High density, top-of-rack switch platform

The patent-pending B1 tightly couples the network services of an Ethernet switch with an Intel® Atom® processor C2000, and a dual Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v2 compute resource. A powerful 400G switch fabric with twenty-four 10 Gbps ports and four 40 Gbps ports provide switching capacity for the entire rack. This combination delivers the high performance required for line-rate service chaining to applications in the data path.

“Many of today’s network-edge systems, and command and control platforms, require low-cost, high performance technologies in compact form factors,” said David Parkinson, vice president of hardware engineering, ZNYX Networks. “No other single product delivers the processing power, level of integration, or flexibility of the ZNYX B1 platform.”

The B1 is an affordable entry-level 1U solution that provides the capacity to add or change applications for future needs. The ZNYX B1 top-of-rack switch platform is ideal for NFV applications, network and security appliances, high-end routers, and end-of-row or top-of-rack security devices. In a multi-tenant server rack, the B1 is able to deploy services for specific servers in the rack, enable individual service configurations for servers, and isolate services for different departments within an enterprise.

The ZNYX B1 platform is also an ideal network-edge gateway device for customer-premises equipment (CPE), such as MPLS routing services for the network, and provides the breakout switching required on-premises.

Virtualized, Cost-Effective Network Security & Services
Any networking application or operating system can run either virtualized or bare-metal on the B1 compute environment providing common services, such as load balancing and security, required by the servers in a rack. The B1 open compute environment supports both the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor for embedded virtualization, or VMware® software enabling simple integration within existing data center infrastructures.

“Network security and services functions can now be integrated into the top-of-rack switch by utilizing virtualized applications that are easy to acquire and deploy,” said Kevin Austin, general manager, ZNYX Networks. “This design delivers a new standard in multi-layer security, and preserves valuable rack space for a higher density of servers. With unmatched functional density for top-of-rack switches, B1 delivers unprecedented consolidation, ease of management, and cost savings for enterprises, data centers, and telecom.”

Utilizing virtualized applications on the B1 platform eliminates the hardware tax required to install multiple appliances. The software for load balancer, firewall, anti-virus, web application firewall, malware detector, and intrusion detection/intrusion prevention can be deployed from the virtualization ecosystem on the B1. This approach lowers CAPEX and reduces the time-to-deployment.

Included at no charge with the platform, ZNYX’s OpenArchitect (OA) Ethernet Switch operating system is an open Linux environment that is feature-rich with network protocols, configuration, packet vectoring, and high availability. The open OA solution allows the switch environment to be customized to satisfy each customer’s unique requirements. The common interface across the ZNYX family of products allows system architects to intelligently scale their deployments.