IBM Storage Networking SAN64B-6 Switch
Meet the demands of hyper-scale virtualization, larger cloud infrastructures and growing flash-based storage environments
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Overview:
The IBM Storage Networking SAN64B-6 switch is designed to meet the demands of hyper-scale virtualization, larger cloud infrastructures and growing flash-based storage environments by delivering market-leading Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology and capabilities. SAN64B-6 provides a high-density storage networking building block for increased scalability designed to support growth, demanding workloads and data center consolidation in small to large-scale enterprise infrastructures.
- Increase performance for demanding workloads across 32 Gbps and 128 Gbps links; shatter performance barriers with up to 100 million input/output operations per second (IOPS)
- Optimize end-to-end performance and availability tuning with IO Insight and VM Insight intelligence
- Enable flexible “pay-as- you-grow” scalability
- Provide high scalability in an ultra-dense, 1U, 64-port switch to support high-densit y server virtualization, cloud architectures and flash- based storage environments
- Detect degraded application performance with built-in device latency and IOPS metrics
Ultra-dense, highly scalable, easy-to-use, enterprise- class storage networking switch
Today’s mission- critical storage environments require greater consistency, predictability and performance to keep pace with growing business demands. Faced with explosive data growth, data centers need more input/ output (I/ O) capacity to accommodate massive amounts of data, applications and workloads. In addition to this surge in data, collective expectations for availability continue to rise. Users expect applications to be available and accessible from anywhere, at any time, on any device.
To meet these dynamic and growing business demands, organizations need to deploy and scale up applications quickly. As a result, many are moving to higher virtual machine densities to enable rapid deployment of new applications and deploying flash storage to help those applications scale to support thousands of users. To realize the full benefits of these architectures, organizations need the network to deliver the performance required by today’s server and storage environments. By treating the network as a strategic part of a highly virtualized environment, organizations can increase optimization and efficiency even as they rapidly scale their environments.
The IBM Storage Networking SAN64B-6 switch is designed to meet the demands of hyper-scale virtualization, larger cloud infrastructures and growing flash-based storage environments by delivering market-leading Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology and capabilities.
SAN64B-6 provides a high-density storage-networking building block for increased scalability designed to support growth, demanding workloads and data center consolidation in small- to large-scale enterprise infrastructures. Delivering unmatched 32/128 Gbps performance, industry-leading port density and built-in instrumentation, SAN64B-6 accelerates data access and drives always-on business.
SAN64B-6 is built for maximum flexibility, scalability and ease of use. Organizations can scale from 24 to 64 ports with 48 enhanced small-form-factor pluggable (SFP+) transceivers and four Q-Flex ports with four quad small-form-factor pluggable (QSFP) transceivers, all in an efficient 1U package. A simple deployment process and a point-and-click user interface make the switch easy to use. With SAN64B-6, organizations gain the best of both worlds: high-performance access to industryleading storage technology and “pay-as-you-grow” scalability to support an evolving storage environment.
Gen 6 Fibre Channel
Gen 6 Fibre Channel is the purpose-built n etwork infrastructure for mission- critical storage, delivering breakthrough performance, increased scalability and operational stability. With Gen 6 Fibre Channel and Fabric Vision technology (including both IO Insight and VM Insight), SAN64B-6 deliv ers unmatched 32/1 28 Gbps performance, industry- leading port density and built-in ins trumentation. These next- generation storage networking technologies and capabilities enable SAN64B-6 t o accelerate data access, adapt to evolving requirements and drive always-on busin ess operations for hyper- scale virtualization, larger cloud infrastructures and growing flash- based storage environments.
Features:
Maximize performance for application and solid-state storage architectures
Faced with unpredictable virtualized workloads and growing flash storage environments, organizations need to ensure that the network does not become a bottleneck. SAN64B-6 delivers increased performance for dynamic workloads through a combination of market-leading throughput and low latency across 32 Gbps and 128 Gbps links. SAN64B-6 shatters application performance barriers with up to 100 million IOPS and 700-nanosecond latency to meet the demands of flash-based storage workloads. At the same time, port-to-port latency is minimized through the use of cut-through switching at 32 Gbps. The 48 SFP+ ports provide 32 Gbps connections, and each Q-Flex port is capable of either 128 Gbps parallel Fibre Channel using QSFP-to-QSFP Inter-Switch Link (ISL) connectivity or 128 Gbps QSFP to four 32 Gbps SFP+ device connectivity using breakout cables, both methods simplifying cabling infrastructure.
Administrators can achieve optimal bandwidth utilization, high availability and load balancing by combining up to eight ISL connections in a 256 Gbps framed-based trunk. This can be achieved through eight individual 32 Gbps SFP+ ports or two 128 Gbps QSFP ports. Moreover, exchange-based Dynamic Path Selection (DPS) optimizes fabric-wide performance and load balancing by automatically routing data to the most efficient, available path in the fabric.
