Blade Network Delivers Top-of-Rack Switch With Lossless Ethernet

BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. announced the delivery of a ‘pure play’ Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) top-of-rack switch. BLADE’s RackSwitch G8124 now includes new lossless CEE enhancements with BLADEOS 6.3 for high-performance IP storage and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) at no extra charge. BLADE’s RackSwitch G8124 is also the first to break the $500 per 10 Gigabit Ethernet port barrier for a CEE-capable switch.

"BLADE’s RackSwitch enables enterprises to take an open approach to unifying their data and storage networks with less disruption and at a far lower cost than hybrid top-of-rack switches that combine both Ethernet and Fibre Channel ports and charge a premium for CEE support," said Tim Shaughnessy, vice president of Marketing, BLADE Network Technologies. "As one of the industry’s top providers of 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, BLADE enables enterprises to deploy high-performance IP storage and prepare for FCoE while reducing networking costs by up to 50 percent, cabling costs by up to 90 percent and energy costs by up to 50 percent."

BLADE’s RackSwitch supports the IEEE’s Data Center Bridging (DCB) standards for high-performance Ethernet with no packet loss, making it an ideal high-performance top-of-rack switch for emerging FCoE environments as well as for IP storage environments that employ iSCSI or NAS. BLADE’s approach enables customers to scale out their IP storage networks without unnecessary expense and prepare for FCoE without incurring a rip-and-replace penalty.

BLADE’s RackSwitch is also ideal for Virtual Machine (VM) environments through BLADE’s VMready VM-aware networking technology. BLADE’s VMready enables the unique identification and network configuration for each Virtual Machine. VMready tracks VMs as they migrate and reconfigures the network in real-time to ensure security and access is always maintained.

CEE/DCB, BLADE VMready, BLADEHarmony Manager and BLADEOS are key elements of BLADE’s Unified FabricArchitecture (UFA), which provides a faster, virtual and proven data center networking platform that allows customers to tie together best-of-breed servers, storage, hypervisors and core networking systems. BLADE’s UFA products enable ‘Rackonomics’ to reduce the cost and complexity of deploying physical and virtual data center infrastructure.

"NetApp’s philosophy and strength has always been to offer a unified, multiprotocol storage portfolio that gives customers the benefit of both efficiency and performance," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions and Alliances at NetApp. "By working closely with our solutions partners like BLADE Network Technologies to leverage 10 Gigabit Ethernet, we help customers seeking to consolidate data center resources and increase value and efficiency by sharing the bandwidth of a high-performance 10GE network infrastructure. Increased bandwidth and added enhancements to support FCoE and DCB make BLADE’s RackSwitch an ideal solution for modern data centers."

"Why would you continue to deploy multiple Ethernet switches and multiple Fibre Channel switches when you can deploy a converged switch such as BLADE’s RackSwitch that utilizes fewer cables and only one console?" said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Leveraging FCoE enables organizations to converge top-of-rack networks and maximize the use of existing Fibre Channel assets. BLADE’s approach enables Fibre Channel to leverage the Ethernet roadmap and economics as well as reduce the number of cables, cards and switches. Why would you buy two networks when all you need is one?"

Price and Availability
BLADE’s RackSwitch G8124, a 24-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch, is available now with support for lossless CEE/DCB, priced at $11,950 through BLADE’s RackSwitch Solution Partners.