Gigabit Ethernet Switches From BLADE on Tap

BLADE Network Technologies will unveil at Interop next week a set of products that includes an "FCoE-ready" 10 Gigabit Ethernet blade server switch with 100 Gig Ethernet of uplink capacity and a virtualization offering that the company says supports more than 1,000 virtual ports. The 100G is achieved by bonding 10 10G Ethernet links, BLADE says.

By Jim Duffy
Fri, May 15, 2009

Network World — BLADE Network Technologies will unveil at Interop next week a set of products that includes an "FCoE-ready" 10 Gigabit Ethernet blade server switch with 100 Gig Ethernet of uplink capacity and a virtualization offering that the company says supports more than 1,000 virtual ports. The 100G is achieved by bonding 10 10G Ethernet links, BLADE says.

The IEEE 802.3ba standard for a single 100G or 40G Ethernet interface is still a year away.

BLADE also says its existing 10G Ethernet top-of-rack switches are in use in IP SAN installations, and also part of its cloud architecture.

BLADE is an OEM supplier of blade server switches to IBM and HP, among other companies. It is also believed to be the source of Juniper's EX2500 top-of-rack 10G switch.

The Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) -ready blade server switch supports loss-less switching required for converged data and storage networking, BLADE says. The sports 24-ports of 10G or 1/10G Ethernet and is intended to enable companies to deploy a single fabric for data and storage, 100 Gbps of data center connectivity and up to 480Gbps of bi-directional throughput.

BLADE says the switch performs at 10G line-rate throughput with no packet loss as required by FCoE and Converged Enhanced Ethernet standards.

For virtualization, BLADE's VMready switch-resident software is designed to support 1,000 or more virtual switch ports. BLADE's VMready 1/10G Ethernet uplink switches are available now for IBM BladeCenter and HP BladeSystem. A new BNT 10-port 10G Ethernet Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter H/HT is planned for VMready support in 3Q09.VMready will be available for BLADE's RackSwitch top-of-rack switches in mid-2009.

BLADE says its switches are priced at under US$500 per 10G Ethernet port.

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