SoftIron HyperSwitch Switches Introduced

Today, SoftIron Ltd. announced their next-generation top-of-rack switch, SoftIron HyperSwitch. This new series of switches is built around maximizing the performance and flexibility of SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud). SONiC is the open source network operating system built by Microsoft for scale-out performance networking. The HyperSwitch family will have three models all focused on hyperscale data center performance.

Today, SoftIron Ltd. announced their next-generation top-of-rack switch, SoftIron HyperSwitch. This new series of switches is built around maximizing the performance and flexibility of SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud). SONiC is the open source network operating system built by Microsoft for scale-out performance networking. The HyperSwitch family will have three models all focused on hyperscale data center performance.

Founded in 2012, SoftIron is a London-based company. Their main focus is creating purpose-built, performance-optimized, storage solutions from the data center to the edge. Though based in London, the company does all of its design, firmware, and manufacturing is done in-house in Newark, California. SoftIron also leverages Ceph, with the claim of simplifying it.

SoftIron new HyperSwitch is said to deliver simplicity and scalability with a specific leaning towards performance. For speed, the company is claiming speeds up to 1.8 terabits per second. SoftIron’s argument here is that customers can build fast, scale-out data centers without the compatibility issues and vendor lock-in of proprietary solutions. Part of how they are driving this performance is by leveraging AMD EPYC Embedded 3000 Processors.

As stated above, the new SoftIron HyperSwitch is built around SONiC. SONiC is an open sourced network operating system pioneered by Microsoft for their Azure cloud platform. As per the company, built using the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), SONiC has innovated the networking space by breaking monolithic switching software operations into multiple containerized microservices. SONiC simplifies switch programming and offers operators independent control to build flexible, application specific hardware platforms that meet their specific and/or evolving IT needs. As an extensible platform built for containerization, SONiC can be easily augmented with third-party components and software, delivering virtually endless capabilities that serve a range of needs from SMBs to hyperscale data centers. SoftIron HyperSwitch is hardware designed to maximize the potential of SONiC.

The SoftIron HyperSwitch family includes the following:

• The HyperSwitch HS43200 – Includes 32 x 100GbE ports
• The HyperSwitch HS34008 – Includes 40 x 25GbE and 8 x 100GbE ports
• The HyperSwitch HS24008 – Includes 40 x 10GBE and 8 x 100GbE ports

SoftIron HyperSwitch

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