High-speed blade switch unveiled

Blade Network Technologies this week unveiled a 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch for the HP BladeSystem.

The company makes blade switches - switches that provide communications for blade servers - for blade systems from both IBM and HP.

Blade Network Technologies is a venture buyout of Nortel's Blade Server Switch business unit. In February 2006, Nortel and Garnett & Helfrich Capital announced that the two companies entered into an agreement to establish the business unit as a private enterprise, with the thinking that a separate company focused on this area could do better. Longtime readers may recall when Nortel started providing switches for HP and for IBM.

Blade Network Technologies says it has shipped more than 110,000 blade switches for IBM and HP blade servers, representing 2.5 million switch ports. It also notes that HP recently announced its blade server sales increased 58% year to year.

Blade's new switch is an IPv6-ready 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch module for HP's system. The HP 1:10Gb Ethernet BL-c switch provides a 10G Ethernet uplink to as many as 16 HP ProLiant and Integrity server blades inside a BladeSystem. The switch has three 10-Gigabit uplinks, a 10 Gigabit cross-connect, 16 downlinks of Gigabit Ethernet, four uplinks of Gigabit Ethernet, and a Gigabit management port.

The company points out that the switch can be used to help build a unified LAN and Ethernet-based storage-area network fabric.

The Tolly Group has verified that the company's products interoperate well in a network of Cisco equipment.

The HP 1:10Gb Ethernet BL–c switch is available from HP now, starting at $5,000.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.