IBM BladeCenter Virtual Fabric Solutions

The deployment of server virtualization technologies in data centers requires significant efforts in providing sufficient network I/O bandwidth to satisfy the demand of virtualized applications and services. For example, every virtualized system can host several dozen network applications and services. Each service requires certain bandwidth (or speed) to function properly. Furthermore, the traffic flows of different network traffic patterns that are relevant to various service types can interfere with each other. They can lead to serious network problems.

The IBM® Virtual Fabric solution for IBM BladeCenter® addresses these issues. The solution is based on the IBM BladeCenter H chassis with a 10 Gbps Converged Enhanced Ethernet infrastructure. This infrastructure is built on 10 Gbps Ethernet switch modules in the chassis and the Emulex or Broadcom Virtual Fabric Adapters in each blade server.

This IBM Redbooks® publication provides configuration scenarios that use technology from five global leaders in network switch and adapter technology: Broadcom, Brocade, Cisco, Emulex, and IBM. These scenarios demonstrate the usage of IBM System Networking technology and products from Broadcom, Brocade, Cisco, and Emulex. This book is for clients who want to learn how to implement an IBM Virtual Fabric solution by using the IBM Virtual Fabric Mode offering or the Switch Independent Mode offering. This book explains step-by-step how to configure the adapters and switches.