IBM Networking and Switches
Good day to all readers!
Today I want to highlight one dim page in the IBM family. Namely - the network.
I think not many people know that IBM made and produced its own network equipment. It is proper, and not the sale of the same Juniper or other manufacturers of switches under its own name.
At the end of the 90s, the IBM division that was responsible for solving network issues was sold to the equally well-known company CISCO, and not only technological developments, but also a pool of customers. More here
The entry into the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) server solutions market has forced IBM to reconsider looking at a partner that has become a competitor.
And on September 27, 2010, IBM announced that it had reached a final agreement on the acquisition of BLADE Network Technologies. This company was born inside the well-known company Nortel and in February 2006 was allocated to the Blade Server Switch Business Unit and was transformed into a private company BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BNT), which was engaged in the production and sale of switches. The products of this manufacturer are used not only by IBM in their blade platforms, but also by other major manufacturers of blade systems.
Having become a part of IBM, the division became known as IBM System Networking and released not only switches intended for installation in the system blade, but also usually in an external version.
')
Now that everything is clear with history - let's talk about the present and the future.
We all know that new processors come out every year, more RAM is becoming ... the network interface is smoothly moving from 1 Gbit / s to 10 Gbit / s, but these are only numerical indicators.
What customers want when choosing network equipment and giving preference to one or another network manufacturer
• Quick access to relevant information with minimal delays
• Fault tolerance
• Ease of management (including the preservation of the familiar interface - we are all used to CISCO-customers say)
• Scaling and investment protection
Of course, there are other important criteria, such as support for open standards (roughly speaking compatibility issues), flexibility and optimization for some specific tasks, the price is again a weighty criterion .......
There are various ways to implement these requirements - these are one of the most popular areas.
• Switch consolidation
• New infrastructure topology
• Integrated Solutions
• New protocols and standards (Software defined networks (Software-defined networking (SDN) and Openflow)
What is IBM System Networking ready to offer the market?
• Performance and non-blocking architecture
All switches have high bandwidth and no “oversubscription”
• Flat network topology.
This technology is actively promoted by Juniper (it stole a slide from them - there is a complete presentation right there)
This technology allows to reduce the number of switches, abandoning intermediate solutions, simplify management - in fact, you have to manage one large switch and increase productivity by reducing delays. How this is implemented in IBM Pure Systems can be found here .
• Convergent networks.
Convergence allows the network infrastructure to abandon dedicated FC SAN switches. The traffic is on one channel and decomposes on FC SAN and Ethernet directly on the switch giving some ports for storage area network (FC SAN) and some for Ethernet. And as we already said, there are fewer channels less switches, easier management, simpler topology and .d
• Virtual Switches.
In virtualized IT infrastructures on the same physical server, traffic is generated from one virtual machine to another located on the same physical server, and virtual switches are used to reduce this load.
• Convenience of the interface
Most of the interface (about 80%) has commands that match Cisco products, the remaining 20% ​​is very similar to those of Cisco.
All these technologies are implemented by the switches included in the line of solutions, while the switches have different data transfer rates - starting from 1 Gbit / s models, 10 Gbit / s and ending with high-performance 40 Gbit / models.
Most models support the new data transfer standard Openflow.
Also in the product line includes other products Software-defined networks (Software-defined networking (SDN) and virtual switches (IBM DVS5000) - analogues of the widespread Nexus 1000v
The story of this line would not be complete if there was no comparison with the traditional old-timers of the market such as Cisco.
Comparison slides were found on the same vast expanses of the Internet:
And the older model
With equal functionality or superior functionality and performance, the price is very, very different :-)
Colleagues in the comments do not hesitate to ask what you are interested in and suggest new interesting topics for discussion !!!
Today I want to highlight one dim page in the IBM family. Namely - the network.
I think not many people know that IBM made and produced its own network equipment. It is proper, and not the sale of the same Juniper or other manufacturers of switches under its own name.
At the end of the 90s, the IBM division that was responsible for solving network issues was sold to the equally well-known company CISCO, and not only technological developments, but also a pool of customers. More here
The entry into the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) server solutions market has forced IBM to reconsider looking at a partner that has become a competitor.
And on September 27, 2010, IBM announced that it had reached a final agreement on the acquisition of BLADE Network Technologies. This company was born inside the well-known company Nortel and in February 2006 was allocated to the Blade Server Switch Business Unit and was transformed into a private company BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BNT), which was engaged in the production and sale of switches. The products of this manufacturer are used not only by IBM in their blade platforms, but also by other major manufacturers of blade systems.
Having become a part of IBM, the division became known as IBM System Networking and released not only switches intended for installation in the system blade, but also usually in an external version.
')
Now that everything is clear with history - let's talk about the present and the future.
We all know that new processors come out every year, more RAM is becoming ... the network interface is smoothly moving from 1 Gbit / s to 10 Gbit / s, but these are only numerical indicators.
What customers want when choosing network equipment and giving preference to one or another network manufacturer
• Quick access to relevant information with minimal delays
• Fault tolerance
• Ease of management (including the preservation of the familiar interface - we are all used to CISCO-customers say)
• Scaling and investment protection
Of course, there are other important criteria, such as support for open standards (roughly speaking compatibility issues), flexibility and optimization for some specific tasks, the price is again a weighty criterion .......
There are various ways to implement these requirements - these are one of the most popular areas.
• Switch consolidation
• New infrastructure topology
• Integrated Solutions
• New protocols and standards (Software defined networks (Software-defined networking (SDN) and Openflow)
What is IBM System Networking ready to offer the market?
• Performance and non-blocking architecture
All switches have high bandwidth and no “oversubscription”
• Flat network topology.
This technology is actively promoted by Juniper (it stole a slide from them - there is a complete presentation right there)
This technology allows to reduce the number of switches, abandoning intermediate solutions, simplify management - in fact, you have to manage one large switch and increase productivity by reducing delays. How this is implemented in IBM Pure Systems can be found here .
• Convergent networks.
Convergence allows the network infrastructure to abandon dedicated FC SAN switches. The traffic is on one channel and decomposes on FC SAN and Ethernet directly on the switch giving some ports for storage area network (FC SAN) and some for Ethernet. And as we already said, there are fewer channels less switches, easier management, simpler topology and .d
• Virtual Switches.
In virtualized IT infrastructures on the same physical server, traffic is generated from one virtual machine to another located on the same physical server, and virtual switches are used to reduce this load.
• Convenience of the interface
Most of the interface (about 80%) has commands that match Cisco products, the remaining 20% ​​is very similar to those of Cisco.
All these technologies are implemented by the switches included in the line of solutions, while the switches have different data transfer rates - starting from 1 Gbit / s models, 10 Gbit / s and ending with high-performance 40 Gbit / models.
Most models support the new data transfer standard Openflow.
Also in the product line includes other products Software-defined networks (Software-defined networking (SDN) and virtual switches (IBM DVS5000) - analogues of the widespread Nexus 1000v
The story of this line would not be complete if there was no comparison with the traditional old-timers of the market such as Cisco.
Comparison slides were found on the same vast expanses of the Internet:
And the older model
With equal functionality or superior functionality and performance, the price is very, very different :-)
Colleagues in the comments do not hesitate to ask what you are interested in and suggest new interesting topics for discussion !!!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/210516/
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