Digital Times
August 8, 2008
“Blade Network Technologies will lead the Blade Server Switch market by Rackonomics, which can provide Green IT with a high quality solution,” said Vikram Mehta, CEO of Blade Network Technologies at a press conference in Korea. He discussed Blade’s “Virtual, Cooler and Easier” solution using Rackonomics. “Our RackSwitch has a unique air-flow system, so enterprises can save cost and space at the same time.” Blade Network Technologies Korea already has a partner—Comtec Systems—and they are going to announce a few more partners soon. Blade Network Technologies was separated from Nortel Network’s Blade server switch Division in 2006. [Article in Korean]
IT Daily
August 8, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies announced its new RackSwitch family of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, the industry’s first Ethernet switches for rack-level network virtualization. RackSwitch G8000, a 1U top-of-rack switch equipped with 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports and four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports for uplinks and/or stacking, is designed for rack-level server connectivity, Web 2.0 cloud clusters and/or as a Gigabit aggregation switch. RackSwitch G8100, a 1U top-of-rack switch equipped with 24 lossless, low-latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GE) ports, is designed for emerging high-volume 10 GE application environments, high-performance clusters that require latency of 300 ns or less and/or as a 10 GE aggregation switch. BLADE’s new 1U RackSwitch product family extends virtualization by mirroring the benefits of server virtualization within the network at the rack level, saves energy through rack-friendly cooling and alleviates management pain by removing complexity through simplified management and fabric convergence. The products take a breakthrough approach that is becoming known as “Rackonomics” to reduce the total cost of ownership of data center infrastructures, overcome network overload and enable scale-out data center economies. provision and scale out Web 2.0 environments, high-performance clusters and virtualized data centers. [Article in Korean]
iNews24
August 8, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies announced its new RackSwitch family of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, the industry’s first Ethernet switches for rack-level network virtualization. BLADE’s new 1U RackSwitch product family extends virtualization by mirroring the benefits of server virtualization within the network at the rack level, saves energy through rack-friendly cooling, and alleviates management pain by removing complexity through simplified management and fabric convergence. The products take a breakthrough approach that is becoming known as “Rackonomics” to reduce the total cost of ownership of data center infrastructures, overcome network overload, and enable scale-out data center economies. It is designed to provision and scale out Web 2.0 environments, high-performance clusters, and virtualized data centers. [Article in Korean]
ET News
August 8, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies announced its new RackSwitch family of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, the industry’s first Ethernet switches for rack-level network virtualization. Vikram Mehta, President and CEO of BLADE Network Technologies said, “We are delighted to be introducing our virtual, cooler and easier RackSwitch to Korea. BLADE’s new 1U RackSwitch product family extends virtualization by mirroring the benefits of server virtualization within the network at the rack level, saves energy through rack-friendly cooling and alleviates management pain by removing complexity through simplified management and fabric convergence. The products take a breakthrough approach that is becoming known as “Rackonomics” to reduce the total cost of ownership of data center infrastructures, overcome network overload, and enable scale-out data center economies. It is designed to provision and scale out Web 2.0 environments, high-performance clusters, and virtualized data centers. [Article in Korean]
Blade opens Korean Branch office to lead the rack switch market
Digital Daily
August 8, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies announced its new RackSwitch family of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, the industry’s first Ethernet switches for rack-level network virtualization. BLADE’s new 1U RackSwitch product family extends virtualization by mirroring the benefits of server virtualization within the network at the rack level, saves energy through rack-friendly cooling, and alleviates management pain by removing complexity through simplified management and fabric convergence. The products take a breakthrough approach that is becoming known as “Rackonomics” to reduce the total cost of ownership of data center infrastructures, overcome network overload, and enable scale-out data center economies. It is designed to provision and scale out Web 2.0 environments, high-performance clusters and virtualized data centers. BLADE’s new RackSwitch products with SmartConnect™ and VMReady™ software are uniquely designed to be “Virtual, Cooler and Easier.” [Article in Korean]
By Calvin Azuri,
TMCnet
August 7, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies has released its new BLADEHarmony Manager 3.0 management software. This software allows data center administrators to efficiently manage and monitor BLADE Network Technologies’ 1Gb and 10Gb blade switches within HP BladeSystems, IBM BladeCenters and NEC SIGMABLADEs.
Market Watch
August 7, 2008
Blade.org, the industry consortium driving open innovation in blade-based solutions, today announced three new “Blade.org Collaborative Solutions”—advanced solutions developed by vendor members working together to help businesses harness the mega trends that Blade.org believes will define the new enterprise datacenter: advanced energy efficiency, converged networking and hyper-consolidation.
