Case Study: Leading State Agency achieves high availability and an SDN‑ready software‑defined data center with Extreme Networks

State Agency Boosts Availability and Performance with SDN Underlay

Leading State Agency, the business services office for a US state supporting 4,000 users across 69 locations and about 80 servers, faced chronic network instability that prevented VMware vMotion, caused frequent outages of three hours or more, and stalled its goal of a software‑defined data center. After evaluating vendors, the agency chose Extreme Networks to provide an SDN underlay using ExtremeSwitching VDX 8770 and VDX 6740 switches and Extreme VCS Fabric technology to align the physical network with its VMware environment.

Extreme Networks deployed the VDX switches and VCS Fabric (with VMware NSX integration) as the data‑center underlay—installed in about two weeks with partner support—and delivered measurable gains: network throughput increased from 40 Gbps to 160 Gbps, the fabric survives up to 16 link failures, staff support effort fell from three people to one, live VM mobility across 80 servers was enabled, and HP server reconfiguration time dropped from hours to minutes. These improvements produced high availability, faster automation toward an SDDC, and significant operational efficiency for the Leading State Agency.