IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124
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Benefits
The IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124 offers the following benefits:
High performance: The 10G Low Latency (<700 nanoseconds) switch provides the best combination
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of extremely low latency, non-blocking line-rate switching and ease of management.
Lower power and better cooling: The G8124 uses as little power as two 60 W light bulbs, which is a
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fraction of the power consumption of most competitive offerings. Unlike side-cooled switches, which
can cause heat recirculation and reliability concerns, the G8124’s rear-to-front cooling design reduces
data center air conditioning costs by having airflow match the servers in the rack. In addition, variable
speed fans assist in automatically reducing power consumption.
Virtual Fabric can help customers address I/O requirements for multiple NIC’s while also helping
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reduce cost and complexity. Virtual Fabric for IBM allows for the carving up of a physical NIC into
multiple virtual NICs (2 - 8 vNICs) and creates a virtual pipe between the adapter and the switch for
improved performance, availability, and security while reducing cost and complexity. (Planned
support for late 2010.)
VM aware Networking: VMready™ software on the switch helps reduce configuration complexity while
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significantly improving security levels in virtualized environments. VMready automatically detects
virtual machine movement from one physical server to another, and instantly reconfigures each VM’s
network policies across VLANs to keep the network up and running without interrupting traffic or
impacting performance. VMready works with all leading VM providers such as VMware, Citrix, Xen,
and Microsoft.
Layer 3 functionality: The switch includes Layer 3 functionality, which provides security and
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performance benefits as inter-VLAN traffic stays within the chassis. This switch also provides the full
range of Layer 3 protocols from static routes for technologies such as Open Shortest Path First
(OSPF) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) for enterprise customers.
Active MultiPath (AMP) effectively doubles bandwidth by allowing all uplink ports to be active/active,
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eliminating cross-stack traffic and providing up to 900 Gbps aggregate bandwidth between servers.
Built-in fault tolerance constant health checking ensures maximum availability.
Seamless Interoperability: IBM switches interoperate seamlessly with other vendors' upstream
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switches. Tolly Reports: Tolly Functionality and Certification: RackSwitch G8000 and G8124 and
Cisco Catalyst Interoperability Evaluation.
Fault tolerance: These switches learn alternate routes automatically and perform faster convergence
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in the unlikely case of a link, switch, or power failure. The switch uses proven technologies, such as
L2 trunk failover, advanced VLAN-based failover, VRRP, HotLink, Uplink Failure Detection (UFD),
IGMP V3 snooping, and OSPF.
Converged fabric: The switch is designed to support CEE and connectivity to FCoE gateways. CEE
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helps enable clients to combine storage, messaging traffic, VoIP, video, and other data on a common
data center Ethernet infrastructure. FCoE helps enable highly efficient block storage over Ethernet for
consolidating server network connectivity. As a result, clients can deploy a single server interface for
multiple data types, which can simplify both deployment and management of server network
connectivity, while maintaining the high availability and robustness required for storage transactions.
