Networking FDR Top-of-Rack Switches Made by Mellanox for IBM

IBM Corp. now offers the Networking FDR TOR IB Switch MSX6036F made by Mellanox for IBM.

The MSX6036F switch is suited as a top-of-rack (TOR) edge switch, providing up to 56Gb/s connectivity.

The MSX6036F-1SFS (8831-F36) and MSX6036F-1SRS (8831-F37) are identical except for the air flow design. A Power Systems rack has air flow moving from the front of the rack to the rear of the rack. ‘1SFS’ designates a ‘back to front’ airflow, which in a Power Systems rack would be mounted in the rear of the rack. 1SRS designates a front to back airflow, which in a Power Systems rack would be mounted in the front of the rack.

The MSX6036F-1SFS is ordered using IBM 8831-F36.

The MSX6036F-1SRS is ordered using IBM 8831-F37.

The MSX6036F uses 1U (1 EIA) and is typically placed in the top of the rack. A rail kit is included. The MSX6036F provides 36 QSFP+ ports, which are nonblocking, and two management ports. These provide up to 4.032Tb/s aggregate capacity. The switch has redundant, hot plug power supplies (ac) and redundant, hot plug fans.

In addition to the FDR switch, several additional features not related to the switch are announced.

Some clients prefer to use 3-phase power in their data centers for increased energy efficiency. PDUs to support this capability for Power Systems are already available in some parts of the world given their electrical wiring standards, but countries such as the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Taiwan require using a different PDU than available for most Power Systems. Therefore, support for the 3-phase feature 7196 PDU is being announced for IBM POWER8 servers and the 7014-T00/T42 rack and the 7965-94Y Slim Rack. In addition, the new PDU feature EPGA is introduced. Feature EPGA is physically a feature 7196 PDU, but has a lower price. One EPGA feature can be configured on a new 7014-T00/T42 rack instead of the no-charge 9188 PDU feature.

A new, optional feature EU19 can be ordered for the POWER8 Scale-out Power Systems and for POWER7+ 710/720/730/740. It provides a convenient set of Velcro ties and cable labels. Previously, these had been included without a feature number, but now require the optional, chargeable feature for IBM to include. The Velcro ties allow for the attachment and detachment of cables to the rack or to other cables. The cable labels help operations and service personnel easily identify the appropriate cables when installing equipment or changing configurations in a rack.

A new compute-intensive accelerator, the NVida K80 GPU (#EC4B), is announced for the Power S824L. The K80 is a later-generation GPU than the currently offered K40 GPU (#EC47) and has more processing capability than the K40.

Key prerequisites
An IBM Power Systems, IBM Systems p, or IBM Systems i server.

Planned availability date:

June 9, 2015, for feature number 0006
June 12, 2015, for feature number 6038
June 19, 2015, for all features except feature numbers 0006, 6038, EB4A, EB4B, EB4C, EB4D, EB4E, EB4F, and EB4G
August 28, 2015, for FDR optical cable features numbers EB4A, EB4B, EB4C, EB4D, EB4E, EB4F, and EB4G