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Blade Platforms and Network Convergence

Download PDF version of Blade Platforms and Network Convergence White Paper

Contributions for this vendor neutral technology paper have been provided by Blade.org members including Astute Networks, BLADE Network Technologies, Brocade Communications, Emulex, Fulcrum Microsystems, IBM, Mellanox Technologies, NetApp and NetXen.

Overview

Blade computing platforms provide numerous advantages because of their modular design, simplified management and greater integration of storage and data networking components. The use of integrated switching within the blade chassis significantly reduce the cabling costs and lowers the complexities of management. While this level of network access consolidation is a great first step, organizations can go further and achieve a higher level of consolidation by converging the networking and storage fabrics. A converged network can simplify the network infrastructure and lower the operational costs by reducing the number of ports and adapters within the blade chassis Ð thus furthering the consolidation initiated by blades. This technology whitepaper from Blade.org presents an overview of the relevance and benefits of network convergence in blade computing environments and provides information technology (IT) managers with recommendations for bringing about wide scale adoption of network convergence in enterprise data centers.

Highlights

• Blade platforms optimize network connectivity by aggregating network ports thus significantly reducing the number of cables for network connectivity.
• Use of multiple networks for different traffic types increases number of adapters, switch ports per blade chassis and decreases operational efficiency.
• Ethernet, the predominant networking technology in the enterprise, provides the ideal foundation for wide scale network convergence.
• Powered by recent enhancements, convergence over 10G Ethernet provides several advantages including simplified infrastructure, reduced TCO, improved efficiency and business agility.
• Though the technologies target different market segments, storage access using FCoE and iSCSI form the basis for wide-scale deployment of network convergence over Ethernet.
• In high performance computing (HPC) environments, InfiniBand is well positioned to meet the segmentÕs requirements and will continue to be the leading option for network convergence in edge-networks.
• Network convergence fully complements the consolidation benefits achieved by blade deployments and facilitates data centers to support dynamic allocation of end-to-end resources.