BNT Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter

The IBM BladeCenter Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module offers the most bandwidth of any blade switch and represents the perfect migration platform for clients who are still at 1 Gb outside the chassis by seamlessly integrating in the existing 1 Gb infrastructure. This is the first 10 Gb switch for IBM BladeCenter that is convergence ready (that is, able to transmit Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) to a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capable top-of-rack switch). This new feature is available with firmware release 6.1 and newer.

In addition, this switch is a key part of the IBM Virtual Fabric offering, which allows clients to form up to eight virtual network interface controllers (vNICs) from one physical adapter (14 vNICs with an adapter plus the onboard 10 GbE controller with the BladeCenter HS23) and to manage them in virtual groups. This switch can be managed via a command-line interface (CLI) or a graphical interface of the switch, providing all the benefits of I/O Virtualization at 10 Gb speeds. Figure 1 shows the switch module.