BLADE Network Technologies Partners With IBM For Industry's First Integrated FCoE Blade Networking Solution
Santa Clara, CA--(Marketwire) - BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BLADE), the trusted leader in data center networking, announced today the delivery of the industry's first and only fully integrated Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) solution inside a blade chassis. This integration significantly reduces power, cost, space and complexity over external FCoE implementations.
This single-chassis FCoE solution is based on IBM BladeCenter H equipped with BLADE's BNT Virtual Fabric 10G Switch Module and QLogic Virtual Fabric Extension Module and Converged Network Adapters. BLADE's FCoE-ready switch is a key element of BLADE's Unified FabricArchitecture™ (UFA), which provides a faster, virtual machine aware, and proven data center networking platform that allows customers to tie together best-of-breed servers, storage, hypervisors and core networking systems. BLADE's Unified FabricArchitecture and Rackonomics approach ensure that customers that have already invested millions of dollars in their data centers can take advantage of the best innovations in the industry and achieve the lowest possible cost of ownership for their IT infrastructure.
"The IBM BladeCenter is the only 100-percent internal FCoE solution currently available," said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Leveraging QLogic CNAs and FCoE technology with BLADE Network Technologies' Ethernet switch modules, IBM is able to deliver an internal FCoE switch solution for IBM BladeCenter. BLADE's BNT switch acts as the Ethernet LAN portion of the solution, and the QLogic Virtual Fabric Extension Module acts as the Fibre Channel Forwarder (FCF) with the FCoE capabilities. The result is less rack space consumed and a more attractive entry point."
The new solution converts CEE (Converged Enhanced Ethernet) packets to native Fibre Channel, so IBM BladeCenter customers can directly attach to their existing storage targets without any impact to their SAN infrastructure. By comparison, this integrated FCoE solution is 3x less expensive, 2x more energy efficient and requires no cabling between the switch and the gateway compared with external top-of-rack gateway designs.
"Our integrated FCoE solution enables enterprises to take an open approach to unifying their data and storage networks without requiring them to overhaul their existing SAN infrastructures," said Tim Shaughnessy, vice president of Marketing, BLADE Network Technologies. "As one of the industry's top providers of 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, BLADE Network Technologies has provided the essential datacenter networking for more than three million IBM servers to date. Now, our 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch for IBM BladeCenter enables enterprises to deploy converged data and storage networks while reducing networking costs by up to 50 percent, cabling costs by up to 90 percent and energy costs by up to 50 percent."
The lossless, low-latency, low-power and low-cost BLADE switch performs at 10G line-rate throughput with no packet loss as required by Fibre FCoE and the CEE standards for open unified networking. This switch for IBM BladeCenter consumes less power than a standard light bulb -- up to 75 percent less than external switches -- and supports BLADE's VMready™ software for Virtual Machine-aware networking.
BLADE's BNT Virtual Fabric 10G Switch Module can also be combined with Emulex's Virtual Fabric Adapter CFFh based on its OneConnect UCNA architecture for IBM BladeCenter HS22 blade servers to provide an end-to-end converged networking solution. This IBM BladeCenter Virtual Fabric solution provides the flexibility of 100Mb-to-10Gb Ethernet connectivity, virtual port switching and converged networking with iSCSI or FCoE.
Availability
BLADE's BNT Virtual Fabric 10G Switch is available now from IBM (Part number: 46C7191) for IBM BladeCenter H/HT. For more information, visit http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0717.html
About BLADE Network Technologies
BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE) is the industry's leading provider of network fabrics for high-performance data centers. Its blade switches, top-of-rack RackSwitch™, VMready™ network virtualization software and Smart Server Control™ software are key elements of the company's Unified FabricArchitecture™. BLADE's "Rackonomics" approach makes it simple for businesses to rapidly deploy and configure massive amounts of server and storage infrastructure, interconnect the various infrastructure elements, virtualize the infrastructure to maximize efficiency and utilization and easily manage the infrastructure to achieve the most optimal TCO. With 7.5 million ports in production deployment, BLADE's proven fabric products connect millions of server and storage systems at over 9,500 enterprises in over 26 different industry verticals, including 350 of the Fortune 500. Visit: http://www.bladenetwork.net. Twitter: @BLADENetwork.
BLADE Network Technologies, the BLADE logo, BLADEHarmony, BLADEOS, FabricHarmony, RackSwitch, RackSwitch Solution Partner, SmartConnect, Smart Server Control, VMready, vNIC, NMotion and Unified FabricArchitecture are trademarks of BLADE Network Technologies. All other names or marks are property of their respective owners.
SOURCE: BLADE Network Technologies