Internet Services Group Revamps Data Center Switching to Increase Stability, Performance, and Scalability
Long-established Internet services group Discount Domain Names Service Pty (DDNS) is embarking on a new phase of expansion, leveraging the latest data center switches from Brocade. The privately held company, founded in 1998, plans to launch a range of online background check services to complement its existing portfolio of Internet registrar, hosting, site development, and business-to-business marketing services.
While planning for Information Brokers, the DDNS Group’s new business intelligence portal, concerns arose about the impact of potentially much higher traffic demand on the existing DDNS data center switching infrastructure. DDNS operates a Xen-based virtualized server environment with iSCSI storage, which impacted network performance.
“We had 10 Gig Ethernet switches in place but were experiencing packet loss across the network, which was causing storage timeouts. After discussions with MYCOM, we made the decision to investigate the migration to a high-performance, low-latency platform,” said DDNS Group CEO Rod Keys. “We looked at what the major vendors had to offer, but only Brocade and its partner MYCOM would let us do a proof-of-concept and stress test their solution over a 30-day period. As a business that operates on a model of service before price, that’s something we really appreciated.”
The switching solution deployed at the DDNS Group’s new data center location comprises Brocade® VDX® 6740 switches that form a highly resilient and automated Ethernet fabric using Brocade VCS® Fabric technology. All 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switch ports operate at wire speed and deliver very low-latency performance across the fabric, completely eliminating the previous packet loss and storage delay issues.
“We are extremely happy with the Brocade solution and can now look forward to fast growth for our business divisions without having to concern ourselves with switching issues in the future. If we need more server ports, we can simply add another switch to the fabric and get a linear increase in performance, so we have future-proofed our network thanks to Brocade,” said Keys.
Following a production environment review of the Brocade VDX 6740 switches, DDNS Group went on to test a pair of switches in Logical Chassis mode before final deployment. Keys said they were also very impressed with the comprehensive documentation and technical support DDNS Group received.
“The Brocade VDX switches are deployed at the heart of some extremely large and demanding data center environments, but they are just as appropriate for mid-scale operations,” said Gary Denman, Senior Director Australia and New Zealand for Brocade. “They’re great for companies such as DDNS that want to focus on servicing customers not worrying about their network. Brocade VDX switches are very much ‘set-and-forget’ devices. They just work with minimal human intervention and they deliver non-stop networking at wire speed to support modern, highly virtualized environments.”
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