ChannelWeb
August 1, 2008
Blade Network Technologies (booth #726) will unveil its BladeHarmony Manager 3.0 software for managing networks of blade servers. The product monitors and manages the company’s 1—and 10-Gigabit blade switches with HP BladeSystems, IBM BladeCenters and NEC Sigmablades, as well as Blade Network Technology’s own RackSwitch family. The new release, which the vendor will be demonstrating at the Next Generation Data Center show, offers new capabilities for simplifying the management of scaled-out data centers and reducing the total cost of ownership of blade servers.
Market Watch
July 31, 2008
Data Center and open source community gather for industry’s largest event where emerging trends, innovative products and agenda-setting educational content meet for four days only.
By Jeff Caruso,
NetworkWorld
July 29, 2008
Blade Network Technologies this week introduced Layer 2 and Layer 3 switches using 10 Gigabit Ethernet for NEC Sigmablade blade-server systems. The 10 Gigabit Layer 3 switch has 16 connections of 10 Gigabit Ethernet to server blades, and four 10 Gigabit uplinks. Each blade will get its own direct connection to the 10 Gigabit router, rather than going through, say, a Gigabit Ethernet access switch.
Blade says that its switches would consume one-twentieth the power that typical standalone 10 Gigabit Ethernet chassis-based switches consume, and is positioning the switches as a platform for handling traffic to virtual servers. Blade adds that they’re also good for any applications that require high bandwidth—IPTV, surveillance video, iSCSI storage and remote backup, to name a few.
By Arthur Cole,
IT Business Edge
July 28, 2008
It looked for a while like the promise of blade technology was about to give way to the hard economic realities of rising energy costs, but a slew of new developments seems to have placed them back on track. Blades were the darlings of the data center earlier in the decade as the need for more processing power in limited physical space was in high demand. However, as the decade progressed and attention started to shift from overall processing power to “watts per square foot,” blades’ dense configurations and high heat factors started to raise some eyebrows. Now, new virtualization and networking techniques are putting some luster back into blades as enterprises are clamoring for high-performance and even portable data centers.
Telecom Web
July 28, 2008
Blade Network Technologies has released the first 10 Gb/s Intelligent L3 Ethernet Switch available for NEC’s Sigmablade systems, a switch NEC will take to market under its own brand name. The new 10 Gb/s L3 was accompanied by an also new 1 Gb/s Intelligent L2 Switch with SmartPanel for the Sigmablade, also to be sold by NEC. According to Blade, the gear provides enterprises using Sigmablade systems with a high-throughput, low-latency 10 Gb/s Ethernet connectivity for server virtualization workloads and converged “single fabric” networks. The 1 Gb/s offering, targeting the small—to medium-size business (SMB) market, provides SMBs with what Blade describes as “easy-to-use Gigabit Ethernet connectivity without sacrificing the benefits of embedded Ethernet switching.”
By Nathesh,
TMCnet
July 28, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies has announced the new 10 gigabit Intelligent L3 Switch and 1 gigabit Intelligent L2 Switch with SmartPanel for NEC SIGMABLADE blade server systems. The company claims that this will enable NEC blade servers to offer high-throughput, low-latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity needed for energy-efficient server virtualization workloads and converged “single fabric” networks. The 10Gb switch for NEC SIGMABLADE is for NEC and BLADE to bring the Rackonomics for “virtual, cooler and easier” rack-level provisioning of today’s massively scaled-out server and storage networks on industry-standard Ethernet.
By Maureen O’Gara,
Cloud Computing Journal
July 25, 2008
IBM is teaming with vendors such as Intel, QLogic, Avocent, Blade Network Technology, Devon IT, Force 10 Networks, and SMC Networks to create an iDataPlex ecosystem.
Blade Network Technologies, for example, built its new RackSwitch G8000 Ethernet switch, optimized for cost and efficient cooling, specifically for iDataPlex.
By Jeff Caruso,
NetworkWorld
July 17, 2008
Blade Network Technologies recently joined the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a non-profit organization whose stated goal is to cut computer power consumption in half by 2010.
By Dave Bailey,
IT Week
July 14, 2008
As the price of oil looks set to push through the $150 per barrel threshold, firms running large datacentres are facing increasingly onerous energy costs. As companies try to scale their datacentres out to increase processing capacity and network connectivity, the power consumption problem becomes more acute, while even tougher problems lay in wait for firms planning new datacentre infrastructure.
One firm that believes it has an answer to these woes is Blade Network Technologies (BNT). The vendor has developed switches that sit inside datacentre racks alongside servers and storage, thus obviating the need to run network connections through power-hungry, chassis-based core switches.
