Lenovo BladeCenter Virtual Fabric 10Gb Product Manual

Also see for BladeCenter Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module: User guide Hardware Maintenance Manual Installation guide

BladeCenter Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch ModuleProduct Guide (withdrawn product)The BladeCenter Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module for offers the most bandwidth of any blade switchand represents the perfect migration platform for clients who are still at 1 Gb outside the chassis byseamlessly integrating in the existing 1 Gb infrastructure. This is the first 10 Gb switch for BladeCenter thatis convergence ready (that is, able to transmit Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) to a Fibre Channelover Ethernet (FCoE) capable top-of-rack switch).In addition, this switch is a key part of the Virtual Fabric offering, which allows clients to form up to eightvirtual network interface controllers (vNICs) from one physical adapter (14 vNICs with an adapter plus theonboard 10 GbE controller with the BladeCenter HS23) and to manage them in virtual groups. This switchcan be managed via a command-line interface (CLI) or a graphical interface of the switch, providing all thebenefits of I/O Virtualization at 10 Gb speeds. Figure 1 shows the switch module.Figure 1. BladeCenter Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch ModuleDid you know?As virtualization has become a prevalent standard in the data center, more people have been looking forways to virtualize I/O to reduce cost and complexity while also maximizing I/O resources. Virtual Fabric forBladeCenter provides fast, flexible, easy, and reliable I/O using the Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module andthe Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter, which provides the abilities to carve up an adapter into eight virtualNICs, dynamically allocate bandwidth, manage virtual groups, and so on. With the BladeCenter HS23, atotal of 14 vNICs can be configured using the Emulex VFA II for HS23 plus the onboard Emulex controller.The switch is designed to support a number of different types of configurations from the blade: 1 Gb, 10Gb, virtual NIC, Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE/FCoE), and iSCSI. If you have a chassis with multipleservers, some operating at 1 Gb, some at 10 Gb, and some transmitting converged packets, this singleswitch can handle all these workloads and can connect to a 1 Gb infrastructure or a 10 Gb infrastructure,or both.BladeCenter Virtual Fabric 10Gb Switch Module (withdrawn product) 1