IBM releases 4GB SAN solution

Sep 30, 2005: IBM has announced the availability of its new 4 gigabyte per second storage area network solution for blade servers.

The IBM BladeCenter 4Gb, developed in conjunction with BladeCenter Alliance partners McDATA and QLogic, is a first for the industry and according to IBM, when configured with IBM's TotalStorage DS4800, provides businesses of any size a high performance SAN solution that is simple to deploy, easily scaleable, and cheaper.

It features the QLogic Fibre Channel host bus adaptor, the QLogic 4Gb switch module and McDATA 4Gb switch module. Each module is available in 10 and 20 port models, with upgrades attained through software keys.

"These offerings with McDATA and QLogic allow clients to deploy blades in new areas like data warehousing and database serving where high data bandwidth is a requirement." Said Dough Balog, vice president and business line executive for IBM Blade Centre.

Installation, configuration and management of SAN infrastructure is made easier through a single GUI. Switch installation and fabric scaling is also simplified through configuration zoning and distance wizards.

Both QLogic, and McDATA 4Gb switches for IBM BladeCenter are available now for $8,999USD and $10,999USD respectively.

Related Article:

IBM to resell Veritas software to ease customer pain