Penguin Computing Launches Arctica 3200xl Open Switches

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This week Penguin Computing announced the new Arctica 3200xl open network switch based on the Broadcom StrataXGS Trident II chipset. Introduction of Arctica 3200xl adds 32-port 40 Gigabit Ethernet capability to the Arctica family and enables up to 96 servers and storage systems to be connected over 10 Gigabit Ethernet to a single Top-of-Rack switch while supporting 40 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks for aggregation. With existing Arctica 4804i, 4804x and new 3200xl models Penguin has a full suite of open switches for High Performance Computing and Internet Data Center applications.

For the bandwidth intensive applications encountered in HPC clusters and Internet Data Centers, the new Arctica 3200xl switch makes 40 Gigabit Top-of-Rack (ToR) architecture economical and practical”, said Charles Wuischpard, CEO Penguin Computing. “All Arctica switches are open and support the Software Defined Networking (SDN) model. Penguin recommends Cumulus Linux which provides rich set of Linux based orchestration and automation tools.”

40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GigE) ports available in Arctica 3200xl alleviate I/O bottlenecks in congested storage servers. Used as Inter-Switch Links (ISLs), 40GigE connections aggregate traffic from multiple 10/40GigE Top-of-Rack switches. Arctica 3200xl also offers new high port count 10 Gigabit Ethernet options to support ultra high density rack form factors, such as Penguin OpenHPC™. Multiple Arctica 3200xl and 4804x units can be used to span large non-blocking fabric topologies (Clos networks) to support High Performance Computing clusters. For data center and virtualization workloads, Arctica 3200xl provides wire speed VXLAN functionality to address the management and security concerns in large multi-tenant cloud deployments.

Read the Full Story or drop by Penguin Computing Booth #1907 at SC13.