The Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36 is a 36-port Quad Data Rate (QDR) InfiniBand leaf switch enabling users to bind Sun Blade and Sun Fire servers and storage systems into a 36-node cluster. This multi-purpose switch can act as a self-contained fabric solution for smaller InfiniBand clusters or as a building block for hierarchical fabric topologies supporting larger clusters of Sun Blade or Sun Fire servers and storage systems.

Features of interest in the Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36:

• Low-latency, 40 Gb/sec fabric for clustered databases, high-performance computing (HPC), high-performance storage, and converged datacenter fabrics. Sun reports the non-blocking switch delivers throughput at 2.3 Tbps of bidirectional bandwidth at low latency (100 nanoseconds).

• Suitable for use in environments demanding high availability in the network infrastructure

• Full nonblocking 36-port QDR InfiniBand (IB) switch in a 1U form factor. QDR is important because it is effectively a quadrupling of the bandwidth over the same number of Infiniband lanes, scaling over 4x the lanes providing another doubling of 4x the connection bandwidth. For example, in Single Data Rate each data lane provides 2.5 Gbps theoretical throughput, but due to data encoding techniques, 8B/10B, the actual data rate is 2.0 Gbps per lane or 8 Gbps for a 4x connection. For Dual Data Rate the total bandwidth is 16 Gbps, making the bandwidth for QDR 32 Gbps.

• Embedded InfiniBand management module. The switch can be managed by either the on-board InfiniBand Fabric Management Module or by an external Subnet Manager (SM) connected to the InfiniBand fabric. When deployed in pairs, the InfiniBand fabric manager supports active/hot-standby dual manager configuration, enabling "hitless" InfiniBand management failover. The InfiniBand fabric provides a highly available and resilient network for business critical applications.
• Redundant power and cooling. Two fully redundant power supplies and redundant cooling for high availability, makes the Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36 ideal for use in demanding data center environments.

• 36 industry standard QSFP Connectors. Utilizes the same connector as the Sun InfiniBand Dual Port 4x QDR PCIe LP HCA and Sun InfiniBand Dual port 4x QDR PCIe ExpressModule HCA, simplifying server to switch connectivity in small to mid-sized InfiniBand clusters.

The Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36 is supported with any Sun Blade or Sun Fire server which supports Sun's family of QDR InfiniBand Host Channel Adapters (HCAs), and supports any connected Sun server or storage device, which hosts an operating system providing InfinBand support.

The switch, which leverages many advanced features of the InfiniBand architecture, provides features enabling high availability and fault-tolerance. Availability and fault-tolerance are maximized when the switch is deployed in pairs. These features include:

• Redundant power supplies and fans
• Embedded InfiniBand management module enabled for redundant fabric management
• Logical network isolation enabling creation of isolated virtual clusters which are supported by the same switch
• Support for traffic isolation and quality of service management
• "Hitless" InfiniBand management failover support for active/hot-standby dual manager configuration

Sun identifies enterprise deployments of Oracle RAC and Solaris Cluster as ideal for this switch.

More Information

Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 36 [...read more...]

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