Juniper Networks Unite Cloud data centre framework is introduced

Juniper Networks, an industry player in automated, scalable and secure networks, has announced Juniper Networks Unite Cloud, a data centre framework that simplifies the creation and management of hybrid, multi-cloud environments.

The Unite Cloud solutions complement the previously announced Unite Campus and Unite Cloud-Enabled Branch solutions to further broaden the Unite architecture, which Juniper Networks says is the industry’s most comprehensive architecture to help customers build and manage complex enterprise environments.

Announced in 2015, Juniper Unite is an architecture for the entire enterprise including data centre, campus and branch with coherent management that allows organisations to develop network infrastructures that meet their unique needs.

As part of Juniper Networks Unite, a secure, agile enterprise architecture, Unite Cloud is designed to reduce the total cost of ownership while increasing long-term return on investments. Unite Cloud also includes an enhanced Junos Space Network Director management application that leverages advanced automation to analyse and control data centres, the new Juniper Networks QFX5110 switch, and the new Juniper Networks Contrail JumpStart service offerings.

The modern data centre has many virtualised elements and spreads across multiple geographies and cloud environments. Building and managing this environment is complex and calls for a secure, simple and open data centre architecture. Juniper’s Unite Cloud addresses this challenge by providing enterprises the required building blocks to manage public, private, hybrid and multi-cloud environments, scale with evolving business needs and support the deployment of new applications, services and technologies.

Network Director 3.0, the latest version of Juniper’s data centre management tool, automates network management:

• Ability to configure and visualise multiple data centres through a single pane of glass, relieving network administrators from performing manual provisioning and configuration.
• Controllerless network virtualisation to automate the building and management for overlay fabrics on top of layer 3 fabrics, utilising the Ethernet virtual private network (EVPN) control plane and the virtual extensible LAN (VXLAN) overlay.
• Support for Junos Fusion, which enables the management of multiple distributed devices as one device and reduces operational complexity.

The new QFX5110 data centre switch for high-bandwidth applications, from server virtualisation and simple leaf and spine topologies to web-scale fabric architectures:

• Support for 10/40GbE access speeds and four 100G uplinks to enable leaf to spine deployment models to manage growing traffic demands.
• Inline tunnel routing for more efficient Internet protocol forwarding.
• Support for virtual machines, containers and a platform for third-party applications.

Juniper Networks has added Contrail JumpStart services to assist customers with the deployment of the Contrail Cloud Platform or Contrail Networking software in their data centres. The new offerings provide a proven, cost efficient, pretested approach to successfully deploying Juniper’s software-defined networking (SDN) solution. JumpStart services cover the three main phases of implementation, knowledge transfer and post installation support.

“The move to hybrid, multi-cloud IT is accelerating with workloads migrating to cloud data centres at light speed. Enterprises require agility and elasticity for applications or services to be spun up quickly and managed efficiently and securely with limited resources. With the solutions announced today, Juniper is changing the landscape for IT leaders who are in search of open, automated and secure solutions to deploy hybrid cloud environments,” said Denise Shiffman, Senior VP, Juniper Development and Innovation, Juniper Network.

“At Getty Images, we have customers around the globe who rely on our images daily – at all hours. Our service provides impactful pictures that enable our users to access the creative illustrations they need to put the final touches on an article or inspire a work of art. The tasks may vary but one thing is certain, our images need to be accessible at all times. This requires a flexible, secure, scalable and cost-effective network solution, and we turned to Juniper Networks for their QFX Series Switches and SRX Series Firewalls to power and secure our always-on network,” said Rad Velez, Principal Engineer, Getty Images.

“The Meta-Cloud, or multi-cloud, where enterprises use many different cloud service providers (CSPs) is a significant trend and represents a complement to hybrid cloud architectures. Meta-Clouds and hybrid clouds demand a network capable of spanning multiple DC sites with proper management. In a recent IHS Markit report*, respondents indicated they expected to be using on average eight different CSPs by 2018, which will drive the need for solutions making it easy to create, automate and manage hybrid and meta-cloud environments while reducing costs,” added Cliff Grossner, Senior Research Director and Advisor, Cloud & Data Center Research Practice at IHS Markit.