A month after announcing an Ethernet initiative to help it gain traction in the data center networking space, Voltaire releases the Vantage 8500 10GbE switch platform. The Vantage 8500 is aimed at virtualized data centers and cloud computing environments, both of which are helping drive the need for the higher bandwidth found with 10GbE and the desire to converge network technologies in the data center.A month after unveiling an initiative aimed at enabling it to become a
player in the data center Ethernet space, Voltaire is rolling out the first of
its high-density Ethernet switches.
Voltaire June 8 released the Vantage 8500, a scale-out Layer 2 core 10
Gigabit Ethernet switch that is aimed at enterprise data centers and cloud
computing environments.
The Vantage 8500 is designed to give businesses a high-density, highly
scalable and efficient switch platform and to give Voltaire greater traction in
the burgeoning converged networking space.
The increasing use of such technologies as blade servers, virtualization and
Web 2.0 applications is driving
the demand for the greater bandwidth that 10GbE can offer. At the same
time, enterprises also are looking for ways to drive down networking costs and
consolidate the various networking tiers now running throughout their data
centers.
Voltaire is expecting that its experience in high-end networking through its
history as an InfiniBand supplier will give it an edge in this arena.
InfiniBand remains a key technology in HPC
(high-performance computing) environments, but 10GbE is where the more lucrative
data center market is going. The Vantage 8500 will be an option for those
scale-out data centers, according to Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing
for Voltaire.
Virtualization breaks the old network architecture and creates a need for a
new approach to data center networking, Somekh said in a statement. With
virtualization, a three-tiered architecture with oversubscription no longer
workscustomers need a solution with a non-blocking core that can scale
linearly.
The Vantage 8500which will be available in the second half of 2009features
288 10GbE ports in a 15U (26.25-inch) chassis, and enables more than 3,400
non-blocking ports in a single switching fabric for greater
scalability. Even denser line cards will be offered in future versions,
Voltaire officials said.
The switch platform, through software features, also offers capabilities
aimed at virtualized and converged data center environments, including the
ability for users to manage roaming VM (virtual machine) ports, assign them
policies and monitor them as if they were physical systems. Voltaires
management operating system, VT-OS, also offers control of both physical and
virtual switch elements.