The company selected low-latency Brocade VDX 6740 10 GbE switches as the network foundation of the new data center
Micromax Informatics has deployed Brocade Ethernet fabric technology in a new virtualized data center designed to support the next several years of operational growth.
Micromax ships more than 3 million mobile handsets a month and the company wants its international revenues to increase to 50 percent in five years, which is 10 percent now. It requires a next-generation data center to support warehouse and factory operations as well as a call center—which has ballooned from 50 seats to 200 seats in the last three years.
The company selected low-latency Brocade VDX 6740 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switches as the network foundation of the new data center due to the strength of Brocade VCS Fabric technology, ease of configuration, operational automation, and cost-effective performance and scalability. Brocade ADX application delivery switches have also been deployed in the new Micromax data center to accelerate application performance, increase application availability, and improve security.
Micromax is starting with approximately 40 Virtual Machines (VMs) running on four racks of blade servers and Micromax expects this will scale up to 100 VMs and 10 server racks within a year. The Brocade VDX 6740 switches have been deployed with an initial 24 fiber ports enabled and, as more server connections are needed, Micromax can license additional 8-port increments up to a maximum of 64 per switch.
“Given the pace at which we have been growing, and the challenges of establishing a strong presence in new markets, building a data center that is both scalable and flexible is a crucial development,” said Atul Nigam, CIO of Micromax Informatics Ltd. “While data center virtualization was obviously the path to follow, our biggest issue was finding a network infrastructure that would enable a high level of operational automation while having the flexibility to accommodate rapid data center evolution.”
This flexible and cost-efficient “pay-as-you-grow” licensing model enables Micromax to quickly scale its data center network in response to changing business demands. More switches can also be added to the Brocade VCS Logical Chassis using four built-in 40 GbE connector ports. Not only do the interconnected switches operate as a seamless Ethernet fabric but they do so as a single virtual device, which reduces Micromax’s operating costs since configuration and monitoring are greatly simplified.
“The combination of pay-as-you-grow scalability, low operating cost, and advanced network virtualization features make Brocade VDX switches an excellent choice for cloud data centers such as the one Micromax is developing,” said Edgar Dias, regional director for Brocade India. “Compared to conventional data center switching architecture, Brocade VCS Fabric technology is vastly more elastic, scalable, and efficient at dealing with virtual machine mobility and massive levels of east/west inter-server traffic.”
Dias added, “Micromax’s aggressive international expansion plans mean the new data center will have to accommodate rapid growth, depending on how the business develops in new markets. With its new Brocade data center network foundation it doesn’t have to worry too much about that. It has started with a small Brocade VDX switch deployment, at a modest upfront cost, and can easily scale up as needed.”
