SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CALIENT Technologies, Inc., the global leader for Optical Circuit Switching technology, today announced the availability of its new LightConnect™ Manager software suite that manages the company’s S-Series Optical Circuit Switches (OCS) in a range of data center, DCI, and SDN Transport applications.
The LightConnect Manager (LCM) product suite is based on a modular system architecture consisting of a base platform software together with plug-in applications for specific use cases. The platform software supports management and administration of multiple CALIENT S-Series optical circuit switches, including initial setup, software upgrades, and system health and alarm state information.
The optional VPOD Fabric app allows data centers to deploy high-capacity optical overlay networks to connect resource pools (servers, storage, accelerators, switches, routers, and firewalls) using CALIENT’s S-Series optical circuit switches. This allows virtualized PODs (VPODs) of computing power to be created that closely match the requirements of specific use cases and workloads, resulting in improved computational efficiency with the highest performance and lowest cost. The ultra-low latency (less than 30ns) of the S-Series switches means that compute resources can be shared across an entire data center without impacting performance.
The LightConnect Manager with VPOD Fabric app can be deployed as a standalone solution with its own graphical user interface to support manual reconfiguration of VPODs. This is a typical starting point for data centers and supports a simple and low-risk introduction path.
Alternatively, the LCM can be implemented as part of a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software environment to deliver dynamic and automated VPOD configuration with the DCIM systems communicating with the LCM through a well-defined REST API.
CALIENT is planning additional apps for the LightConnect Manager Suite to support the rollout of high volumes of its S-Series optical circuit switches as demand accelerates driven by the high value of optical layer virtualization in data centers and SDN Transport networks.
Core LightConnect™ Manager Functions
The LightConnect™ Manager consists of three primary functional modules:
- Optical Circuit Switch (OCS) Management: Supporting the management and administration of multiple S-Series optical circuit switches, including initial setup, software upgrades, and system health and alarm state information.
- Connectivity Management: This function discovers the optical switch and packet switch topologies and subsequently updates and maintains them by monitoring connectivity and port status information from the optical switches, providing a comprehensive view of the overall data center topology, including which layer 2/3 switches and ports are connected to specific OCS ports.
- Dashboard: The LCM maintains a consolidated dashboard summary with a real-time view of VPOD status and the operational status of all optical circuit switches, including alarms, events, and port utilization.
VPOD Fabric App: The VPOD Fabric app can be added to LightConnect™ Manager to create and manage VPODs, including the initial definition of POD boundaries and subsequent resizing. This includes cross-connect management to create, delete, and update cross-connects to reconfigure the VPODs.
Together, the Connectivity and VPOD management functions allow a packet switch to signal its OCS port and establish a network connection on a per-flow basis.
The LightConnect Manager is a CentOS-based Linux application, capable of running on Intel Architecture hardware or any virtual machine.
“Poor compute resource utilization is one of the greatest economic challenges in modern data centers, with operational efficiency typically less than forty percent,” commented Atiq Raza, CALIENT’s Chairman and CEO. “This is a major problem because compute hardware represents approximately 90% of the electronics cost and 70% of the energy consumed in data centers. Our new LightConnect Manager Suite supports a new operational paradigm that allows servers, storage, and other compute hardware to be pooled and shared across the data center with optical switching, resulting in very high performance at the lowest possible CAPEX.”
Availability
The CALIENT LightConnect Manager is available today. CALIENT’s S-Series Optical Circuit Switches, which form the physical basis for the LightConnect Fabric, are generally available and shipping in commercial volumes today.
About CALIENT Technologies
CALIENT Technologies is the global leader in pure photonic Optical Circuit Switching with systems that enable dynamic optical layer optimization in next generation data centers and software defined networks. CALIENT’s 3D MEMS switches allow data center operators to dramatically improve utilization rates of expensive compute resources, which typically account for more than 85% of the electronics investment. Data Centers and Service Providers also deploy CALIENT switches at the edges of their networks to facilitate multi-layer network optimization for maximum efficiency and flexibility. In this application the optical circuit switches support network-wide implementation of SDN Transport regardless of the vendor or vintage of the optical transport system. The company designs and manufactures its systems using the state of art MEMS fabrication equipment at its corporate headquarters in Santa Barbara, California.
For more information, visit CALIENT at http://www.calient.net, on Twitter, and LinkedIn, or contact us at: marketing@calient.net.
