PIK Group upgrades network infrastructure using Brocade

PIK group, one of the Russian developers in the field of the residential real estate, selected Brocade company to build scalable network and also to carry out upgrade of the existing IT infrastructure.

PIK group — one of the largest builders of a full stroke implementing projects of complex building in Moscow, the Moscow region and other regions of Russia. Priority activity of Group is construction and implementation of modern comfortable housing mainly in an economy class segment. Representations of Group are open in 17 cities of Russia, the staff of the company totals more than 11 thousand employees.

The company has three data processing center (DPC) in Moscow for support of head office and two production facilities with own IT environment. Besides, network infrastructure of DPC includes more than 50 branches in the different cities through the whole country. Expansion of resources of DPC was a priority task to unroll new corporate applications and services and also for accomplishment of the increased volume of the existing tasks.

Having revealed need of expansion, the company held the tender with participation of several suppliers. After long selection process PIK Group came to a conclusion that Brocade provides the best combination of the developed functionality and a ratio of the price quality for several reasons. First, for the company it was very important to save the existing investments. Brocade offers an opportunity to save the existing network equipment due to reduction of capital costs and simplification of operating expenses. Secondly, as the products Brocade are based on the general standards and protocols, they allow to perform flexible integration with already working network equipment into DPC.

PIK group stopped the choice on the Brocade VDX 6730 switch with the license FCoE. These high-performance network convergent switches with the fixed configuration working at a basis of a 10-gigabit transmission medium of Ethernet (10GbE) and a 8-gigabit transmission medium of FC (8Gb FC) and the having connectors for own fiber optic connections. They are specially developed for increase in efficiency of use of network, optimization of availability of applications, increase in scalability and considerable simplification of a network architecture due to convergence of FC and Ethernet of environments in one switch. The company is also going to expand new Ethernet-topology due to gradual replacement of former 1-gigabyte Ethernet-solutions by new switches.

"Scaling of corporate IT infrastructure is necessary for satisfaction of the growing requirements of our business — Emil Muratov, the chief manager of PIK Group network notes. — Investments into switching Ethernet-factory from Brocade and the accompanying solutions will give us the chance to move to a new level of scalability and network performance in our data processing center. On the basis of a new solution we expect to receive benefit from expanded flexibility and new opportunities at deployment of a virtual server framework and corporate services and applications".