First announced in March, the Force10 Open Automation Framework was designed to bring network automation to virtual data center environments.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Data center and service provider technology developer Force10 Networks (www.force10networks.com) has added new functionality to its network automation solutions to provide today’s data center environments additional flexibility, availability, manageability and lower operational costs.
According to Force10’s Tuesday announcement, Force10’s new SmartScripts software provides a scripting environment for Force10 switching platforms designed to enhance network reliability and improve management. Force10’s Open Automation Framework has also gained support from top virtualization solution providers VMware (www.vmware.com) and Citrix (www.citrix.com).
“From our perspective, network automation solutions from Force10 represent a more flexible and ultimately cost-effective approach to automating data center environments,” said Jeremy Stinson, network operations vice president at social network site myYearbook (www.myyearbook.com). “We value network virtualization solution providers who offer infrastructure choices that avoid vendor lock-in and provide their customers with the optimum, best-of-breed solution that fits their needs – not what the vendor supports.”
Providing robust scripting capability, SmartScripts improves the monitoring and management of network infrastructure and boosts productivity by enabling IT managers to run Perl and Python scripts on Force10 switches. This lets customers customers implement custom monitoring and management functions in the network switch such as version control, alert notification and autonomous management of network devices.
As part of its Open Automation Framework, Force10’s HyperLink tool also now supports VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer environments, enabling users to automate VM/VLAN migration in VMware and Citrix environments for improved network connectivity and security. Without HyperLink, IT managers have to manually provision VLANs, delaying VM migration anywhere from minutes to days, depending on the size and complexity of a data center.
“Automating configuration management represents an important step toward transforming data center infrastructure into an automated, policy-driven network fabric,” Force10 Networks chief marketing officer Arpit Joshipura said in a statement. “Working with our impressive ecosystem of partners, we have extended our position as a leading data center infrastructure provider by giving CIOs and their IT staffs some important tools needed to improve their responsiveness, efficiency and reliability while bringing costs under control.”
The announcement of the new SmartScripts tool and added HyperLink support follow the initial delivery of the Force10 Open Automation Framework products announced in March. The Force10 Open Automation Framework was designed to bring network automation to virtual data center environments. According to Force10, these tools give IT managers the power to automatically provision virtual machines and virtual network resources using a single software tool.
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