Dell Teams Up With Aerohive For Wireless Network Management

Dell will offer a converged cloud-managed wired and wireless networking platform to small and medium sized businesses using equipment and software Aerohive.

The ‘One Network’ platform uses Dell’s own N-series networking switches and Aerohive’s 802.11.ac wireless access point, managed by the latter’s HiveManager NG (next generation) management tools.

It is claimed HiveManager HG will give admins in-depth information about users, network policy management and switch port status, backed up by predictive and proactive support.

Converged networks

“These milestones demonstrate Dell and Aerohive’s shared vision of cloud-managed IT, providing streamlined operations, configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting for all elements of customers’ networks,” claimed David Flynn, CEO, Aerohive Networks.

“We are proud to extend enterprise-class cloud management that Aerohive customers use to manage our access points to Dell’s switches. HiveManager NG sets the standard for building and managing networks.”

There has been a move towards to convergence among networking vendors in recent times, with HPE acquiring Aruba to offer businesses packages of wired and wireless infrastructure, while Juniper Networks and Ruckus Wireless have also forged a partnership. Ruckus itself was bought by Brocade for £1 billion earlier this year.

Open networking in the data centre

Away from campus networks, Dell is also continuing its open networking efforts for data centres. It is a contributor to the Open Compute Project’s (OCP) Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC), which has the support of Microsoft and other vendors.

The aim is to open source all the components to build fully functional networking software and create a collection of modules that can be installed on a Linux switch. As part of the initiative, Dell is providing its Operating System 10 (OS10) as a foundation for SONiC.

OS10 promises to provide data centre operators and cloud operators with greater flexibility and a more consistent development environment by separating the software from the stack.

Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV) technologies are becoming increasingly popular among data centre, cloud and telecoms providers as they allow for the more rapid rollout of services and greater choice of equipment and software from multiple sources.

To this end, Dell will also offer two new in-rack switches to help customers deploy 10G on their infrastructure. The Dell Networking S4048T is intended for copper based server and storage connectivity while the S6010-ON is designed for “demanding” data centre environments.

“Major trends such as cloud and software-defined create a dynamically changing IT landscape, both on campus and in the data centre,” said Tom Burns, Dell’s networking head. “These new Dell Networking solutions help our customers navigate these changes with future-ready architectures, open technology and hyper-scale inspired efficiency.”

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