A Little Help From Some Friends

Inside the Consiliant command center, located in a trailer parked at the back of the site, Consiliant ran its own management software along with the Brocade Network Advisor application on one of its own Cisco UCS servers, said Sean Balas, solutions architect for Consiliant.

The two servers on the left in this photot were provided by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, with one serving as the primary server and the other as a backup using software from Veeam. "There was no budget for off-site replication," Balas said.

Sitting on top of Consiliant's UCS server is one of three Brocade ICX6610 switches that were used as core switches for the Solar Decathlon, Balas said.

The Brocade and Aerohive gear were provided free by the vendors as part of a 30-day evaluation program, and had to be returned after the event.