Virtual switch for data centres

Inkra Networks has introduced a new virtualisation tool to help data centres make better use of their infrastructure.

Sanjay Dhawan, president and chief executive of Inkra Networks, said his company's Virtual Services Switch (VSS) simplifies the problems of the high operational expenses of data centres.

VSS enables a single switch to be used for many different applications, such as firewalls and load balancers. Each different function has its own discrete performance and security controls.

The virtual services are then combined into logical containers referred to as 'Virtual Racks', emulating a physical data centre rack.

The partitioning of a switch is carried out dynamically via a series of software controls to manage bandwidth, CPU power, memory and encryption resources.

VSS also includes four management tools providing virtual architecture features, and the connectors to link it to more general systems management tools such as Hewlett Packard's OpenView.