legacy barriers and improving business agility. The flat architecture provides visibility, enforcement and scale across the entire physical and virtual data centre fabric and collapses the traditional three-layer network down to a single, high-performance layer.

The architecture is claimed to be up to 10 times faster, uses 77% less power, requires 27% fewer networking devices, occupies 90% less data centre floor space, and delivers a nine-fold reduction in operating resources than other architectures.

A reengineered data centre network, it is said to address the demand for exponential speed, scale, security and efficiency for the next decade.

The architecture comprises three components that create a high-performance, low-latency fabric. The QF/Node acts as the distributed decision engine of the fabric; the QF/Interconnect is the high-speed transport device; and the QF/Director delivers a common window, controlling all devices as one.

The QFX3500 is the first product in the QFabric family and is capable of operating as a stand-alone, 64-port, 10 Gb ethernet switch with FCoE and Fibre Channel gateway functionality. It is said to provide the fastest unicast and multicast performance.