F5 Acquires SDN Startup LineRate Systems

F5 Networks has snapped up the startup LineRate Systems. The company created Line Rate Proxy, software that provides Layer 7 services such as load balancing, acceleration, SSL offload and traffic management.

Line Rate Proxy runs on commodity x86 servers and targets service providers and large websites. The startup positions itself as a software-defined networking (SDN) company that targets the application layer rather than the network fabric. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

F5's Lori MacVittie wrote in a recent blog post about the programmability and scalability that will be required at the application layer in a controller-based SDN environment, noting, "The closer to Layer 7 you get, the more stateful the network necessarily must become. It can no longer act on individual packets; it must aggregate those packets and it must do it often--far more often than is presupposed when working at Layer 2 and 3 of the network stack."

While it's not yet clear how LineRate Systems' technology will be incorporated into F5's product portfolio, it does align with F5's goals around a highly programmable data center.

Dell Launches New Switch, Adds OpenFlow Support

Dell has announced the availability of a new switch, as well as the addition of OpenFlow support, to the Force 10 operating system (FTOS). On the switch side, Dell has launched the S4820T, a ToR switch with 48 1/10-GbE ports, and four 40-Gbe uplinks. The company is positioning the switch for organizations that are upgrading servers from 1 GbE to 10 GbE. The switch supports 10-Gbase-T copper for companies that haven't migrated to fiber cables.

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On the OpenFlow front, the company says the 9.01 version of FTOS, its switch operating system, will support OpenFlow version 1.0. The Dell Z9000 and S4810 data center switches are the first in Dell's product line to include OpenFlow support. By supporting the standard, these switches will interoperate with OpenFlow controllers, including the Big Network Controller from startup Big Switch Networks.

The SDN market continues to heat up, with Cisco providing more details about its Cisco ONE Controller earlier this month. Cisco will support OpenFlow, as well as a set of proprietary APIs called onePK.

CA Simplifies Access and ID Management

CA Technologies' latest version of its CloudMinder identity and access management (IAM) tool now includes extended support for more on-premise and cloud apps such as Office 365, as well as social identities such as OpenID, OAuth and SAML.

CloudMinder has three components that can deployed together or as one integrated service: Advanced Authentication stops unauthorized access through authentication and identity validation; Identify Management provisions and de-provisions users for a wide variety of on-premise apps and cloud services, and makes use of Active Directory and other LDAP-compliant directories; and, finally, Single Sign-On, which uses technology from CA SiteMinder, provides access control for users inside or outside the enterprise.

CA CloudMinder is available now. Delivered in an IAM-as-a-service model, pricing starts with a base tenant setup fee of $10,000 plus $5,000 per service; monthly fees are based on the number and types of user (internal or external).

Veeam Gets Cloud-Ready

Veeam Software has launched a cloud-ready edition of its backup tool. Veeam Backup Cloud Edition is cloud-agnostic and supports 15 public storage clouds, including Amazon S3, Rackspace, Windows Azure and HP Cloud, as well as additional clouds built on OpenStack. IT staff don't require knowledge of APIs--all that is required are credentials for the particular cloud service.

Veeam Backup Cloud Edition is able to automatically copy VMware and Hyper-V VM backups to any of these providers on a set schedule with backup job notifications to IT staff, who can control bandwidth usage in real time. Backups are compressed, deduplicated and secured with AES 256-bit encryption.

Veeam Backup Cloud Edition is available now with one-, two- and three-year subscription licenses for new Veeam Backup and Replication customers. Discounts are available for multiyear subscriptions. Existing customers can add a Cloud Edition license to existing perpetual licenses.