Simplify scalability and management complexity
SAN64B-6 features up to 64 Fibre Channel ports in an efficiently designed 1U form factor, delivering industry-leading space utilization for simple scalability and consolidation, reducing costs and complexity
This enterprise-class switch offers “pay-as-you-grow” scalability with ports on demand (PoD) capability to quickly, easily and cost-effectively scale from 24 to 64 ports with a combination of 12-port SFP+ PoD and 4-port Q-Flex PoD that equates to a 16-port SFP+ PoD. The 48 SFP+ ports support 4, 8, 10, 16 and 32 Gbps Fibre Channel speeds, while each of the four Q-Flex ports is capable of supporting a single 128 Gbps Fibre Channel link using QSFP optics to deliver 4-to-1 cable consolidation or four 32 Gbps Fibre Channel links using QSFP to SFP+ breakout cables. With its flexible PoD capability, SAN64B-6 provides excellent overall value and the agility needed to deliver rapid deployments to meet user demands and support higher growth.
Along with simplifying scalability, SAN64B-6 simplifies end-to-end network management by automating monitoring and diagnostics through Fabric Vision technology, deploying with the EZSwitchSetup wizard and validating cables, ports and optics with the ClearLink Diagnostic Ports (D_Ports).
Gain control and insight to quickly identify problems and meet critical SLAs
SAN64B-6, with its Gen 6 technology and built-in instrumentation, offers organizations the insight and control necessary to meet critical service level agreements (SLAs). IO Insight and VM Insight monitoring gathers statistics, including device and virtual machine (VM) latency and IOPS metrics, for early detection of application and device-level performance degradation. Administrators can proactively monitor against SLAs, reduce time to resolution, obtain crucial insight for troubleshooting and take action to optimize the end-to-end performance that ensures high availability.
IO Insight and VM Insight monitoring enables administrators to:
- Gain deep insights into performance and availability across physical and virtual infrastructures
- Quickly identify issues and understand key performance, health and utilization trends
- Monitor application flows with no physical taps, no downtime and no disruption
- Optimize performance and safeguard operational stability
Simplified management and robust network analytics
Fabric Vision technology2 enables administrators to avoid problems before they impact operations, helping their organizations meet SLAs. Fabric Vision technology includes:
- IO Insight: Proactively monitors application- and devicelevel I/O to gain deep insights into performance and availability, ensuring predictable performance and operational stability.
- VM Insight: Monitors VM performance throughout a storage fabric to quickly determine the source of VM/application performance anomalies and fine-tune the infrastructure based on VM/application requirements.
- Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS): Leverages prebuilt, rule-/policy-based templates within MAPS to simplify fabric-wide threshold configuration, monitoring and alerting.
- Fabric Performance Impact (FPI) Monitoring: Automatically detects and alerts administrators to different latency severity levels, and identifies slow-drain devices that could impact network performance.
- Dashboards: Displays an overall storage area network (SAN) health view, along with details on out-of-range conditions, to help administrators easily identify trends and quickly pinpoint issues.
- Configuration and Operational Monitoring Policy Automation Services Suite (COMPASS): Simplifies deployment, safeguards consistency and increases operational efficiencies of larger environments with automated switch and fabric configuration services.
- ClearLink Diagnostics: Ensures optical and signal integrity for Fibre Channel optics and cables, simplifying deployment and support of high-performance fabrics.
- Flow Vision: Enables administrators to identify, monitor and analyze specific application flows in order to simplify troubleshooting, maximize performance, avoid congestion and optimize resources. Flow Vision includes flow monitor, flow generator and flow mirroring.
- Forward Error Correction (FEC): Enables recovery from bit errors in device connections and ISLs, enhancing transmission reliability and performance.
- Credit Loss Recovery: Helps overcome performance degradation and congestion due to buffer credit loss.
IBM Network Advisor
IBM Network Advisor SAN management simplifies Fibre Channel network management and helps organizations reduce deployment and configuration times and accelerate troubleshooting by allowing fabrics, switches and ports to be managed as groups with customizable dashboards that graphically display performance and health indicators.
A building block for virtualized, private cloud storage
SAN64B-6 provides a critical building block for today’s highly virtualized and cloud environments by meeting the highthroughput demands of solid-state disks (SSDs), supporting multitenancy capabilities required in cloud environments, and increasing security and efficiency with in-flight encryption and data compression over ISL connections.
Access gateway mode
SAN64B-6 can be deployed as a full-fabric switch or as an access gateway using the N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) standards. Access Gateway mode simplifies topologies and heterogeneous connectivity to other SAN fabrics by making the switch transparent to the SAN fabric, greatly reducing device management and allowing greater SAN scalability.
Benefits:
Increase performance
Shatter application performance barriers with up to 100 million input/output operations per second (IOPS) and increased performance for demanding workloads across 32 Gbps links.
Gain industry-leading port density
Leverage high scalability in an ultra-dense, 1U, 64-port switch and deliver greater hardware consolidation with fewer switches.
