HONG KONG, 2 JUNE 2009 – Sohu, a China-based search engine giant, has deployed H3C’s new data centre core switch, H3C S12500, in one of its data centres in Beijing to handle its increasing volumes of data and video traffic.
The move began in March after a 90-day data centre lab test. This is ‘one of the first next-generation data centre applications in China’.
“We decided to use the H3C data centre switches for establishing the essential Internet infrastructure for our next-generation data centre programme,” said Qiu Wei, director, network operation and maintenance department of Sohu.
“It helps us achieve uninterrupted business operation and meet the ever increasing demand of bandwidth due to the fast business growth, enhancing Sohu’s capability to deal with new business opportunities in the years ahead,” said Qiu.
40/100G ethernet architecture
The core switch provider, H3C, is an Internet protocol-based network architecture solutions provider headquartered in Hong Kong and with research and development centres in China (Beijing, Hangzhou and Shenzhen).
Built on a 40/100 gigabit ethernet architecture, the H3C S12500 delivers unified fabric, virtualisation and automation designed for high switching performance.
The S12500 core switch provides up to 512 10 gigabit ethernet ports and 864 gigabit ethernet ports in a full rack configuration, delivering 2.2 billion pps (packets per second) forwarding and 6.6 Tbps switching capacity, and consumes 50 per cent less power than competing products, said H3C.
The S12500 is built with a multi-stage switching architecture, supporting 40-gigabit, 100-gigabit and fibre channel over ethernet (FCoE) links to meet the requirements of modern data centres. At the same time, the integral Intelligent Resilient Framework 2 (IRF 2) enables traffic load balancing, offering a transition path to consolidate physically disparate data centres through a connective switch fabric.
The new core switch is said to support application optimisation services to virtualised network services, and enables enterprises to consolidate their operations and drive down IT and networking costs while exploring critical initiatives such as virtualisation.
