IBM DCN Webcast x-series TurboIron
--------------------------- Start --------------------------------Hello everyone and welcome to our IBM webcast session today.
My name is Alexander Czutka. I´m responsible for the German area of IBM.
--------------------------- Slide 3 --------------------------------Today our topic is the switches of the x-series. I will give you an overview of the
switch and its features. After that I will show you where you can position the x-series
in the data-center at the customer side. At the end I will give you a short overview
over the competitor of the x-series. And as always you can ask questions at the end
of my presentation, if you want ?
--------------------------- Slide 4 --------------------------------Product Overview
--------------------------- Slide 5 --------------------------------The x-series was announced at August the 25th by IBM. The name is derived from
the Brocade TurboIron 24X.
The TurboIron is designed for the demands in the Data-Center today. In the network
you need higher levels of performance, reliability, security and Quality of Services –
as well as low Total Cost of Ownershipis getting more important.
The x-series was specifically designed for this demands. The TurboIron 24X is a
compact, high-performance, high-availability, and high-density 10 Gigabit Ethernet
switch that meets mission-critical data center and High-Performance Computing
requirements.
It provides a cost-effective solution for server or compute-node connectivity.
--------------------------- Slide 6 --------------------------------It has an ultra-low-latency, cut-through, non-blocking architecture. The TurboIron 24X
can support 1GBE servers until they are upgraded to 10 GBE-capable Network
Interface Cards. That gives the customer the option for a simplifying migration from 1
GB Ethernet to 10 GB Ethernet. In addition the TurboIron can provide 10 GBEthernet
aggregation behind 1GBEthernet access-switches.
With a cut through architecture, the switch only has to look at the first 64 bytes of the
packet header to determine where the packet needs to be sent. The packet can then
be forwarded to the destination before the switch receives the entire packet. This
architecture results in very low latency which is demanded by high-performance
1
computing environments. With a store-and-forward architecture, the switch receives
the entire packet, analyzes it, and then determines where it should go. Store-andforward architectures require larger buffers to receive data and usually have higher
latency
--------------------------- Slide 7 --------------------------------The TurboIron is 1 Rack-Unit high density switch. It support 24x 1GBEthernet or 10
GB Ethernet SFP+. When he migrates from 1 GB to 10 GB. The customer needs
only to replace the SFP optics with SFP+ optics or direct attached SFP+ Copper
(Also known as Twinax). This approach protects Ethernet-based investments and
streamlines migration to 10 GBEthernet.
The switch has a 488 Gbps line speed full-duplex forwarding capacity with 1.5 microsecond latency and a 2 MB buffer. This design makes the switch perfect for data
centers applications where you need high throughput capacity with low-latency to
support applications of today.
Additionally the switch has 4 ports of 10/100/1000 Mbps copper supporting 100
Base-TX and 1000 Base-T RJ-45 connectors with auto-sensing, auto-negotiation and
auto-MDI/MDIX detection.
To configure and manage the switch has a serial management DB9 connector and a
10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet RJ45 management port for Out-of-Band Management.
--------------------------- Slide 8 --------------------------------The TurboIron has hot-swappable power supplies and fan assembly which allow the
customer to replace components without service disruption.
The switch comes with 1x AC power-supply. The customer can add another power
supply for 1+1 redundancy. The AC power supplies are hot-swappable and provide
load-sharing with auto-sensing and auto-switching capabilities which are critical for
power redundancy and deployment flexibility.
--------------------------- Slide 9 --------------------------------The switch can be installed with 2 different rack mount options.
It comes with a kit of short mounting brackets. Additionally can the switch installed
with long mounting brackets to prevent the device from sagging when installed in
non-compliant equipment rack.
--------------------------- Slide 10 ---------------------------------
2
The TurboIron has a fan tray unit with 3 speed adjustable fans. This variable speed
of the fans uses power needed to run the fans and cooling more efficiently. The
cooling fans cool the CPU, main memory, voltage regulators, fabric and all ports.
Even in the event of 1 or 2 fan fails the system is cooled.
The fan tray unit is also hot-swappable.
--------------------------- Slide 11 --------------------------------The airflow in the TurboIron 24X is pulled from front to back and cannot be reversed
--------------------------- Slide 12 --------------------------------This slide shows the architecture of the TurboIron. It has 512 MB DRAM available to
save mac-tables and other data during the run mode. The 32 MB of flash is to store
the deifferent images and configuration.
--------------------------- Slide 13 --------------------------------Now I will give you an overview of the available features of the TurboIron.
--------------------------- Slide 14 --------------------------------The TurboIron Ironware Operating system is based on the reliable and proven
Brocade FastIron Family. The TurboIron and s-series of IBM uses the same
Operating system. The operating system was designed for security, reliability,
management and serviceability. The OS of Brocade FastIron is field-proven for years.
At the moment TurboIron has a lot of Layer 2 features in build which are needed in
the data-center environment. A further Layer 3 upgrade option is planned.
--------------------------- Slide 15 --------------------------------The TurboIron can maintain up to 32.000 Mac addresses. It has a wide range of ACL
features to protect the network.
