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To the QFabric portfolio Juniper is also adding a new QFabric Node in the form of the QFX 3600, a top-of-rack switch that works in both the -M and the -G level QFabric systems.
"We think this opens up a great opportunity for QFabric," said Denise Shiffman, vice president of marketing, enterprise systems, Juniper Platform Systems Division, in an interview with CRN. "We're going to be focused on getting partners broad capabilities in selling, servicing and support."
Only a small number of Juniper partners -- Shiffman said fewer than 10 -- sell the -G level QFabric systems. But, Juniper has about 450 Select- or Elite-level partners qualified to sell data center wares, she said, and about 80 of those are data center specialists that sell end-to-end servers, storage and networking with Juniper. It's with those partners Juniper will work to sell the -M level QFabric systems, Shiffman explained, and Juniper also has a data center specialist group with a whole global channel support staff.
Pricing for QFabric systems depends on everything from the number of devices and licenses needed to how customers are looking to scale their data centers, with things like the transition from 10 GbE to 40 GbE throughput taken into account. Dhritiman Dasgupta, Juniper's senior director, enterprise switching and routing product marketing, said the list price usually nets out to about $1,000 per 10 GbE port, but that Juniper will offer solution providers special pricing on initial -M level QFabric deployments to push the opportunity.
In addition to the -M QFabric announcements, Juniper also confirmed new features on its EX8200 modular switches, which are targeted at mixed 1 GbE and 10 GbE environments in data center and campus core. Whereas before customers could pair up two EX8200 line switches and manage them in essence as a single switch using Juniper's Virtual Chassis technology, they can now do that with eight of the EX8200s, with the ability to mix and match the 8-slot and 16-slot versions as they choose.
The pumped-up EX8200 switches just started shipping, Dasgupta said.
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