It’s no secret that cloud computing is key to remaining competitive in today’s rapidly changing networking landscape. But, many organizations often overlook new network connectivity tools that are critical to capitalizing on all of the benefits offered by the cloud. That’s why I’m excited to share how the work between Juniper Networks and VMware is continuing to deliver exceptional results with our certified industry-leading QFX5100 switch line and VMware’s NSX solution, a network virtualization platform.
Just in time for VMworld, this certification underscores Juniper’s established and successful alliance with VMware to offer our customers the integration they need to succeed. As businesses continue to move to a Software-Defined Data Center model, compute, storage and networking capabilities are virtualized and tied together with orchestration software. With the Juniper-VMware solutions, we’re able to offer innovation for customers looking to achieve enhanced application agility for their cloud environments.
Leading up to the certification, many of our customers have already incorporated the joint solution into their networks and are experiencing success. Take OGD ict-diensten, a Dutch IT service provider, for example. To keep up with customer demands, evolving IT service provision and a continuously changing landscape, the company needed to expand its service offerings to accommodate new applications quickly and easily, and deliver more flexibility for its end users. By integrating Juniper’s open network architecture with VMware’s NSX, they developed a multitenant Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform that enables set up of a complete customized network, without complexity, and it’s done with a fully standardized and automated procedure. When we asked OGD ict-diensten about the benefits of their IaaS platform and the decision to go with Juniper and VMware, they explained:
“The combination of VMware NSX and Juniper Networks has made us much more responsive to our customers’ business challenges,” said Joep Piscaer, CTO at OGD ict-diensten. “We chose Juniper’s QFX Series specifically for its proven interoperability with NSX and its ability to integrate physical devices into a virtual stack. Leveraging this technology for our IaaS, customers can bring equipment to the data center and seamlessly integrated it into their virtual infrastructure, usually within a day instead of months. The ability to give customers complete control over their networking environment and allow them to implement changes to incorporate physical or virtual workloads on-demand, securely and within compliance is a huge added value.”
Another customer benefiting from Juniper Networks and VMware is ZettaGrid. They are working with both companies on the solutions that enable this IaaS cloud computing provider to offer Australia’s most advanced self-service cloud infrastructure platform along with full network integration. When discussing their network requirements, ZettaGrid shared:
“We needed an effective solution that could deliver the power our end users required for efficient cloud deployment,” said Simon Dixon, network manager at ZettaGrid. “We are now equipped to provide advanced networking features supported by our ZettGrid Virtual Data Center, due to being powered by both VMware NSX and Juniper Networks technology.”
We’re excited for our joint customers to continue leveraging Juniper and VMware solutions to make their networks more efficient and productive. In addition to the QFX5100 switch series, organizations can also benefit from the following:
- Juniper Networks MX Series, EX9200, and QFX10000 Series can act as a Universal SDN Gateway (USG), by implementing not only a layer two bridge, but also a routing gateway for VMWare’s NSX VXLAN overlays.
- Junos Space Network Director works with VMware’s vCenter (part of vSphere) and NSX to tie together network and VM visibility for both physical and virtual as an overlay and underlay.
- Network Director deployed with a Juniper plug-in for VMware vRealize Operations will give the server infrastructure operations team visibility into the network status and troubleshooting in the single pane of glass VMware GUI.
We’re pleased that our QFX5100 line of switches are now VMware NSX-certified, giving customers an added level of assurance, interoperability and enterprise-grade performance.