The TurboIron offers a superior QoS features designed to ensure high-reliabilty
services throughout the data center. It can identify, mark, classify, reclassify and
manange traffic based on specific criteria. This allows the customer to classify
bandwith-critical applications traffic and enforcing bandwidth policies.
After the traffic is classified, customer has complete control over the method the
system uses to service the request:
They can use Weighted Round Robin, Strict Priority or a mix of both. For granular
control to regulate bandwitdth utilization, the TurboIron can also perform ingress rate
limiting and egress rate shaping.
It supports optical monitoring to check the quality of the fibre connection as well.
3
--------------------------- Slide 16 --------------------------------To provide loop-free networks the TurboIron supports industry-standard Ethernet
protocols including varities of Spanning Tree and link-aggregation as well.
To support video, financial and other multicast applications the TurboIron supports
IGMP and PIM Snooping for optimized Multicast forwarding.
--------------------------- Slide 17 --------------------------------Security is a critical requirement in today´s data centers, therefore the TurboIron
provides robust security through a wide range of advanced features.
The customer can permit or deny traffic based on different characteristics as
Soure/Destination Mac address or Source/Destinatio IP Address TCP/UDP Port to
protecting and restricting network access.
The TurboIron implements ACL lookups at the hardware level, so security does not
affect switching performance.
--------------------------- Slide 18 --------------------------------It comes with a wide range of management features. The TurboIron uses sFlow to
provide real real-time network visibility. SFlows allows the customer to monitor its
network for security and accounting reasons.
It supports the IEEE 802.1AB LLDP standard, enabling organizations to build open,
converged and advanced multivendor networks.
The TurboIron provides accurate SNMP/RMON statistics for proactive network
management, design, and capacity planning.
--------------------------- Slide 19 --------------------------------Positioning
--------------------------- Slide 20 --------------------------------The benefits of placing switches at the Top of the rack are:
•
The ToR data center design defines an architecture in which servers connect
to access switches that are located within the same or adjacent racks.
•
These switches then connect to aggregation switches using horizontal fiberoptic cabling.
•
ToR switching allows oversubscription to be handled at the rack level, with a
small number of fiber cables providing uniform connectivity to each rack.
•
The advantage of this design is that horizontal fiber can support different I/O
connectivity options, including 1GbE, 10GbE and Fiber Channel (FC)
4
•
Fiber from each rack also helps in protecting investments as emerging
standards
--------------------------- Slide 21 --------------------------------In data centers where most servers are 1G-capable, the TurboIron 24X provides a
compact and cost-effective 10GB Ethernet aggregation switch. It connects to the
data-center core through wire-speed 10 GBE while the IBM r-series provides an
aggregation solution.
--------------------------- Slide 22 --------------------------------HPCC means high performance cluster computing.
The x-serie offers 1500 nanoseconds of very low latency cut-thru architecture that
makes it ideal fit for high performance cluster computing.
In environments where high-speed inter-cluster connectivity is required over distance,
customer can use Brocade Metro-Ring Protocol supporting devices (suh as m- s- or
c-series) in conjunction with the TurboIron to provide dual-ring, fault-tolerant
connectivity.
--------------------------- Slide 22 --------------------------------As more application data requirements continue to rise exponentially. Demand for
higher port density and bandwith grows, as do the number of network devices and
power consumption. Therefore customers are looking to reduce Total-Cost of
Ownership with higher scalability and density per rack unit that consume less power
and dissipate less heat.
At this time, driving 10 Gigabit Ethernet over Cat6 twisted pair cabling requires too
much power and is not cost effective. Using copper Twinax cables in the data center
much more power efficient.
For low-cost, low-latency, and low-energy-consuming cabling within and between the
racks, the TurboIron supports direct attached SFP+ copper (Twinax) cabling at up to
10 meters. For switch-to-switch connectivity, the TurboIron supports low-powerconsumimg SFP+ optics at up to 300 meters. In high-port-density deployments, these
features save significant operating costs.
--------------------------- Slide 24 --------------------------------Competition
--------------------------- Slide 25 --------------------------------On this slide you can see the competitors of the TurboIron.
5
The Tier 1 switches are only pure 100% ethernet switches. The Tier 2 switches are
FCOE switches. This switches are capable for Ethernet but also has FC connectors
to support storage devices.
--------------------------- Slide 26 --------------------------------Summary
--------------------------- Slide 27 --------------------------------The next slide give you a short overview of all feature highlights. Not all but key
features are listed here.
--------------------------- Slide 28 --------------------------------The TurboIron can be ordered via HVEC. You can additionally order a redundant
Power-Supply and Tranceivers.
--------------------------- Slide 29 --------------------------------This slides shows the available Transceivers for the TurboIron which you can order
with HVEC.
--------------------------- Slide 30 --------------------------------The rest of the slides are further information for DCN.
If you have any question, feel free to ask me.
Thank you for your interest
At this time, the TurboIron 24X does not have Layer 3 routing capabilities as its
primary use case is server access in the data center. A majority of data center
deployments only require Layer 2 capabilities at the access layer.
6