* Foundry switches land in two networks
Foundry Networks recently announced that NutriSystem and Cadence Design Systems both installed its equipment for very different purposes.
The NutriSystem network is using Foundry ServerIron 850 application switches to help handle an online ordering application that needed to be available at all times. NutriSystem is of course the weight-loss company. Foundry says NutriSystem was looking to upgrade to a resilient and scalable infrastructure.
The ServerIron switches accelerate Web-based applications and are resilient enough to get around server or application failures. Foundry says the switches can be upgraded with processing power as needed to scale up.
Cadence Design Systems is using Foundry’s NetIron MLX Series of routers and the BigIron RX Series of routing switches as part of a new, centralized data center network. Cadence develops and tests semiconductors and circuit boards, and uses bandwidth-intensive applications to do so.
The NetIron MLX routes between the company’s 2,000 servers, and the BigIron RX switches are set to aggregate more than 500 of the servers. The BigIron RX switches use non-blocking 48-port 10/100/1000 Ethernet modules; the capacity of each chassis is 768 ports, or 2,304 ports in a seven-foot rack. Cadence said it was looking for high performance in a small space.
Cadence gets future-proofing with the switches, as the BigIron RX is billed as 100 Gigabit Ethernet-ready, with high non-blocking 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Gigabit port densities. In other words, Cadence probably isn’t going to be maxing out its bandwidth for some time.