By HuangKun,
CCID Net
July 14, 2008
For a long time, how to simplify the management of data center has been a headache problem that all CIOs must face. In nowadays, as the network environment becomes more complicated, the problem turns to be more serious. Through long-time hard research, BNT, the industry leader in network virtualization and high-performance solutions for servers and storage, introduces the concept of “Rackonomics” to the industry, thus makes virtualization to rack-level the reality, giving the CIOs a pill for headache. [Article in Chinese]
By Zhao Xiandi,
Enet.com.cn
July 11, 2008
On July 4th, Mr. Vikram Mehta, CEO of BLADE Network Technologies Inc., visited China and accepted our interview. This is his first time to come to China after BNT sets office in Beijing and launches Chinese operation. In the interview, he talked about the development of BNT and introduced their new technology “Rackonomics”. He also thought highly of the company’s business strategy of entering Chinese market. BNT would cooperate closely with its Chinese partners to provide Chinese customers their best service. BNT attached so much importance to Chinese market and their products would be sure of the Chinese customers good choice. [Article in Chinese]
By Pedro Hernandez,
Enterprise IT Planet
July 10, 2008
The roster just keeps getting bigger. BLADE Network Technologies today announced that they have joined The Green Grid. Their pitch? “Rackonomics” for efficient data centers.
BLADE is a proponent of “Rackonomics,” which recommends that an energy-efficient data center should be made up of replicated racks that have standard configurations of servers, storage and network. Rackonomics-based data centers can realize lower ongoing total cost of ownership through improved energy efficiency.
At least that’s what the press release says. In CEO Vikram Mehta’s blog, he explains the concept.
By Song Jiayu,
CNW.com.cn
July 10, 2008
The universal problems existing in new generation data center are cooling, power consumption, virtualization, and complicated management and so on. In an exclusive interview of Mr. Vikram Mehta, CEO of BLADE Network Technologies Inc., a industry leader in network virtualization and high-performance solutions for servers and storage, Mr. Vikram revealed that BNT had already delivered two kinds of rack switches for customer to simplify their network and solve the existing problems, leading the new tide of network virtualization. [Article in Chinese]
SOA World Magazine
July 9, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies announced that it has joined the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing computer power consumption by 50 percent by 2010.
As a pioneer of energy-efficient data center networking, BLADE is recognized on AlwaysOn’s GoingGreen 100 list of the world’s foremost “green” companies. BLADE views organizations such as the Climate Savers Computing Initiative as key to the energy-efficient data center of the future.
By Art Cole,
IT Business Edge
July 7, 2008
Cole: Blade Network Technologies seems set on unifying networks under an Ethernet fabric. What advantages does Ethernet have over Fibre Channel or Infiniband? Tuchler: These are indeed the top three prospects for unifying storage, message passing and general networking on a single fabric. However, we know of no vendor proposing Fibre Channel for a unifying fabric. Instead, the leading Fibre Channel vendors are moving strongly towards Ethernet. InfiniBand is controlled by a trade association, not a standards body, and is dominated by a single silicon vendor and only a handful of product companies. This much smaller ecosystem makes it difficult to develop the broad, rich set of features that are common in the Ethernet world.
Enterprise Open Source Magazine
July 3, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies announced its 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet network virtualization switch for IBM BladeCenter.
BLADE’s new switch provides the ability to use six 1-Gigabit copper and three 10-Gigabit SFP+ fiber uplinks concurrently—for 50 percent more bandwidth than alternative blade switch offerings. BLADE’s new switch applies the principles of “Rackonomics” to “scale out” and virtualize data center networks, driving down the total cost of ownership associated with high-performance clusters and virtualized data centers that require an affordable migration path to 10 Gigabit Ethernet.
By Bert Hill,
Ottawa Citizen
July 3, 2008
Blade Network Technologies rolled out new gigabit and 10-gigabit Ethernet switches that meet industry compliance standards for use in Hewlett—Packard systems. The Nortel Networks spinoff, which has Ottawa development operations, said the switch requires less energy and 94 per cent fewer cables compared with competitors. It can generate up to 400 gigabits of Ethernet bandwidth in HP-based computer data centres.
CCW.com.cn
July 2, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies Inc. (BLADE), the industry leader in network virtualization and high-performance solutions for servers and storage, announced last month that it had launched its sales and support presence in China and had appointed Victor Chen as Country Manager of China Operations. With this launch and appointment, BLADE is prepared to address the data center networking requirements of one of the world’s most technologically advanced nations. Its’ concept of “Rackonomics” would also be introduced to China in follow. It is a revolutionary approach for scaling out data center networks to drive down total cost of ownership. [Article in Chinese]
By Shamila Janakiraman,
TMCnet
July 2, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies announced the introduction of 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet network virtualization switch for IBM BladeCenter. BLADE Network Technologies specializes in network virtualization and high-performance solutions for servers and storage.
This new switch from BLADE is capable of using six 1-Gigabit copper and three 10 Gigabit SFP+ fiber uplinks at the same time offering 50 percent more bandwidth than other blade switch offerings.
Enterprise Watch
July 2, 2008
U.S.-based BLADE Network Technologies (BNT) announced on June 30 the “RackSwitch” family of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) switches. The RackSwitch is BNT’s first product released under its own company brand. RackSwitch G8000 and G8100 are “the industry’s first rack-level network virtualization” switches, and include software called SmartConnect and VMReady which enable flexible network virtualization at the rack level. The RackSwitch line also has innovative front-to –rear or rear-to-front cooling which solves the problem of “hot loops” caused by switches with opposite air flow from servers. The RackSwitch also comes with the BLADEHarmony web management interface. [Article in Japanese]
IT Pro
July 2, 2008
U.S. BLADE Network Technologies’ Japan office announced on June 30 network switches that can manage a large number of virtual server machines in a rack. The Gigabit switch (RackSwitch G8000) features include a MAC address base for QoS control, and will ship in mid July 2008. The Low-latency 10 Gigabit RackSwitch G8100 will ship in mid-August of this year. G8100 switch features include 10GBASE-CX4 ports which can connect racks or FCoE SANs. Based on the 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard, the switch uses Infiniband cables and connectors, and has latency of 300 nanoseconds.
The G8100 will be releasing firmware designed to support the next generation Converged Enhanced Ethernet standard, which encapsulates Fibre Channel protocol within the Ethernet frame, allowing for connectivity to Fibre Channel SANs.
Both switches support VMWare ESX and other server virtualization. The switches are unique in that they can apply QoS control and other dynamic network management attributes such as dynamic VLANs to virtual servers based on the MAC address of the virtual NIC instead of to the physical ports.
The hardware features air flow which can be either front to rear (or the opposite) to match the air flow of the rack-mounted servers to enable efficient operation of datacenter hot aisles and cold aisles. Most switches vent air from the sides. [Article in Japanese]
AT Mark IT
July 2, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies announced on June 30 two Ethernet switches for the Japanese market. The switches expand network control from the blade server to the rack, and will help grow BLADE’s business under its own brand. The RackSwitch G8000 has 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports and 4 10G ports. The G8100 has 24 10G ports. The switches feature zero packet loss and low latency, and can be used to connect servers in high performance computing clusters. Available firmware upgrades support Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), Data Center Ethernet (DCE), and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). The G8000 will be available in Japan starting mid-July for 1.264 million yen (tax excluded); the G8100 in mid-August for 2.749 million yen (tax excluded). BNT’s CEO Vikram Mehta said that research and development efforts are underway in Japan to meet the needs of the Japanese market, and this includes application-oriented network management services to address the NETCONF standard. [Article in Japanese]
By David Marshall,
VMBlog.com
July 1, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies, Inc., the industry leader in network virtualization and high-performance solutions for servers and storage, announced the first 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet network virtualization switch for IBM BladeCenter. BLADE’s new switch provides the ability to use six 1-Gigabit copper and three 10-Gigabit SFP+ fiber uplinks concurrently—for 50 percent more bandwidth than alternative blade switch offerings. BLADE’s new switch applies the principles of “Rackonomics” to “scale out” and virtualize data center networks, driving down the total cost of ownership associated with high-performance clusters and virtualized data centers that require an affordable migration path to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The BLADE switch is priced up to 50 percent less than alternative blade switches.
By Paul Roberts,
Blocks and Files
June 30, 2008
Blade Network Technologies is supplying hybrid 1/10Gbit/s Ethernet switches for IBM’s BladeCenter and also joining The Green Grid and Climate Savers Computing Initiative, capitalizing on the low power-draw of its switches..Blade is marketing its three Ps—price/performance/power—under the Rackonomics rubric with market leader Cisco firmly in its sights. It says that Switches account for about 10% of total data center power usage…It reckons that its 6 watts per 10GE port vs. Cisco’s 75 watts per 10GE chassis switch port becomes a big deal when scaling out massive, mega data centers.
