Australian Local Government Council Creates High-Performance Disaster Recovery System with Juniper Networks EX-series Ethernet Switches

Pittwater Council Leverages Juniper’s EX 4200 Series Switches to Accelerate Off-site Data Replication, Simplify Network Management and Eliminate Bandwidth Waste

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today announced that Pittwater Council of Sydney, Australia, has created a robust disaster recovery system, streamlined its network management and eliminated bandwidth waste with Juniper Networks EX 4200 series Ethernet switches.

The EX 4200 series switches are deployed in the Council’s main office and a remote disaster recovery site located 2Km away. The EX 4200 series switches in both locations operate as a single switch by running the Virtual Chassis technology across dual 10 Gbps Ethernet fiber links. The EX 4200 series switches increased the throughput and decreased the latency between the two sites allowing real-time data backup to off-site network attached storage. The EX 4200 series also supports VMware VMotion, the virtual systems application the Council used to mirror virtual machines to the remote site for added resilience. Extending the Virtual Chassis technology across the 10Gigabit Ethernet fiber links dramatically simplified the Council’s network management effort by allowing IT staff to administer the multiple switches as a single logical device. The EX-series switches also eliminated wasted bandwidth on idle optical fiber links.

The Council, the local authority for the northern Sydney coastal area of Pittwater, maintains a large number of records ranging from council notifications to planning approvals. It previously backed up data on magnetic tapes, which had to be physically — and frequently — transported to the remote site for storage.

Juniper’s EX-series switches are designed for high-performance organizations such as Pittwater Council, which require ubiquitous access to strategic assets, reduced network downtime and enhanced overall security. With these criteria in mind, Candor Networks, a Juniper SELECT Partner working on the design and implementation of the new infrastructure, recommended Pittwater consider the EX 4200 series.

The EX-series switches leverage the powerful JUNOS® software, the industry’s only network operating system based on a single source code, providing continuous carrier-class availability, automated network operations and the open innovation businesses demand to quickly align the network with changing business requirements. The EX 4200 series switches also feature Juniper’s Virtual Chassis technology, which enables up to 10 of the single rack-unit EX 4200 series switches to be interconnected over a high-speed 128 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) backplane and operate as a single, logical system.

“The notion of just managing a single entity — rather than having loads of things to look out for — was very attractive to the customer,” said Mitch Barr, network consultant with Candor Networks. “If we had multiple devices, we would have needed multiple applications to manage them.”

“The Virtual Chassis feature was a major enabler,” said Chris Tubridy, IT manager, Pittwater Council. “By allowing our optical links to be used concurrently, the Juniper approach simplifies administration while it also provides higher throughput and reliability. Redundancy is built into the architecture, and none of our optical links need be idle. The EX-series brings a resilient solution that optimizes use of our existing resources, with simplified management and excellent economics.”

Pittwater Council is now evaluating replacing legacy switches in all other parts of its network with the EX-series switches.

“Organizations such as the Pittwater Council, which depend on their networks for the delivery of essential services, are recognizing the powerful benefits of Juniper’s switching solutions,” said Shaun Page, Juniper’s vice president of Australia and New Zealand. “Unique features, such as the Virtual Chassis functionality, are delivering benefits beyond basic hardware switching.”
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