FiberZone releases new software capabilities for Multitenant Datacenter Operators

Welcome back to another update from FiberZone Networks!

We have been working hard in the back ground for several months to bring you a new software release to our AFM NMS and Embedded software product family, version NMS 2.3.0 and Embedded 1.5.0. This new release includes a number of new capabilities requested by our customers that bring measurable benefits to the user. We think you will like the result.

The new software allows Multitenant Datacenter (MTDC) operators to offer new fiber management services to co-location tenant customers in their facilities in a secure and scalable manner. It allows customers to install lower port count AFMs in lower fiber dense locations and cost effectively scale the AFM as their port count needs grow. Plus a number of enhancements have been made to simplify day-to-day operations in both simplex and duplex fiber pair environments.

I would like to take a moment to highlight some of the key features and benefits a little further so that you have a better understand of what to expect in this release, and would also like to pay special thanks to our customers for their feedback and comments, helping us make a better product for all.

Customer needs vary depending on application and site requirements, no two are exactly alike. As a result a number of customers have been asking for AFM scalability support to allow them to start with smaller port counts for lower density sites and grow their switch size as their needs require. AFM was originally released in a fixed configuration supporting 180x180 ports. The new release supports two new scalable AFM models to address this concern.

• AFM-96S
• AFM-192S

And we are particularly pleased with of how simple we made the expansion process for our customers. Read on...

The AFM-96S model comes in two variations, with both supporting 48x48 fibers by default. One version can be expanded to 96x96, while the other can be expanded to 180x180. The AFM-192S model supports 96x96 fibers by default and can be expanded to 180x180. All models expand in 24x24 fiber increments. To simplify things even further expansion is easily accomplished via a separately purchased software expansion key, which can be activated remotely. There is no need to go on site and no hardware cards to add or replace. FiberZone has taken great strides in continuing its tradition of managing the AFM remotely, even when it comes to expanding the port count. This allows customers to install these models at distant locations and pre-wire them, including inactive ports, and after remotely entering an expansion key, previous inactive ports can be made available and can instantly be managed. Flexibility, simplicity and convenience all rolled up into one.

Many of our customers are making use of our AFM in environments that support duplex fiber pairs, but AFM traditionally managed connections, just like manual patch panels, at the individual fiber level. To ease the management of this type of connectivity we now support duplex Tx/Rx fiber pairs per port, allowing a pair of Tx/Rx fibers of one port to be connected to another with a single connectivity command, as shown below. The embedded software also supports paired port connectivity. This simplifies the management of paired ports without the need to issue two separate connectivity commands for the individual Tx and Rx fibers, and streamlines the workflow by a factor of 2. We think the effort was well worth it and we are hopeful you will agree.

We added a new Value Added Module (VAM) to our NMS offering called Partitioning that we believe will greatly help targeted customers differentiate themselves from their competition, increase the satisfaction level of their respective customers, while also generating new sources of revenue to significantly improve return on investment. In short, we think partitioning will be a hit as it allows a MTDC operator to logically segment a given AFM into smaller sub-switches, each consisting of a select group of ports, and to then assign control of each of these port groups to specific individual tenants, see below. MTDC operators can benefit by leasing different port groups to various co-location tenants while maintaining secure physical separation between different tenant customers. Partitioning also addresses security concerns customers have by limiting user access to specific port groups within their respective departments. The sharing of a single AFM over several tenant customers or department groups is cost effective and simple to implement. Partitioning is sold separately and can be easily remotely added to the AFM NMS at any time.

I have only covered some of the highlights, but we hope you agree that this new software release better serves the needs of our customers in their transition to an automated and remotely-controlled fiber infrastructure. We will continue to work closely with our customers to ensure that their needs are being addressed. AFM has been deployed in world-class facilities around the world and we believe this release will further improve the product functionality and need, while enhancing the user’s experience.

I hope the information provided here was worthwhile, and should you have any questions please feel free to contact a FiberZone representative or visit our website for further details. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

In the beginning...

Hello Everyone!

We decided to start this blog about the transformation Fiber Optic connectivity is undergoing these days in the datacenter space, as well as in carriers’ networks. I won’t deny we think a blog on this topic is an effective marketing tool for the products we make at FiberZone Networks, but for the most part, we want to share with you some of the insights we get going through this transformation, hoping to learn even more through your feedback and participation.

We begin this first post, as many do these days, with the “transition to the cloud”. When it comes to fiber connectivity, this transition means that more changes to network capacity and connectivity take place at the core “cloudy” part of the network, on high-bandwidth links, and for mission-critical applications. This in turn means that uninterrupted changes to fiber connectivity mean a great deal more than they used to. The Ponemon Institute analyzed the cost of outages in datacenters in a recent study, and showed that the cost of a single outage is measured in thousands-of-dollars-per-minute, and the average time to recover from outage is about 2.5 hours in fully staffed datacenters.

Consider now that a “private cloud” hosted environment, like the one shown in the picture below, means that an enterprise IT department no longer has staff onsite to manage and troubleshoot its IT infrastructure, and there you have it – IT infrastructure that has to support traffic more valuable than ever, and deployed in an environment that requires a new approach to management and control.

The Uptime Institute, a think-tank and professional services organization providing datacenter tier certification, will be holding its annual symposium in Santa Clara, CA on May 14-17. The symposium is focused on addressing these issues exactly – the operational aspects of maintaining high-availability and reducing downtimes to enterprise and hosting providers’ datacenters. We welcome you to stop by at the Innovation Pavilion and get a demonstration of our Automated Fiber Management solutions.

Remote management solutions for power and cooling in datacenters have been introduced over the  past several years, and have become mainstream, but the third leg of datacenters’ infrastructure – IT fiber connectivity, has not been effectively automated, yet! More enterprise and service provider customers realize that manual operation of fiber infrastructure can’t scale to meet their growing needs. An extreme, but real-life, example of how manual fiber connectivity looked like at one of our customers’ sites before implementing automated fiber management is shown in the picture below.

Back in January we announced a strategic relationship with 3M to bring a new approach to manage fiber connectivity to the datacenter market. As a small company, we’re extremely excited about this relationship with 3M – it means that our technology is now becoming available to more customers around the world, and offered by one of the world’s most reputable companies. For those of you located in Europe, we’ll be having a joint webinar on May-15^th, describing the joint offering. Please register to learn more.

We’re also seeing tide shifts in Asia, where unlike in the case of the early movers in the U.S., deployments of FTTx networks are also used to serve Small/Medium Businesses (SMBs) and enterprise customers. These customers require strict high-availability Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and service providers build their fiber-optic networks accordingly. China Telecom, for example, is deploying intelligent fiber connectivity for its FTTx deployment with 20 million homes passed planned by 2013, quoting that “manual operations [of fiber] incur high deployment costs and great operations and maintenance pressure for operators”. We’ve also seen some of the major MSOs in the U.S. make plans to use EPON architecture to deliver Ethernet services to SMBs, so we may see a similar trend in the U.S. shortly. We hope to tell you more about developments in transforming fiber connectivity in this market soon.

We’d like to hear your views and opinions, and I promise you’ll hear more from us soon!