News and Events

2008

FORCE10 NETWORKS INTRODUCES UNIFIED OPERATING SYSTEM ACROSS PRODUCT PORTFOLIO TO LOWER TOTAL COST OF OWNING AND OPERATING NETWORKS

SAN JOSE, Calif., January 28, 2008 – Force10 Networks®, the pioneer in building and securing reliable networks, today announced that its modular operating system FTOS™ is now available across its Reliable Networking portfolio of switch/routers, bringing consistency, stability and flexibility to the enterprise network. With support for a common interface across the TeraScale E-Series, C-Series and S-Series, Force10 is enabling customers to reduce their total cost of ownership by simplifying management, reducing unplanned downtime and optimizing application availability.

“With new users joining every day and a commitment to developing new applications that increase our ability to make good matches, our network needs to be flexible and easy to manage,” said Cyrus Mohit, manager of data center operations at eHarmony. “With FTOS as the common operating system across the Force10 E-Series and C-Series, we not only have a single, reliable code running on our switches but managing the network, from troubleshooting to software upgrades, is much easier, leaving more resources dedicated to enhancing our users’ experience.”

With roots in high performance data centers, Force10 leveraged its experience in these demanding environments to build FTOS, a modular, reliable operating system. By extending a common interface across its product portfolio to create Unified FTOS, Force10 brings stability and consistency to the network. Additionally, with a single management system across all switch/routers, Force10 enables customers to streamline management as well as upgrade and troubleshooting processes to lower the total cost of network ownership.

To deliver these benefits, Force10’s FTOS supports three key characteristics that are required in service rich networks: reliability, network control and scalability.

To build reliability into its operating system, Force10 integrated the unix-like NetBSD kernel into FTOS, which provides inherent process modularity and fault isolation. Additionally, FTOS is based on a single source code and release train, simplifying software maintenance and upgrades while a rigorous quality assurance process ensures the code is stable prior to being made available to customers. The advances in operating system design and QA policies and processes combine to provide optimal application availability to the enterprise.

To reduce human error, one of the primary causes of unplanned downtime, Force10 has built several network control features into FTOS. In the event of a configuration error, FTOS is designed to revert to the last known working configuration if the system becomes inaccessible. Additionally, automated fault correction helps minimize system interruption and maximize uptime by allowing IT managers to program actions the system will take in the event of failed health checks.

In addition to supporting automated features that provide more system transparency and protect against human error, FTOS also relies on an industry-standard command line interface (CLI). Rather than using a proprietary command syntax, FTOS enables enterprises to leverage the existing tools and knowledge base in their IT organization to minimize management costs and streamline deployments.

“With 16 million users, the traffic on our network continues to grow rapidly, and the Force10 E-Series and C-Series have provided the scalable networking infrastructure we need to support that growth and provide our customers with new services,” said Keith O’Neil, network engineer at Pando Networks. “With FTOS running across our Force10 switches, we are able to streamline the network management process and focus on providing our customers with new advanced services.”

Rounding out the suite of network control features supported in FTOS are inline diagnostic and monitoring tools that enable troubleshooting without shutting down the system or disrupting application traffic. FTOS monitors all processes to ensure operations are within normal limits of resource utilization and provides system-wide monitoring for out-of-range environmental and other fault conditions. The modular design of FTOS makes it easy to trace errors to specific processes and facilitates any remedial action while enhanced serviceability commands enable IT managers to quickly gather debugging information needed to analyze and resolve problems.

To deliver the predictable performance that service-rich environments require, the modular architecture of FTOS is designed to provide dedicated resources for network features. In addition, FTOS offloads processes, such as sFlow or BFD, to line cards on the E-Series and C-Series switch/routers. As a result, these Force10 systems can easily run multiple processes at the same time without compromising performance. By distributing processing capacity and control plane functions, FTOS enables Force10 switch/routers to scale dramatically without compromising reliability or performance.

“Leveraging our experience in the data center, we are now bringing to enterprise networks the technologies and features we developed in demanding, high performance environments to increase network reliability,” said Sachi Sambandan, vice president of engineering at Force10 Networks. “By extending FTOS support across our products, we provide customers with the network consistency and stability they need to support the evolving and emerging productivity-enhancing services that are transforming the enterprise.”

In addition to providing a reliable foundation for FTOS, the modular architecture also enables rapid integration of third party applications and functions into the operating system. By simplifying integration of third party applications, Force10 can speed time to market with new services. FTOS also includes an XML interface that allows Force10 to integrate with third-party systems to automate network functions, allowing enterprises to augment the benefits of a best-of-breed network with automation.

As the enterprise becomes a more service-rich environment, the traditional data center characteristics reliability, network control and scalability must move into the LAN core and wiring closet. With support for FTOS across its Reliable Networking product portfolio, Force10 delivers those performance metrics to the enterprise, enabling them to transform their networks into strategic assets.

FTOS is generally available on the TeraScale E-Series (E1200, E600, E300) and the C-Series (C300, C150) and now supports the S-Series (S50N, S50V and S25). For additional information on FTOS, please visit
www.force10networks.com/products/FTOS.asp.

Contact:
Peter Ruzicka
Force10 Networks Inc.
408-965-5151
pruzicka@force10networks.com

Contact:
Jennifer Arculeo
Force10 Networks Inc.
408-965-5194
jarculeo@force10networks.com

About Force10 Networks
Force10 Networks is the pioneer in building and securing reliable, high performance networks. With its no compromise approach to networking and advances in high density Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching, routing and security, Force10 delivers the innovative technologies that allow customers to transform their networks into strategic assets at the lowest total cost of ownership. For additional information, please visit www.force10networks.com.

Force10 Networks and E-Series are registered trademarks, and C-Series, P-Series, S-Series, TeraScale and FTOS are trademarks of Force10 Networks, Inc.  All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders.