IBM BladeCenter Virtual Fabric Solutions

The deployment of server virtualization technologies in data centers requires significant efforts in providing sufficient network I/O bandwidth to satisfy the demand of virtualized applications and services. For example, every virtualized system can host several dozen network applications and services, and each of these services requires certain bandwidth (or speed) to function properly.Furthermore, because of different network traffic patterns relevant to different service types, these traffic flows may interfere with each other, leading to serious network problems including the inability of the service to perform its functions.The IBM® Virtual Fabric solution for IBM BladeCenter addresses these issues. The solution is based on the IBM BladeCenter H chassis with a 10-Gb Converged Enhanced Ethernet infrastructure built on 10-Gb Ethernet switch modules in the chassis and the Emulex or Broadcom Virtual Fabric Adapters in each blade server. This book is for clients who want to learn how to implement an IBM Virtual Fabric solution, either the IBM Virtual Fabric Mode offering or the Switch Independent Mode offering. It provides step-by-step instructions for configuring the adapters and switches.