IBM BladeCenter® Open Fabric includes industry-leading Fibre Channel switch modules that offer an easy way to manage, high performance Fibre Channel networking capabilities for BladeCenter® systems—including end-to-end 8Gb technology supported on all chassis. Compatible with IBM Fabric Manager for BladeCenter, these switch modules from Cisco, Brocade and Emulex supporting 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb and 8Gb rates with as many as 20 ports, provide flexible Fibre Channel networking capabilities designed to help your business run better.
| Fibre Channel switch modules |
Product features |
Bandwidth |
Compatibility |
Management |
Brocade® 8Gb 10-port, 20-port and Enterprise 20-port SAN Switch Modules for IBM BladeCenter® 
|
A comprehensive 8Gb platform that supports entry-level to enterprise SAN I/O requirements. New Enterprise 20-Port model is a fully enabled switch with a complete set of licensed features that maximizes performance, ensures availability and simplifies management for the most demanding applications and virtualization environments. |
6 external 8Gb ports, supports fault-tolerant and load balanced ISL Trunks with bandwidth of up to 48 Gbps. |
Supported on BladeCenter® E, H and HT chassis and Multi-switch interconnect modules and compatible with IBM Fabric Manager for BladeCenter.
Native interoperability with IBM System Storage and TotalStorage® b-type SAN switches and industry-standard NPIV functionality. |
IBM System Storage™ Data Center Fabric Manager centralizes and simplifies management of System Storage b-type fabrics. |
Cisco 4Gb 10-port and 20-port Fibre Channel Switch Modules for IBM BladeCenter 
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Affordable 10-port and 20-port offerings enables high-performance end-to-end 1, 2 and 4 Gigbits per second SAN solutions for the data center with a 10-port upgrade available for on demand scaling to a 20-port switch. |
10 external 4Gb port or 20 external 4Gb port. |
10 port switch module is supported on all BladeCenter chassis; 20 port switch module is supported on BladeCenter E, H and HT chassis; both are compatible with IBM Fabric Manager for BladeCenter. |
Includes Tivoli SAN manager enhancements to better manage MDS9000 with integrated IBM SAN Volume Controller. |
QLogic® 4/8 Gb Intelligent Pass-thru Module for IBM BladeCenter 
|
QLogic 4/8 Gb Intelligent Pass-thru Module provides a fully interoperable solution for seamless integration of the Fibre Channel initiators to an existing fabric. |
6 external 8 Gbps ports. |
Supported on all BladeCenter chassis and Multi-switch interconnect modules and compatible with IBM Fabric Manager for BladeCenter. |
Provides open, standards-based NPIV interface simplifying SAN interoperability and scalability. |
QLogic® 20-Port 4/8 Gb SAN Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter 
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QLogic 20-port 4/8 Gb SAN Switch Module is a high-speed addition to the BladeCenter switch portfolio which helps enable scalability in SAN size while maintaining ease of management. |
6 external 8 Gbps ports. |
Supported on all BladeCenter chassis and Multi-switch interconnect modules and compatible with IBM Fabric Manager for BladeCenter. |
QLogic's SANsurfer™ Management Suite eases installation, configuration and management of your SAN infrastructure. |
QLogic® Intelligent 8Gb Pass-Thru Fibre Channel Module for IBM BladeCenter® 
|
Get double throughput from this new 8Gb solution, an alternative to traditional optical pass-thru module. |
6 external 8Gb ports. |
Supported on all BladeCenter® chassis and Multi-switch interconnect modules and compatible with IBM Fabric Manager for BladeCenter. |
Provides open, standards-based NPIV interface simplifying SAN interoperability and scalability. |
QLogic® 20-port 8Gb SAN Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter® 
|
Get double throughput from this new 20-port offerings, enabling high-performance 2, 4, and 8 Gigabits per second SAN solutions and provides interoperability in open mode leveraging standards-compliant (FC-SW2 & FC-SW3) SANs. |
20 external 8Gbps ports. |
Supported on BladeCenter S, E, H and HT chassis and Multi-switch interconnect modules and compatible with IBM Fabric Manager for BladeCenter. |
QLogic's SANsurfer™ Management Suite eases installation, configuration and management of your SAN infrastructure. |
| Fibre Channel adapters and mezzanines |
Product features |
| QLogic® 8Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CIOv) for IBM BladeCenter®
|
Enables end-to-end 8Gb solution through bays 3 & 4 on all BladeCenter® chassis.
Doubles the SAN speed and maintains backward compatibility with existing 4Gb SAN. |
| Emulex 8Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CIOv) for IBM BladeCenter®
|
Enables end-to-end 8Gb solution through bays 3 & 4 on all BladeCenter® Chassis.
Doubles the SAN speed and maintains backward compatibility with existing 4Gb SAN. |
| QLogic® 4Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CIOv) for IBM BladeCenter®
|
Enables end-to-end 8Gb solution through bays 3 & 4 on all BladeCenter® chassis. These adapters enable you to quickly and simply connect the blade server to a high-speed Fibre Channel SAN. By using an end-to-end fibre channel solution, clients can realize benefits of increased throughput and performance in virtually all workloads, for example Microsoft Exchange, Oracle 10g RAC etc. In addition, the flexible design of these adapters allow the addition to another IO Fabric such as Ethernet, or additional Fibre Channel ports on the same blade server. |
| QLogic® 4Gb SFF Fibre Channel Expansion Card for IBM BladeCenter®
|
Small form factor provides complete end-to-end 4 Gb FC blade server to SAN solution. |
QLogic® 4Gb CFFv Fibre Channel Expansion Card
for IBM BladeCenter®
|
Based on QLogic® 2422M ASIC, this card provides a PCI-X 1.0 interface for 4Gb 2-Port Fibre Channel connection from every Blade to Fibre Channel switch module. |
| QLogic Ethernet and 8 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter
|
The QLogic Ethernet and 8 Gb Fibre Channel Expansion Card (CFFh) for IBM BladeCenter is installed in the blade server and allows connectivity to high-speed switch bays.
This expansion card provides flexibility for connecting the blade server to the horizontally oriented BladeCenter H modules in bays 7 and 8 or bays 9 and 10 when using the Multi-Switch Interconnect Module (MSIM). |