By Ariane Rüdiger,
Information Week
June 26, 2008
Blade Network Technologies would like a new chapter in the design of data centers with components for network virtualization in the blade chassis along with “Rackonomics”. The philosophy of BNT’s system design is that: “The replicated Rack is the new basic unit of the computing center.” This is why the company has been discussing “Rackonomics.” BNT has integrated its new switches 8000 (from 4000 Euro) and 8100 (low latency, from 11000 Euros) particularly closely with VMware and makes all its 24 ports 10G capable. The devices are integrated with Smart Connect software which detects network settings with Vmotion to get the server to its new location automatically with the same speed, same access rights over the network and the same connections. With Blade Harmony BNT also provides software for the management of all network elements that are in the major management platforms from HP, IBM and CA. Even with the hype favorite attribute “green” BNT can shine, because the switches consume, according to company data, only half the electricity of Cisco switches. The company received recently an environmental award in the US, because a Wall Street firm customer had implemented its switches and thus saves 27 million kWh (kilowatt hours) each year. [Article in German]
Data Center Journal
June 25, 2008
At the Blade.org gathering, technologists from Morgan Stanley and The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University and GameVee.com joined with leading suppliers of blade-based data center gear such as APC, BLADE Network Technologies, Brocade, Devon IT, Emulex, IBM, Intel, NetApp, NetXen, QLogic, VirtenSys and VMware. These visionaries detailed the emerging mega trends of converged networks, advanced energy efficiency and hyper consolidation, which will unify data center I/O on a single wire, reduce energy waste and enable unprecedented data center densities. Tim Chao, BLADE’s VP of Software Engineering and Advanced Technology discussed these mega trends in his symposium presentation.
Blocks and Files
June 25, 2008
[…] Blade Network Technologies (BNT) says you can implement a loss-less, low latency FCOE network now. Its RackSwitch products run at 10Gbit/s Ethernet speed and don’t lose packets. BNT Ethernet is lossless. It’s been verified by independent testing carried out by the Tolly Group; the group’s report can be downloaded below.
By Paul Weinberg,
eChannelLine
June 4, 2008
Blade Network Technologies has reached outside its territory of blade switches with new RackSwitch Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet switches to facilitate rack-level network virtualization at a time when the existing model of the data center appears to be “broken,” industry analyst Joe Clabby said.
By Heather Clancy,
ZDNet
May 28, 2008
I love it when companies pitch me because they’ve been reading this blog and have something that they think one-ups something I’ve already written about. Thus was the case with Blade Network Technologies, an upstart in the blade networking space working closely with blade giants IBM, NEC and Hewlett-Packard. (Others to come.) Simply put, Blade Networks has developed a truly innovative new product in the network virtualization category, one that promises to reduce power consumption through its unique cooling design.
By Shirai-san,
Nikkei Computer
May 21, 2008
U.S.-based BLADE Network Technologies announced on May 19 the opening of its Japan sales office. The company is the largest manufacturer of blade switches for blade servers. They sell switches to U.S.-based IBM, U.S.-based HP, and NEC. BLADE’s Japan country manager, Yasunobu Ohta was interviewed. According to the editor, Shirai-san, “Rackonomics is an approach that enables us to build full-distributed and expandable systems like Google with standardized technologies.” [Article in Japanese]
By Dan Kusnetzky,
ZDNet
May 5, 2008
I don’t often get the opportunity to speak with companies offering a different take on network virtualization, a blade networking approach. A week ago, I had a chance to speak with Dan Tuchler, VP of Strategy and Product Management, for BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE) about network virtualization for blade servers. Until my conversation with Dan, I had never come across the term “rackonomics” before.
By Paul Roberts,
The Register
April 24, 2008
Blade Network Technologies has announced RackSwitch, the first loss-less Ethernet switch, needed for FCoE storage networking.
RackSwitch is a top-of-rack product that provides Ethernet switching for an entire rack of blade servers and storage. The gigabit and 10 Gbit Ethernet ports in it are aggregated into a single virtual switch, facilitating the movement of virtual machines from one blade server to another. Blade says its product draws substantially less electricity and facilitates more efficient rack cooling than competing switch products.
By James Rogers,
Byte and Switch
April 24, 2008
Startup Blade Network Technologies claims to have developed a fresh take on server virtualization with the launch of its RackSwitch hardware, and the company is already eyeing storage opportunities.
The RackSwitch devices are 1U 1—and 10-Gbit/s Ethernet switches that virtualize the I/O for an entire rack of multivendor servers, creating “one large virtual switch.” The RackSwitch provides and manages network connectivity for server blades from multiple vendors, while removing the power and cooling requirements formerly associated with disparate rackmounted servers and switch blades.
By Jim Duffy,
The New York Times
April 23, 2008
RackSwitch switches are a key component of the Blade’s strategy to reduce the total cost of ownership of data-center infrastructures by enabling scale-out from the server rack a strategy the vendor calls “Rackonomics.” Rackonomics is positioned as a method of virtualization and scaling that’s an alternative to those offered by such large data-center switch vendors as Cisco, which are anchored by large core switches for example, Cisco’s new Nexus 7000.