Improve hardware consolidation
Utilize 128 Gbps port speeds for greater hardware consolidation with fewer optics and cables required to connect switches.
Uncover performance issue
Detect degraded application performance with built-in device latency and IOPS metrics.
Improve resiliency
Increase resiliency by automatically discovering and recovering from device or network errors. Simplify troubleshooting with real-time and historical visibility in a single dashboard.
Ensure predictable performance
Validate and benchmark the physical infrastructure to ensure predictable performance prior to deployment.
Specifications:
| SAN64B-6 Switch Specifications | |
|---|---|
| System Architecture | |
| Fibre Channel ports | Switch mode (default): Minimum of 24 ports and maximum of 64 ports configuration. Port numbers above minimum are enabled through 12-port SFP+ increments with Ports on Demand (PoD) licenses, and through one 4-port QSFP PoD, providing 16-port increments through a Q-Flex license: E_Ports, F_Ports, D_Ports, and EX_Ports. Access Gateway default port mapping: 40 SFP+ F_Ports, 8 SFP+ N_Ports. |
| Scalability | Full-fabric architecture with a maximum of 239 switches |
| Certified Maximum | 6,000 active nodes; 56 switches, 19 hops in Fabric OS fabrics; larger fabrics certified as required. |
| Performance | Fibre Channel: 4.25 Gbps line speed, full duplex; 8.5 Gbps line speed, full duplex; 14.025 Gbps line speed, full duplex; auto-sensing of 4, 8, 16, and 32 Gbps port speeds |
| Fibre Channel performance |
|
| ISL Trunking | Frame-based trunking with up to eight 32 Gbps ports per ISL trunk; up to 256 Gbps per ISL trunk. Exchange-based load balancing across ISLs with DPS included in Fabric OS. |
| Aggregate bandwidth | 2 Tbps |
| Maximum fabric Latency | Latency for locally switched ports is 700 ns; encryption/compression is 1 µsec per node. |
| Maximum frame size | 2,112-byte payload |
| Frame buffers | 15,360 dynamically allocated |
| Classes of service | Class 2, Class 3, Class F (inter-switch frames) |
| Port types | D_Port (ClearLink Diagnostic Port), E_Port, EX_Port, F_Port, AE_Port optional port-type control. b-type Access Gateway mode: F_Port and NPIV-enabled N_Port. |
| Data traffic types | Fabric switches supporting unicast |
| Hot-swap components | Power supplies, fan modules, SFPs. |
| Warranty | One-year; customer-replaceable unit (CRU); and onsite, next-business-day response; warranty service upgrades are available |
| Media types |
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| USB | One USB port for system log file downloads or firmware upgrades |
| Fabric services |
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| Extension |
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| Management | |
| Supported Management software |
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| Security |
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| Management access | 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet (RJ-45), in-band over Fibre Channel, serial port (RJ-45), and one USB port |
| Diagnostics |
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| Mechanical | |
| Enclosure | Front-to-back airflow; non-port-side exhaust; power from back, 1U Back-to-front airflow; non-port-side intake; power from back, 1U |
| Size | Width: 44.00 cm (17.32 in.) Height: 4.39 cm (1.73 in.) Depth: 35.56 cm (14 in.) |
| System Weight | 7.73 kg (17 lb) with two power supply FRUs, without transceivers |
| Environmental | |
| Operating environment | Temperature: 0°C to 40°C/32°F to 104°F Humidity: 10% to 85% (non-condensing) |
| Non-operating environment | Temperature: -25°C to 70°C/-13°F to 158°F Humidity: 10% to 90% (non-condensing) |
| Operating altitude | Up to 3,000 m (9,842 ft) |
| Storage altitude | Up to 12 km (39,370 ft) |
| Shock | Operating: Up to 20 G, 6 ms half-sine Non-operating: Half sine, 33 G 11 ms, 3G axis |
| Vibration | Operating: 0.5 g sine, 0.4 grms random, 5 Hz to 500 Hz Non-operating: 2.0 g sine, 1.1 grms random, 5 Hz to 500 Hz |
| Heat dissipation | 64 ports at 716 BTU per hour |
| Power | |
| Power supply | Dual, hot-swappable redundant power supplies with integrated system cooling fans Two airflow options available: Non-port side intake and non-port side exhaust |
| AC input | 90 V to 264 V ~3.5 A |
| AC input line frequency | 47 Hz to 63 Hz |
| Power consumption | 206 W with all 64 ports populated with 48 x 32 Gbps SFP+ SWL optics and 4x (4 x 32 Gbps) QSFP SWL optics 85 W for empty chassis with no optics |
Documentation:
Download the IBM Storage Networking SAN64B-6 Switch Datasheet (.PDF)
Pricing Notes:
- All Prices are Inclusive of GST
- Pricing and product availability subject to change without notice.
Our Price: Request a Quote
Our Price: Request a Quote