Dell Brings 40-Gigabit Ethernet Into Its PowerEdge Blade System

From PC World: Dell will flesh out its new virtual networking strategy at Interop next month when it shows off a 40-Gigabit Ethernet switch for its PowerEdge M1000e blade system announced Tuesday, extends its management software and shows its equipment working with the OpenFlow standard for SDN (software-defined networking).

The company's once-lackluster networking business got a shot in the arm last year with the acquisition of Force10 Networks, which was a pioneer in 10-Gigabit Ethernet and is marching quickly into networking's next frontier, 40-Gigabit. Force10 is now integrated into Dell, and the new parent company is offering an architecture to handle connectivity all the way from virtualized applications and storage through network switches, said Arpit Joshipura, head of marketing at Dell Networking.

Dell plans to accommodate both emerging virtualized network technology and traditional box-oriented infrastructures with its Virtual Network Architecture (VNA), announced last month, which encompasses everything from packet switching and network services to policy control and management. VNA separates both basic networking protocols and services such as security and load-balancing from the underlying hardware that typically carries them out, though it doesn't require a hard changeover from existing systems. It is built around a "distributed core" of smaller switches rather than the large chassis-based network gear from rivals such as Cisco, Dell said.

Combining that architecture with the rest of the company's sprawling portfolio, Dell says it can provide enterprises with storage, computing and networks with at least 10-Gigabit speed from end to end. And through automation, Dell intends to make it easier to manage networks.

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