IBM System Networking RackSwitch G8124E
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IBM System Networking RackSwitch G8124E
IBM Redbooks Product Guide
The IBM
®
System Networking RackSwitch
™
G8124E delivers exceptional performance that is both
lossless and low latency. In addition, the G8124E delivers excellent cost savings as you consider
acquisition costs, energy costs, plus its feature-rich design with when it comes to virtualization,
CEE/FCoE, high availability, and its enterprise class Layer 2 and Layer 3 functionality.
With support for 1G or 10G, this switch is designed for those clients that are leveraging 10G Ethernet
today or have plans to in the future. This is the first Top of Rack 10Gb switch for IBM System x
®
designed to support IBM Virtual Fabric, which helps clients significantly reduce cost and complexity
when it comes to the I/O requirements of most virtualization deployments today. Virtual Fabric can
help clients reduce the number of multiple I/O adapters down to a single dual-port 10G adapter, in
addition to reducing the number of cables and upstream switch ports required. Virtual Fabric allows
clients to carve up a dual-port 10G adapter into eight virtual NICs (vNICs) and create dedicated virtual
pipes between the adapter and the switch for optimal performance, plus higher availability and better
security. This functionality provides the ability to dynamically allocate bandwidth per vNIC in
increments of 100 Mb, while being able to adjust over time without downtime. Figure 1 shows the IBM
System Networking RackSwitch G8124E.
Figure 1. IBM System Networking RackSwitch G8124E
Did you know
The G8124E switch is designed to support a number of separate types of configurations from a
server or downstream switches: 1 Gb, 10 Gb, virtual NIC, Converged Enhanced Ethernet
(CEE/FCoE), and iSCSI. This single switch can handle all these workloads and can connect to an
upstream 1 Gb or 10 Gb infrastructure, or both.
The G8124E is designed to support data center bridging (DCB), which is the IEEE’s group of
protocols that provide Lossless Ethernet and allows for clients to reduce the costs of
implementing FCoE by leveraging port aggregation before connecting to more costly upstream
gateway devices.
IBM Virtual Fabric helps clients reduce costs and complexity in environments where they need
four or more NICs per server. A perfect example is virtualization, where clients often need as
many as eight NICs per server.
IBM is a leader in helping clients reduce the complexity of managing VMs and VM migration with
their IBM VMready
®
product, which makes the network VM aware.