NetworkWorld
April 23, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies has unveiled a method for virtualizing data center resources that’s an alternative to Cisco’s network-centric approach.
The data center switch company, which was spun off from Nortel two years ago, this week unveiled a line of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches for “rack-level” network virtualization. BLADE’s 1U RackSwitch line is designed to perform server virtualization within the network at the rack level. It is also intended to save energy through “rack-friendly” cooling, simplify management and provide fabric convergence through support for FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE).
By James Niccolai,
Washington Post.com
April 23, 2008
IBM has designed a new type of rack-mount server specifically for companies running heavily trafficked “Web 2.0” sites such as Facebook and MySpace, the company announced Wednesday.
By Jim Duffy,
NetworkWorld
April 23, 2008
Blade Network Technologies, the data-center server-switch company spun off from Nortel two years ago, this week unveiled a line of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches for rack-level network virtualization.
The 1U RackSwitch line is designed to perform server virtualization within the network. It also is intended to save energy through “rack-friendly” cooling, simplify management and provide fabric convergence through support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).
SYS-CON Media
April 23, 2008
BLADE’s new 1U RackSwitch product family extends virtualization by mirroring the benefits of server virtualization within the network at the rack level, saves energy through rack-friendly cooling and alleviates management pain by removing complexity through simplified management and fabric convergence.
Reuters
April 23, 2008
Similar to its strategy to foster an ecosystem of third party technologies that work with IBM BladeCenter, IBM will team with vendors including Avocent, Blade Network Technology, Devon IT, Force 10 Networks, Intel, QLogic and SMC Networks to drive a product ecosystem around iDataPlex. Blade Network Technologies, for example, built its new RackSwitch G8000 Ethernet switch—optimized for cost and efficient cooling—specifically for iDataPlex.
Reuters
April 23, 2008
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, in combination with Reuters Market Data System (RMDS 6.0), IBM BladeCenter H and 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology from Blade Network Technologies and Chelsio Communications, delivers record-breaking performance results that meet key critical demands of the financial services industry. Together, the combination provides both the lowest mean latency and lowest standard deviation of latency ever reported with RMDS.
By James Niccolai,
PC World
April 23, 2008
Called the iDataPlex, the server is designed to compete with the unbranded “white-box” PCs that online companies link together by the thousand to run busy Web sites. IBM said its new server, which runs Linux and is based on Intel’s quad-core Xeon processors, consumes 40 percent less power and packs more computing punch than a typical rack-mount system. The energy savings come largely from a new design that requires less power for cooling, IBM said.
By Tim Moran,
EE Times
April 16, 2008
At a gala celebration in Silicon Valley Tuesday (April 15), TechInsights’ EE Times feted the recipients of its 4th Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) awards. Industry luminaries and Embedded Systems Conference attendees converged on the Fairmont Hotel, here, for an evening of accolades and entertainment (provided by the “The Late Late Show’s” Craig Ferguson), at which Analog Devices Inc.’s co-founder Ray Stata was given the prestigious “Lifetime Achievement Award.”
[…] Other ACE winner last night included: […] Tim Shaughnessy of Blade Network Technologies, for “Startup of the Year”.
Data Storage Connection
April 16, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BNT) announced recently that it is teaming with Emulex Corp. and NetApp at Storage Networking World to showcase the industry’s first public demonstration of a blade server-based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) unified fabric. The demonstration shows that the “loss-less” I/O required to carry Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) storage traffic within blade architectures is now possible using products based on the emerging standards for Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), an enhanced version of Ethernet for data centers.
By Kevin Komiega and Dave Simpson,
Infostor
April 10, 2008
Blade Network Technologies teamed with Emulex and NetApp at SNW to demonstrate a blade server-based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) “unified fabric.” The demo was based on “loss-less” Ethernet, the emerging Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) standard, and Blade Network’s 10GbE switches.
Byte and Switch
April 9, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BNT) announced today that it is teaming with Emulex Corp. and NetApp at Storage Networking World to showcase the industry’s first public demonstration of a blade server-based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) unified fabric. The demonstration shows that the “loss-less” I/O required to carry Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) storage traffic within blade architectures is now possible using products based on the emerging standards for Converged Enhanced Ethernet™ (CEE), an enhanced version of Ethernet for data centers.
