Brocade has opened a new facility near their San Jose headquarters, reports DatacenterDynamics. And yes, it is all about drinking one's own poison.

The vendor consolidated three R&D facilities into the new 5,000 sq ft data center, reducing physical footprint of its research labs by 30 percent and energy consumption by 37 percent, according to a news release. The idea is that the reduction in energy use will eliminate 4,450 tons of CO2 emissions per year.

The flagship feature of Brocade is its NetIron MLX technology. It "allowed engineers to eliminate the need for an aggregation layer in the data center’s network and to collapse access and aggregation layers into a flat Layer 2 network," so states the article. "In addition to reducing capital outlay and simplifying operations, connecting network edge directly to the core decreased space, power and cooling requirements in the facility."

Ok, I'll be completely honest here: I don't understand outright what they are on about. But I do want to know. Anyone able to explain it to me.

By the way: Brocade claim a PUE of 1.3, which is reasonable enough to believe.