The Enterasys S-Series family is designed to optimize data, voice and video traffic in enterprise networks and virtualized and cloud computing environments. It provides Terabit-class switching and routing, efficient and resilient power over Ethernet, or “PoE,” performance, granular visibility and enhanced management automation features, to ensure high availability while reducing data center energy costs.

The new switches offer enhanced levels of automation for daily network administration in complex environments, reducing operational costs. Also, Enterasys' PoE design allows the S-Series switch to provision power in small increments and use only enough power to allow current convergence-enabled devices reducing operational costs of power and cooling.

“In order for organizations to fully realize the cost savings associated with new technologies such as virtualization, they must select intelligent hardware that enables network administrators to spend less time managing and troubleshooting the network, and more time focusing on business initiatives,” Steven J. Schuchart Jr. (News - Alert), principal analyst, Current Analysis, said.

“The Enterasys S-Series builds on a long history of flow-based switching capabilities to deliver centralized management, high availability service and built-in automation features that lower the cost of managing next-generation infrastructure,” Schuchart added.

Built-in automated features of Enterasys S-Series system include, automated provisioning of virtual and physical server connectivity, reducing server administration costs; fully distributed switching and system management architecture for higher resiliency and always-on availability; self-healing functionality; distributing and redistributing switching and routing applications across multiple modules in the event of a module failure.

It also features multiple, standards-based discovery methods to automatically identify and provision VoIP services, with intelligent traffic management, for IP phones from all major vendors. There is automatic upgrade, reload or rollback of firmware on each module ensuring the highest levels of system availability.
  

The S-Series switching family has 1U, 3-slot, 4-slot, and 8-slot chassis options and flexible I/O and option module design that allow more deployment configuration choices. 

“The configuration flexibility and automation features built into the S-Series switch were the main criteria in our decision to add them to our network,” Besufekad Negewo, associate director of Information Technology & Automation Engineering at MassBiologics, a research, development and manufacturing division of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said. 

“In the pharmaceutical manufacturing world, we must constantly measure the total cost of ownership of our IT investments against the performance ratio, and the new S-Series switch offers a perfect balance on both counts,” Negewo said. “We also find value in the continuous service and support our excellent Enterasys team provides, including their extensive design assistance as we strive to optimize new technologies in our network.”