By Howard Solomon,
ARN Magazine
April 2, 2008
Every year some 12,000 new students and their new technology—laptops with faster wireless accessing high-bandwidth social networking applications, for example—demand online satisfaction. Which is why six months ago, McAusland started experimenting with 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Not a wholesale rip and replace, but in select spots-between some servers in the gateway, in places where there are large file transfers.
Ottawa Citizen
March 27, 2008
Blade Network Research (BNR) is the principle hardware design & research center for BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE). Together, we are a market-leading supplier of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet I/O infrastructure solutions that reside in blade servers and “scale-out” server and storage racks. The company’s customers include half of the Fortune 500. BLADE boasts sales of over 160,000 switches representing more than 3.7 million ports. Products include switches for HP BladeSystem, IBM BladeCenter and NEC SIGMABLADE. In 2006, BNR was established as a fully independent company when it purchased certain assets of Nortel’s Blade Server Switch Business.
Ajax World Magazine
March 18, 2008
BLADE Network Technologies announced the availability of its new SmartConnect software. By stacking network switches across multiple racks of blade server systems, SmartConnect virtualizes blade server I/O thus simplifying administrative tasks (deployment, control, policy administration, etc.). The result is dramatic reduction in the TCO associated with blade server systems.
Low-Latency.com
March 18, 2008
STAC has released more test results on 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE), using technology from two vendors: Blade Network Technologies (BNT) and Chelsio Communications. BNT offers a 10GigE switch module for the IBM BladeCenter, and Chelsio provides 10 GigE NICs. STAC tested the technology under market data workloads because the vendors believed that the combination of the high-speed BNT switch with Chelsio’s TCP Offload Engine (TOE) would improve both latency and throughput in market data environments. The tests revealed the lowest mean latency and the lowest standard deviation of latency ever reported with RMDS.
Blade Watch
March 6, 2008
Very cool news for BLADE Network Technologies. Interestingly it highlights the demand of blade servers and 10 GigaBit Ethernet which could be ideal in a hpc/grid or virtualization project. The innovation needs to continue in terms of energy efficiency scalability and performance; for those new rich media applications and hpc/grid applications as they come online. Anything BLADE Network Technologies and the other vendors can do to aid this, has to be a good thing for the industry and the end user..Do check it out.
By Mary Jander,
Byte and Switch
February 13, 2008
In news highlighting the growing momentum behind Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), participants in the standards-setting effort say they hit a milestone during a meeting last week.
Primeur Monthly
February 12, 2008
NetApp has developed the NetApp Kilo Client, a massive testing environment capable of exceeding the most scalable and extreme performance conditions that most enterprises deploy with NetApp solutions in their data centres. The NetApp Kilo Client provides an environment in which utility computing approaches can be tested in real-world environments and on a scale unavailable from other storage vendors today.
By Clay Ryder,
IT Director
February 7, 2008
IBM has recently announced BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager (OFM), which provides I/O virtualization through an open architecture that supports a range of Ethernet and Fibre Channel technologies from vendors including Blade Network Technologies, Brocade, Cisco, Emulex, NetXen, and QLogic.
Earth Times
January 29, 2008
Chelsio Communications, Inc., the leading provider of 10-Gigabit Ethernet unified wire solutions, today announced the general availability of its T3-based Unified Wire Accelerators, which enable server networking, storage networking and clustering on a single platform, for HP BladeSystem c-Class. Chelsio’s S320EM-BS 10GbE Unified Wire expansion card solution has been qualified by HP for use by BladeSystem customers.
TMCnet
January 22, 2008
Based on its recent analysis of the blade network switches market, Frost & Sullivan presents Blade Network Technologies Inc. (BNT) with the 2008 North American Product Innovation of the Year Award.
The Award specifically recognizes BNT’s innovative development of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) blade switches that will help data centers improve their efficiency and performance. The company developed this 10GE blade switch technology for virtualization and server consolidation, bandwidth-intensive and high performance applications.
By Arthur Cole,
IT Business Edge
January 22, 2008
Blade Network Technologies’ 10 GbE blade switches, for example, were recently cited by Frost & Sullivan for their ability to enhance server performance following virtualization.
By Pradeep Chakraborty,
CIOL
December 17, 2007
The study demonstrated that blade servers equipped with embedded 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) networking can support large-scale business applications at near wire-speeds in consolidated blade server architectures using NetApp Ethernet and IP networked storage.
By Vikram Mehta,
Greener Computing
December 5, 2007
Consider that the average 1U rack switch with 24 Ethernet ports uses a minimum of 250 watts of power (most use more). In continuous use—a requirement for most 24x7 Web businesses—each switch consumes 2190 kWh annually. If the source of this electricity is a coal-fired plant (as is the case in many emerging economies around the world), producing 2190 kWh of energy requires 1780 pounds of coal*. 1780 pounds of coal releases over two tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere along with other pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. This doesn’t even include the impurities released during mining and transportation. Multiply two tons of pollutants per year by tens of millions of rack switches currently in production worldwide, and it’s easy to see that we have a major environmental catastrophe on our hands.
