Blade Network and Emulex Deliver Networking Components for IBM

Emulex Corporation and BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. announced that the two companies are delivering the essential networking components for IBM BladeCenter Virtual Fabric. BLADE’s BNT Virtual Fabric 10G Switch Module combined with Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter CFFh for IBM BladeCenter provide an end-to-end converged networking solution for IBM BladeCenter H and HS22 blade servers.

Virtual Fabric for IBM BladeCenter provides flexible Ethernet connectivity, virtual port switching and support for future converged networking with iSCSI or FCoE. Unlike the physical port switching employed by conventional switch fabrics, the Emulex-BLADE solution provides a virtual fabric for IBM BladeCenter supporting 1Gb/s or 10Gb/s that can be configured into up to eight virtual ports with bandwidth allocation in 100Mb/s increments.

BLADE’s switch-resident and hypervisor-agnostic SmartConnect with VMready software is the industry’s first shipping product to enable network policies to move along with Virtual Machines to maintain application performance, availability and security.

The Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter CFFh for IBM BladeCenter provides the fastest and most flexible blade server Ethernet connections in the industry, offering two physical 10Gb/s Ethernet ports that can be configured into up to eight virtual ports with bandwidth allocations in 100Mb/s increments. Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapters are field upgradable to iSCSI or next-generation Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). BLADE’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches support iSCSI and can be upgraded with new firmware to support FCoE, allowing a converged networking infrastructure to support diverse application requirements within the data center.

"One of the challenges customers face today is that they have too many devices in their data centers that need to be managed," said Alex Yost, vice president, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "Virtual Fabric for IBM BladeCenter, developed in partnership with Emulex and BLADE Network Technologies, allows customers to significantly reduce the number of adapters, switches and cabling by offering up to eight virtual adapters with the flexibility to work at any bandwidth from 100Mb to 10Gb."

"Emulex and BLADE Network Technologies are working with IBM to bring industry-leading 10Gb/s Ethernet and virtual I/O solutions to the market that help IT managers reduce costs and scale their operations through the performance and consolidation benefits of network convergence," said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of Business Development, Emulex. "Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapters for IBM BladeCenter are based on our OneConnect’ Universal Converged Network Adapter architecture and work seamlessly with BLADE’s convergence-ready switches to provide an ideal solution for IBM BladeCenter customers seeking to lower capital expenditures, maximize blade consolidation and deploy highly virtualized environments."

"BLADE’s FCoE-ready virtual fabric switch automatically recognizes Emulex’s Virtual Fabric Adapter and has the ability to connect massive virtualization environments that span thousands of servers, helping simplify management and improve performance for today’s agile workloads," said Charles Ferland, vice president of EMEA, BLADE Network Technologies. "Working with Emulex and IBM to deliver this combined solution confirms that BLADE switches are today’s best choice for next-generation data center networks."

Availability
BLADE’s BNT Virtual Fabric 10G Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter (Part number 46C7191) and Emulex’s Virtual Fabric Adapter (Part number 49Y4235) will be available in November from IBM.

To look at the product demo