Mobile handset maker Micromax Informatics has deployed Brocade Ethernet fabric technology for its new virtualised data centre designed to support the next several years of operational growth.
The technology deployment is to align and support company’s business expansion plan to South Asian countries, Russia and Eastern Europe. Micromax has set up a next-generation data centre to support warehouse and factory operations as well as has expanded its call centre to 200 seats in past three years.
“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. While data center virtualisation 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,” said Atul Nigam, CIO – Micromax Informatics Ltd.
The company ultimately 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 centre 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.
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 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 centres such as the one Micromax is developing. Compared to conventional data centre 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,” said Edgar Dias, Regional Director – Brocade India. “
“Micromax’s aggressive international expansion plans mean the new data centre will have to accommodate rapid growth, depending on how the business develops in new markets. With its new Brocade data centre 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,” added Dias.
