Past Company Spotlights

For more information >>>

BLADE views 10 Gigabit Ethernet as the next wave in networking - it lets networks move data faster, and supports applications that use a lot of bandwidth, and require very low latency, such as High performance computing clusters, iSCSI-based Storage Area Networks and Network Attached Storage, Voice over IP, Video on Demand and High-Definition IP TV. By collaborating with blade.org members, BLADE Network Technologies has helped IBM develop the most comprehensive solution for 10 Gigabit Ethernet networking.
 

Blade Network Technologies

Broadcom's NetXtreme II™ BCM57710 converged network interface controller (C-NIC) uses only four lanes of the PCI Express 2.0 interface to deliver bi-directional line rate performance gains two times greater than that achieved with products utilizing the previous generation of PCI Express technology. The BCM57710 can support up to eight lanes of PCIe 2.0 or PCIe 1.1 and enables either 5 Gbps or 2.5 Gbps data rate per lane. Equivalent functionality previously required eight lanes of PCIe 1.1 bus connectivity that doubled the amount of signaling overhead in previous generation server systems.

Broadcom's Converged NIC is ideal for Blade Server and Blade environments. Combining 10 Gbps throughput with convergence technology designed to boost server performance (i.e. TCP/IP offload engine (TOE), iSCSI, and Remote Direct Memory Access), Broadcom's C-NIC is able to provide scalable performance while improving overall CPU utilization by up to five times. Broadcom features iSCSI boot and offload for host bus adapter (HBA) functionality. Designed as a cost-point/performance upgrade to existing 1GbE implementations, the 10 Gigabit BroadcomNetXtreme II C-NIC is optimized for embedded blade server applications

Today's blade servers and advanced telecom computing architecture (ATCA) equipment are self-contained, modularly designed computing systems that typically use a chassis, common backplane and Ethernet connectivity to transfer voice, video and data within the system. However, these computing systems can only support single-channel, low bandwidth capabilities (using 1000BASE-X or 1000BASE-KX standards), or four-channel, low bandwidth per channel capabilities (using the 10GBASE-KX4 standard). With today's higher bandwidth applications (such as virtualization, security and encryption, and multimedia), as well as a need to preserve today's legacy systems running at 1Gbps or XAUI data rates, 10Gbps data must now be driven across the backplane. Broadcom is the first silicon vendor to address this market requirement with its new serial transceiver that supports the new IEEE 802.3ap standard (10GBASE-KR) for backplane systems.

Blade infrastructures benefit from Broadcom's new StrataXGS 200 series of switch solutions that contain highly integrated multilayer Ethernet switches which support up to 28 GbE ports and can operate at 10/100/1000 Megabits per second (Mbps). An unprecedented level of integration is achieved using 65nm process technology, which enables lower-power silicon solutions that can reduce overall system costs in blade server platforms for local area networks (LAN).

For more information >>>
 

Broadcom Corporation

Broadcom is one of the world's largest fabless semiconductor companies, with 2006 revenue of $3.67 billion, and holds over 2,200 U.S. and 900 foreign patents, more than 6,600 additional pending patent applications, and one of the broadest intellectual property portfolios addressing both wired and wireless transmission of voice, video and data. Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. Broadcom may be contacted at +1.949.926.5900 or at www.broadcom.com.

As the leading 10 Gigabit Ethernet Unified Wire solution provider, Chelsio is excited to work with Blade.org members to enable the fabric convergence for the next generation HPC & Enterprise data centers.
 

Chelsio Communications

Citrix Systems has worked with IBM System X and VMware to create an exciting solution for desktop virtualization. Citrix Presentation Server offers a compelling solution for desktop virtualization in the form of published desktops. Desktop virtualization can also be the abstraction of operating systems from user-PCs: completely removing Operating Systems from individual PCs and running them on servers in the data center. Desktop Virtualization separates the desktop from the physical access device. It enables anywhere access and the benefits of "desktop consolidation" on a server platform.

There are several areas that lead customers to become interested in a desktop virtualization solution: Two of the most common are offshore development and trader workstations.

For more information >>>
 

Citrix Systems

Devon IT Invests $8M in R&D with IBM BladeCenter
Devon IT, a founding member of Blade.org, began its collaborative relationship with IBM in 2005 and has since invested over $8 million dollars in research and development with IBM to drive innovation in next generation thin client computing.

