Skip Links

Network World

  • Social Web 
  • Email 
  • Close

Nortel spinoff Blade takes virtualization to data-center rack

IBM, HP blade switch supplier rolls out family of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet switches
By Jim Duffy , Network World , 04/23/2008
Newsletter Signup
  • Share/Email
  • Tweet This
  • Comment
  • Print

Blade Network Technologies, the data-center server-switch company spun off from Nortel two years ago, this week unveiled a line of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches for rack-level network virtualization.

The 1U RackSwitch line is designed to perform server virtualization within the network. It also is intended to save energy through "rack-friendly" cooling, simplify management and provide fabric convergence through support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).

The vendor makes blade switches for blade-server systems from IBM, HP and NEC. Blade claims leadership in this particular market, having installed more than four million ports connecting more than 800,000 HP, IBM and NEC server blades, with products deployed across 26 market segments.

RackSwitch switches are a key component of the Blade's strategy to reduce the total cost of ownership of data-center infrastructures by enabling scale-out from the server rack -- a strategy the vendor calls "Rackonomics." Rackonomics is positioned as a method of virtualization and scaling that's an alternative to those offered by such large data-center switch vendors as  Cisco, which are anchored by large core switches -- for example, Cisco's new Nexus 7000.

Blade claims large core switches are more expensive to deploy and operate, and use power inefficiently.

"The Cisco approach is not too appealing to the server people, that's for sure," says Dan Tuchler, vice president of strategy and product management at Blade. "To rip and replace with a Nexus 7000 is a pretty costly thing. We should leave [virtualization] control to the server guy and leave the network to the networking guy. That's an easier approach to swallow."

The switches are the RackSwitch G8100 and G8000. The G8100 is a 1U top-of-rack switch equipped with 24 10G-Ethernet ports, and is designed for emerging high-volume 10G-Ethernet applications, clusters that require latency of 300 nanosec or less, or 10G-Ethernet aggregation.

The RackSwitch G8000 also is a 1U top-of-rack switch, but is equipped with 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports and four 10G-Ethernet ports for uplinks or stacking. It is designed for rack-level server connectivity, Web 2.0 cloud clusters or as a Gigabit aggregation switch.

Each RackSwitch has a nonblocking, internal switching fabric. The G8100 delivers "loss-less" I/O to carry FCoE storage traffic across Ethernet networks based on the emerging standards for Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE). CEE is an enhanced version of Ethernet for data centers designed to add flow-control and congestion-notification across multiple lanes of data and storage traffic on a single Ethernet fabric. Cisco refers to this as Data Center Ethernet.

  • Share/Email
  • Tweet This
  • Comment
  • Print
Partner Content

Explore the Ultrium Edge

The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.

Find Out More

Disk and Tape Square Off

Discover what disk and tape really cost and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization

Download this White Paper

Don't Fall for the Myths

The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.

Review this information

information examination

An examination of information security issues, methods and securing data with LTO-4 tape drive encryption

Read this analysis

Comments (4)
Login
Forgot your account info?

Welcome to the PartyBy Omar Sultan on April 24, 2008, 1:58 pmIts always nice to see new entrants into a segment. There are, however, a couple of incorrect assertions that should be addressed. Cisco does not advocate the...

Reply | Read entire comment

competitorsBy Anonymous on April 23, 2008, 3:52 pmSomeone should inform Mr.Tuchler that before making comments about the competition, do a quick search and find out what they are selling, I just did a quick search...

Reply | Read entire comment

competitorsBy Anonymous on April 23, 2008, 3:52 pmSomeone should inform Mr.Tuchler that before making comments about the competition, do a quick search and find out what they are selling, I just did a quick search...

Reply | Read entire comment

Nexus 5000By Anonymous on April 23, 2008, 3:24 pmDid Dan Tuchler forget about Cisco's new 10G TOR switch, the Nexus 5k?

Reply | Read entire comment

View all comments

Add comment
Anonymous comments subject to approval. Register here for member benefits.
Have a NetworkWorld account? Log in here. Register now for a free account.

Videos

rssRss Feed