At HPE Discover 2017, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) company, announced a new enterprise core and aggregation switch, the Aruba 8400 Core Switch Series, and what it is calling the industry’s most advanced operating system, ArubaOS-CX. Both the switch series and the OS are an effort to improve what Aruba is referring to as today’s antiquated switching platforms. The new switch series and OS are also purpose-built for emerging mobile-cloud business applications and changing traffic patterns driven by IoT.
At HPE Discover 2017, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) company, announced a new enterprise core and aggregation switch, the Aruba 8400 Core Switch Series, and what it is calling the industry’s most advanced operating system, ArubaOS-CX. Both the switch series and the OS are an effort to improve what Aruba is referring to as today’s antiquated switching platforms. The new switch series and OS are also purpose-built for emerging mobile-cloud business applications and changing traffic patterns driven by IoT.
The market for Internet of Things (IoT) is exploding with no slowdown in sight. Despite this, network core switches for the most part are showing very little innovation to adapt to this new technology. As more enterprises adopt and integrate mobile and “things,” network switches will too have to make some changes. Aruba aims to address these issues with the announcement of its new 8400 Core Switch Series and ArubaOS-CX Operating system.
The Aruba 8400 Core Switches offers “breakthrough in campus core and aggregation, extending intelligence from the edge to the core and allowing CIOs to derive better business outcomes from their networks.” The 8400 offers immediate visibility, better insights into troubleshooting, and easier automation for action-taking making it an overall better fit for mobile-first, cloud, and IoT business. The Aruba 8400 has a fully extensible fabric design that enables enterprises to scale their bandwidth as needed. The Virtual Switching Framework (VSF) with two chassis scales up to 512 10GbE, 128 40Gbe or 96 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Integral to the 8400 switch series is its operating system, the ArubaOS-CX. The new OS is more flexible and is able to automate and simplify many critical and complex network tasks.
Benefits of ArubaOS-CX include:
- Automated Visibility for Early Detection: The revolutionary Aruba Network Analytics Engine allows IT professionals to easily monitor network, system, application and security-related activities with simple rules-based monitoring and automatic correlation of network activities. This engine comes with a native time-series database combined with event correlation to enable operators to instantly detect problems, analyze trends to quickly gain insight, and predict or avoid issues that often lead to scale, security and performance bottlenecks.
- Faster Resolution with Network Insights: With legacy switches, IT must not only troubleshoot problems after-the-fact, but also remediate problems using traditional tools, such as CLI and SNMP, which can be time-consuming and expensive to the business. Through easy programmability, immediate resolution can be built into the Aruba 8400 via intelligent, policy-based integration with network monitoring, performance, and security management tools.
- Programmability Simplified to Help IT Scale: The Aruba 8400 is fully programmable with a built-in Python interpreter and REST-based APIs for every function. This allows for easy integration and ongoing flexibility with infrastructure and applications, including the Aruba Mobile First Platform, for end-to-end network monitoring, detection, troubleshooting, and closed-loop remediation of network performance or security-related issues.
Aruba also announced its new asset tracking solution. This new solution help organizations easily track valued assets. Included in the new solution are the following components:
- Advancements to ArubaOS and Aruba APs: This new software allows Aruba BLE-enabled Access Points and Sensors to act as asset tag “observers,” creating a sensory network, providing added value to organizations with existing Aruba wireless infrastructure. In essence, it allows their Wi-Fi infrastructure to double as an asset tracking network.
- New Aruba Tags: Cost-efficient Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) – enabled tags are slightly larger than a quarter, making them ideal for items that range in size from IV pumps in a healthcare setting to pallets of goods in a warehouse. The tags are designed to meet stringent environmental requirements and come with multiple attachment options.
- Asset Tag Configuration App: Aruba’s configuration app makes set-up and ongoing management of the tags simple. Assets can be designated with names, photos and optional IDs so that like assets can be searched for easily. Changes can be performed quickly, near the assets, and all data is automatically saved in a central cloud database.
- New features for the Aruba Meridian AppMaker: Organizations can now create their own asset tracking app for iOS or Android with the Meridan AppMaker. The AppMaker provides new SDK and APIs for seamless third-party integration and custom use cases.
Availability
The Aruba 8400 Core Switch is available now. The complete Aruba asset tracking solution is available now.
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