Aruba CX switch series helps build high-performance networks for the future

Under the epidemic, whether it is serving customers externally or maintaining employee engagement internally, companies are more dependent on digital channels than ever before. However, digital transformation has brought huge challenges to IT teams. IT teams lack unified management tools and can only use separate, isolated tools to manage all types of devices and users, and these devices and users come from different locations such as branches and companies. According to relevant reports, 62% of IT organizations use more than 4 network management tools, which makes IT management time-consuming and inefficient, and is prone to network security issues such as ransomware attacks.

It is difficult for traditional networks to overcome the above operational obstacles, and enterprises need solutions that keep pace with the times. Aruba's CX switch series is designed to help IT teams solve network management challenges. By eliminating scattered islands, replacing manual tasks, and reducing risks around IoT and segmentation, it helps users build an automated, secure, reliable, and agile network environment, providing a solid network foundation for the accelerated development of business.

The Aruba CX series covers different levels of switch products from access, aggregation to core, which can be used in campus networks and data centers. There is also the CX4100i that specifically supports industrial environments. Specifically, this series of switches has the following advantages that can help IT become more efficient and effective.

Unified and flexible management

Using siloed management tools creates a lot of manual work for IT, which can lead to time delays, errors, and increased risk of downtime.

The Aruba CX series uses a unified cloud-native operating system, and its application scenarios will be expanded from campuses to branch offices and data centers, providing a simple, end-to-end switching platform for network operations and management personnel, perfectly solving the problem of unified management. As a unique advantage of the Aruba CX series, the hardware architecture of the Aruba CX series also supports the flexible selection of different management methods without changing the switch. Since each customer has different network management requirements, this flexibility allows customers to avoid making choices in advance and protect their switch investments, such as from Web GUI to Central, or from local to cloud.

Faster troubleshooting

These islands also pose challenges for troubleshooting. The performance and health data collected come from different systems, which are isolated and lack correlation. It is difficult for IT teams to obtain comprehensive and efficient network visibility and thus cannot understand the root cause of the problem. Gartner research shows that up to 70% of IT time is spent on troubleshooting.

The Aruba CX series supports a built-in NAE network analysis engine, which is like a built-in operation and maintenance robot that can work continuously 24x7. This unique feature can provide better visibility, continuously monitor the network operation status and respond quickly to faults to accelerate troubleshooting and display alerts in the AI ​​Insight/Center, saving IT staff time.

Always online

Ensuring that switches are online is critical for enterprises and IT teams because network downtime or lag, even for one second, can result in huge economic losses. The Aruba CX series uses a resilient switch architecture to ensure that switches and businesses are always online.

The Aruba CX series provides two virtualization solutions: Aruba VSX virtualization solution is suitable for core switches, adopts dual control platforms, does not share device management and routing, and the service interruption during the entire upgrade process is less than 20 milliseconds, so users can be unaware of the upgrade process; Aruba VSF is suitable for access layer switches and is an ideal choice for campus access. The two devices share a management platform and data forwarding platform. The commander switch pushes configurations on all members. It is plug-and-play and easy to deploy.

For IOT devices, Aruba also provides an always-on PoE function to keep APs and IoT devices powered during upgrades. For example, when users upgrade or restart switches, smart light devices will not be turned off or extinguished.

Secure access

More and more devices are connected to the network, bringing potential security risks. Due to the inherent security and visibility limitations of these devices, more and more IoT connections have expanded the network attack surface of enterprises, making the network and data security of enterprises face challenges. A third-party report shows that 80% of organizations have found IoT devices in their networks that were not installed by the IT team.

In the face of various IOT devices that need to be connected, Aruba CX series switches use Dynamic Segmentation technology to automatically implement consistent policies in wired and wireless networks to keep the traffic of any user or device independent and secure, and to achieve maximum segmentation isolation according to different businesses. Through the Aruba authentication platform ClearPass, secure access can be achieved, and network users can be centrally controlled. ClearPass provides role definitions, and the switching infrastructure is responsible for implementing policies based on these roles. Through the Aruba mobile controller, tunnels are dynamically built for each device according to the set policies, and applied end-to-end in the network without a lot of manual configuration, thus realizing the integration of wireless and wired access policies.

Better scalability

The future world is oriented towards the Internet of Things, cloud, and mobility, and Wi-Fi 6 will play an increasingly important role in it. However, Wi-Fi 6 products often have high power requirements, requiring network switches to provide higher access rates and higher PoE power supply.

Aruba provides enhanced PoE capabilities to ensure that when more IoT devices are connected in the future, it can be easily expanded as performance requirements increase. In addition, the Aruba CX series supports HPE SmartRate technology, which can provide 1G/2.5G/5G/10G access rates and good connectivity without replacing the wiring infrastructure.

Network technology is developing rapidly, and the network needs of enterprises are also constantly changing. In this era of change, Aruba's mission has never changed, that is, to help solve the challenges faced by enterprise IT and the difficulties faced by IT operations and maintenance personnel, to create network connections that can provide development momentum for enterprises and the world, and to make connections ubiquitous.