Juniper Networks says it is future-proofing enterprise data centres with the launch of the latest iteration of its QFX5700 Series networking switch. The company is calling it the most flexible midsized switch of its kind in the market.
It can mix and match line cards with various interface options that range from 10-gigabit Ethernet to 400G to support a variety of use cases.
Juniper said the QFX5700 Series delivers on its vision of experience-first networking, which reimagines the data centre as agile and driven by intent-based operations.
What Juniper wants to deliver
Mike Bushong, the Veep of data centre product management at Juniper, said in a blog post that the QFX5700 Series switch will help transition us into the new generation of self-driving, intent-based networks that use the company’s Apstra automation software.
Bushong said that with Apstra, customers can go beyond what other vendors call automation (the automating of a series of procedural steps to perform a task faster), adding that it may generate speed ‘in a narrow sense.’
However, Bushong feels confident that true business agility has to be built on a foundation of consistency and reliability.
Intent-based data center networks
Bushong added that customers can use Apstra to build operations frameworks in a repeatable way in multiple vendors’ environments to identify where a task needs to be initiated, how it should be executed, and whether it accomplishes the goal/intent.
Explaining the nature of a true intent-based data center network, Bushong said it is one that automatically translates business-level decisions into network configurations spanning complex and dynamic multivendor environments.
The intent-based network continuously models the state of the network, checks against the state, collects telemetry, and pushes notifications to human operators when issues arise.
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