IBM recently unveiled its new Workstation Blade and "eco" system of connection broker software. Devon IT's TC10 desktop access device is designed to help customers host workstation environments remotely to significantly reduce costs and conserve energy in the workplace. The TC10 is the highest performance desktop access device in the world, and is the first to give the end user a true PC experience with instant screen updates, full multimedia support, and full USB compatibility. It connects to IBM's HC10 Workstation Blade using PC over IP (PCoIP), a technology that changes the desktop computing model by enabling desktop consolidation benefits to be realized across the enterprise.
For more information >>>
 

Devon IT

Disaster Recovery and High Availability for IBM eServer™ BladeCenter®

Double-Take® from Double-Take® Software goes beyond periodic backup to provide continuous data protection, ensure minimal data loss, and enable immediate recovery from any disaster or system outage. Double-Take utilizes patented replication and failover technology that continuously captures byte-level changes as they happen and replicates those changes to one or more target servers at any location, locally or at a recovery site miles away. As enterprises deploy blade technology to increase server density, achieve higher levels of scalability and availability, and ease systems management they require the highest level of data and application protection.

For more information >>>
 

Double-Take Software

The company recently expanded its global presence and technical support through the acquisition of its subsidiary, Sunbelt System Software.

Emulex is a global provider of enterprise-class solutions and technologies that intelligently connect storage, servers and networks, to ensure access to data that's open, secure and adaptable. We've been a leader and catalyst for innovation and investment protection with a proven record of success that spans nearly 30 years. The world's leading OEMs rely on Emulex products to build scalable, high-performance storage and server solutions for today's largest, most demanding data centers. Emulex works closely with IBM to develop innovative solutions for our mutual customers and our Virtual HBA technology is extended to IBM through Emulex's enterprise-class 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA expansion cards.

For more information >>>
 

Emulex Corporation

For more information >>>
 

Nallatech

NetXen is a recognized leader in 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) high-performance networking and protocol processing solutions. We developed and brought to market the industry's first dual-port 10GbE mezzanine card, in collaboration with IBM, enabling blade environments to transition to next-generation Ethernet technology. The solution takes datacenter performance and affordability to the next level for enterprise customers, helping pave the way for mainstream adoption of 10GbE blade systems.

Blade servers, server consolidation, virtualization, and convergence of network fabrics at 10 Gigabit speeds are driving an exponential increase in data volumes and complexity. Against this backdrop of escalating network processing demands, IT managers are also striving to reduce system power consumption and cooling requirements, while integrating more flexibility into their datacenters. NetXen developed its breakthrough Intelligent NIC® technology in anticipation of these major technology shifts in the enterprise datacenter.

We are meeting the needs of the fast-growing blade server market by offering blade connectivity products based our Intelligent NIC® technology. Our product portfolio is built around the NX203x family of highly integrated, fully programmable network controllers that are optimized to offload and accelerate processing tasks, significantly improving the throughput of blade server platforms while reducing host CPU utilization. These offload capabilities enable overall system performance to scale dramatically. A flexible, fully programmable architecture allows the solution to adapt to stack and protocol changes through firmware updates. NetXen's dual-port 10GbE mezzanine card provides the datacenter with an extremely cost-effective, low latency, 10GbE solution that is ideally suited for blade server deployments.
 

NetXen, Inc.

NetXen Intelligent NICs are the industry's first programmable, multi-protocol networking solution designed for volume 10GbE markets. The Intelligent NIC silicon and board-level products are ideally suited for enterprises seeking cost-effective, high-performance solutions that alleviate critical IT infrastructure problems while scaling datacenter performance. The patented NetXen chip architecture delivers advanced capabilities for the next generation of server networking, substantially improving datacenter performance and agility.

NetXen, Inc. is a privately held company that manufactures intelligent 10-Gigabit Ethernet networking chips that advance enterprise datacenter performance and agility. Founded in February 2002 by chip design veteran Govind Kizhepat, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., with an office in Pune, India. NetXen’s protocol- and OS-agnostic Intelligent NICs are designed for volume 10-Gigabit deployments and are targeted at server, storage, security and networking systems. Contact NetXen at +1 408-330-0010, sales@netxen.com or www.netxen.com. Click here for more information.

The First WLAN on an IBM Blade

In 2006, IBM and Symbol jointly delivered the industry’s first comprehensive wireless LAN (WLAN) solution on a blade. The WS5120 Wireless Switch integrates all the functionality of Symbol’s WLAN architecture on an IBM eServer™ BladeCenter®, delivering a new level of simplicity and cost-efficiency to wireless networking. This approach combines the separate components traditionally required to deploy a wireless network — server, wireless switch, Ethernet switches, wireless security and applications, and more — into a single, plug-and-play device.
 

Symbol Technologies, Inc

Teak Technologies has pioneered a new category of highly scalable 10-Gb Congestion-Free Ethernet (CFE) switching solutions for the New Data Center.

