Industry discussions of server virtualisation, SDN, and cloud computing abound, for one simple reason: agility. Every year, CIOs are asked to support more - often much more, in terms of data and traffic - with less, and more quickly. In addition, a number of regulations have arisen in the last decade, forcing a stronger focus on data security and control. These business realities, along with improvements in WAN/LAN performance, have contributed to a retrenchment of IT operations and investments back into the data centre.

Brocade VCS Fabric technology is designed to meet these challenges by enabling next-generation virtual data center and private cloud computing initiatives. VCS fabrics, delivered on Brocade VDX switches, were designed specifically to meet the needs of cloud environments and scale-out data center architectures being driven by an explosion of information, the heightened importance of data, and new application architectures. VCS fabrics provide the highest levels of network automation, efficiency, resilience, and investment protection. This paper reviews key data centre network challenges and how Brocade VCS Fabric technology addresses them.