University of Auckland deploys Juniper Networks QFabric at data center sites

The University of Auckland (UoA) will be deploying Juniper Networks’ QFabric system at its two key data center sites to provide low-latency performance, scalability and operational simplicity. The University is also upgrading its campus network with Juniper Networks EX Series Ethernet Switches, which will boost performance and increase both scalability and resiliency while reducing operational overhead.

 

The University of Auckland is New Zealand's largest university. With more than 32,000 full time-equivalent students and nearly 5,000 staff spread across its main city campus and four specialist campuses, it is the only one in the country among the top 200 of The Times Higher Education World Rankings of Universities. It is New Zealand’s pre-eminent research-led institution, employing a third of the country’s top-ranked researchers, and is now home to a new supercomputer deployed under the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) initiative.

 

The UoA has a high-performance and heavily virtualized data center environment with approximately 2,100 virtual machines that, together with the new NeSI supercomputer, demands dense 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) top-of-rack connectivity today, with a pathway to 100 GbE in a few years.

 

Juniper Networks QFabric was selected for the low-latency performance, scalability and operational simplicity it will bring to a new data center being built at UoA’s Tamaki Innovation Campus, which is particularly focused on high-performance computing as well as improving the University’s business continuity capabilities.

 

Having chosen the QFabric system for the new Tamaki data center network, the university decided that it also wanted to extend the same QFabric benefits to a second data center site.

 

Juniper Networks EX8216 and EX4500 Ethernet Switches, installed in the UoA’s existing data center last year, will be redeployed within the campus.

 

Existing and new EX4500 switches will provide a 10GbE network aggregation layer at all campuses, connecting over fiber-optic cables and leveraging Juniper Networks Virtual Chassis technology to form a resilient, single-but-distributed logical switch.

 

The EX8216 switches will form a new high-performance, high-capacity and highly available campus network core.