Cisco Nexus 4001I Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter

On my previous blog post “What exactly is a Nexus 4000?” there were many questions/comments around OEM blade server vendors and details of Nexus 4000 Series Blade Switches . Today, IBM announced the details of the Cisco Nexus 4000 blade switch for their BladeCenter H and HT chassis.

Nexus 4001 Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter will provide the support for Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and the emerging IEEE Data Center Bridging (DCB) standards over 10 GbE for IBM Blade servers.

So IBM becomes the first blade server vendor to make Cisco Nexus 4000 available for their blade servers. You can find the Nexus 4000 blade switch IBM description at:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0754.html

and included in the IBM websites below:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/openfabric/fcoe.html

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/openfabric/ethernet.html

and on the Cisco website:  http://www.cisco.com/go/nexus4000

This illustrate: 

1. Continued momentum of FCoE standard in the data center and broader acceptance of Cisco’s vision of unifying LAN & Storage networking at the server access layer which started with the introduction of Nexus 5000 in March 2008.  Nexus 4001I will allow customers using IBM blade servers to deploy FCoE and Unified Fabric at the access layer. 10 GbE and FCoE to server helps to create greener data centers through the reduction of cables, adapters and switches.  This reduces CapEx (less equipment to purchase) and OpEx (reduced power/cooling and management costs.). This also help untangle data center of cabling.

    2.  Cisco and IBM are continuing to work closely to meet the needs of our joint customers.

According to the IBM announcement, planned availability date is Nov 5th, 2009.

Posted by Kash Shaikh at 05:27PM PST

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