These solutions unlock the full promise of a loss-free Ethernet thereby transforming a data center into a Congestion-Free Zone.

Data Center LANs based on 10-Gb CFE are simpler to manage and consume up to 4x less power at a price point that significantly reduces overall cost of ownership. Customers substitute 10-Gb CFE for best-effort 10-GbE in all mission critical networks that require delivery of highly predictable and reliable application performance.

10-Gb Congestion-Free Ethernet Switching Performance:

• improves upon comparable best-effort 10-GbE price/performance by up to 16x
• maximizes load-invariant, loss-free link utilization up to 100%
• up to 4x virtual links per physical port
• reduces number of uplinks in multi-hop network configurations by up to 4x
• delivers SLA-driven, predictable application throughput and latency performance

Key Applications

• Enterprise-class block-level storage connectivity
• High performance compute and database clusters
• High-definition video content acquisition, retrieval and caching in IPTV and cable applications

For more information on the 10-Gb CFE Solution for IBM BladeCenter >>>

Virtual Links

Teak's switching solutions simplify data center networks by consolidating physical links by up to a factor of four. Physical links can be consolidated because Teak's solutions eliminate packet loss, even in bursty environments, thereby making each link more efficient and allowing it to carry more traffic while delivering highly predictable and reliable application service-levels. Consequently, the I3000 can have four times as many 10-Gb/s virtual links for each external 10-Gb CFE port.

Greener Bottom Line

Fewer links consume less power.

Legacy data center networking equipment represents a grossly underutilized asset class. Link bandwidth is intentionally over-provisioned to compensate for performance, and utilization remains typically in the 15 percent – 30 percent range. As each network link consists of two terminations, one to a compute or storage device and the other to a switch, it can consume, on average, as much as 6W of power whether there is traffic or not.

Many data centers have multi-hop networks that interconnect as many as 4,000 compute and storage end-points for as many as 20K network terminations. As energy in data centers is expended twice – once, to power the equipment and, second, to cool it – there can be as many as 60K network terminations on an equivalent basis, which also includes a modest 50 percent overhead for all the supporting hardware that goes into building network switches such as fans, management modules, controllers, etc. An enterprise with a handful of mid-to-large data centers can face energy bills that run into a few hundred thousand dollars just for networking equipment alone. LANs using Congestion-Free Ethernet switching solutions can save such an enterprise enough electricity to power a small US town.

For more information >>>

For additional information, see also http://www.teaktechnologies.com/Green%20Web%20Site/green-solution.htm.
 

Teak Technologies

Voltaire offers a complete family of intelligent, unified fabric solutions for data centers and for high performance grid computing in HPC environments. Based on the InfiniBand infrastructure, Voltaire's solutions also enable high performance applications to run on industry standard servers and storage.

The combination of high bandwidth, low latency and scalability makes it the advanced interconnect of choice to power many of the world's biggest and fastest computer systems and enterprise data centers. Using Voltaire interconnect solutions, even the most demanding HPC and enterprise grid applications can run on entry-level servers. Voltaire's grid backbone switching solutions enable grid computing because the InfiniBand architecture defines a network for interconnecting processing systems, storage I/O and network I/O (IP) into a single easy-to-manage environment. Moreover, Voltaire solutions offer built-in intelligence (layer 2-7) that enables virtualization of multiple networks for resource allocation, provisioning and virtualization.

Our comprehensive product portfolio of Grid Backbone solutions includes Grid Director™ switches, Grid Switch™ edge switches, adapters, InfiniBand-to-IP routers, InfiniBand-to-Fibre Channel routers and software. Voltaire's product offerings also include Voltaire High Performance InfiniBand Pass-Through Module and Host Channel Adapter Expansion Card for IBM's BladeCenter-H, host communications adapters, integrated Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel routers and network virtualization software that provides the high performance, network "backbone" for grid computing architectures.
 

Voltaire Inc.

The ZXTM software was benchmarked on two sets of dual processor IBM blade servers (AMD Opteron based LS20 blades and Intel Xeon based HS20 blades) and its performance compared with that obtained on the ZXTM 7000 appliance (a dual processor Opteron server). It was found that ZXTM ran as efficiently on blades as on conventional hardware, and that performance scaled linearly as additional blades were added to the ZXTM cluster. This makes ZXTM the ideal traffic management solution for a blade based environment.

For more information >>>
 

Zeus Technology

As the only pure software traffic management solution, the Zeus products are flexible whatever your deployment environment; a purpose-built Zeus appliance, standard servers, blades, or even virtualized environments.