Reuters
November 29, 2007
TheInfoPro (TIP), www.theinfopro.net, an independent research network and leading supplier of market intelligence for the Information Technology (IT)industry, today announced that coping with data center environmental issues is the top pain point of Fortune 1000 (F1000) and Midsize Enterprise (MSE) Server professionals. Server pros report that consolidation is being driven by space, heat, power, and cooling constraints, resulting from continuing large-scale growth in new applications and demand for new servers.
Premises Networks
November 28, 2007
BLADE Network Technologies Inc. (BLADE), the leading provider of network switching infrastructure to the blade server market, today announced the availability of two new XFP transceivers for BLADE’s embedded 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) switch modules for blade servers from BLADE partners HP and IBM.
By Vikram Mehta,
Data Center Journal
November 21, 2007
According to a report recently released by research firm TheInfoPro, blade servers are finally ready for mass adoption as Fortune 1000 and mid-sized enterprises turn to blades to empower virtualization, consolidation and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.
CMP Media
November 20, 2007
Information Week and leading 10Gig providers have joined forces to create a sponsored report to help IT, data center and business decision makers better understand this developing market.
By Walaika Haskins,
Tech News World
November 20, 2007
IBM announced a new addition to its BladeCenter portfolio Monday designed to make its blade servers more open and easy to use. IBM’s BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager provides I/O (input/output) virtualization that can help reduce the cost and complexity to enterprise users through its open architecture, the company said.
“Customers who want to cut costs and complexity through I/O virtualization, consolidation and aggregation while realizing outstanding performance and investment benefits from converged server fabrics are fueling the demand for open tools such as IBM’s new Open Fabric Manager,” said Vikram Mehta, president and CEO of Blade Network Technologies.
IBM
November 19, 2007
“Customers who want to cut costs and complexity through I/O virtualization, consolidation and aggregation while realizing outstanding performance and investment benefits from converged server fabrics are fueling the demand for open tools such as IBM’s new Open Fabric Manager,” said Vikram Mehta, President and CEO of Blade Network Technologies. “We are pleased that our entire portfolio of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet embedded blade switches works out of the box with IBM’s new Open Fabric Manager and enables businesses of every size and type to confidently adopt Ethernet technologies.”
TMCnet
November 17, 2007
“Data centers are expanding faster than ever before due to the large volume of content and applications they are now required to support,” said Vikram Mehta, President and CEO of BLADE Network Technologies. “Market leading products like Broadcom’s BCM56820 will help enable our strategy to deliver server I/O fabric convergence and network virtualization to the data center. We have partnered with Broadcom to launch a dozen data center switches with another three to launch within six months, which will further our leadership position in the market.”
NetworkWorld
November 14, 2007
Earlier this year several LAN gear vendors launched 10G Ethernet products that broke new ground in product categories and could signal more advances to come from the LAN industry. […] Blade Network Technologies claimed it has the first 10G Ethernet switch module for a blade server chassis.
By Arthur Cole,
IT Business Edge
October 30, 2007
For those looking to leverage their IP networks in the process, it looks like nothing less than 10 Gb Ethernet will get the job done. A new study by Blade.org, backed by Chelsio Communications, NetApp and Blade Technologies, concludes that support for large-scale business applications at current wire speeds will require 10 GbE. A blade architecture with embedded 10 GbE holds enough headroom to support the multiple protocols, workloads and integrated data management capabilities to provide network servers at the level that users have grown accustomed to, the group reports. It also helps to tie the blades to a storage system that supports advanced data management functions, such as boot from SAN and non-disruptive data protection.
By Tiffany Maleshefski,
eWeek
October 12, 2007
Blade Network Technologies suggests several ways data centers can reduce their demands on the power grid, including replacing multiple data center fabrics used for server-to-server, server-to-storage and server-to-client communication with Ethernet/IP everywhere. The company also has developed a low-power blade server embedded with 10 Gigabit Ethernet that it says encourages a flattened data center network and consolidated infrastructure, resulting in IT cost savings.
By Mary Jander and James Rogers,
Byte and Switch
October 10, 2007
This switch specialist appears to have gained some real momentum, recently adding NEC to its existing partners HP and IBM. More deals are also in the pipeline, according to the startup’s CEO, Vikram Mehta. “Watch this space—we’re working it fast and furious,” he says.
Blade now OEMs 12 products, up from three earlier this year.
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