BLADE and Emulex Outfit IBM BladeCenters with Virtual Fabric

Improvements to IBM BladeCenters and H and HS22 blade servers can now be implemented by combining BLADE’s BNT Virtual Fabric 10G Switch Module with the Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter CFFh for IBM BladeCenter. Emulex's Virtual Fabric Adapter CFFh gives IBM's BladeCenters network connectivity options that are both the fastest and the most flexible in the current industry.

“One of the challenges customers face today is that they have too many devices in their data centers that need to be managed,” Alex Yost, vice president, IBM Systems & Technology Group, said. “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.” 

The Virtual Fabric gives servers a flexible Ethernet connectivity and the ability to easily switch between virtual ports. Not only that, but the module also has support for future converged networking with iSCSI and FcoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet). This virtual port switching replaced the physical port switching used by regular switch fabrics. The BNT Virtual Fabric, when used with IBM BladeCenters capable of 1Gb/s or 10Gb/s connections, can be configured into up to eight virtual ports, each capable of 100Mb/s increments. In addition, network policies may be transferred along with Virtual Machines, thus preserving application performance, security and availability, via the SmartConnect with VMready software.  

“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,” Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of Business Development, Emulex, added. “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,” Charles Ferland, vice president of EMEA, BLADE Network Technologies, shared. “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.”