- Effortless selection of pure switch or IBP functionality allows flexible use responding to demand
- Perfect transmission of data from mezzanine cards to various external networks
- Variable connection to external networks with extremely high bandwidth
- Operational with today's wide spread 1 Gbps Ethernet backbones and also with the growing number of 10 Gbps ones
- IBP mode avoids protocol compatibility issues and offers a large number of add-on functions compared to standard switch mode
- Investment protection for existing server blades by flexible adaptation of downlink speed
- Investing in this connection blade guarantees long-term operability; it is usable also by customers, who tend to move away from separated Ethernet and Fiber Channel towards a converging topology
PRIMERGY BX Connection Blades simplify network connectivity for PRIMERGY BX Blade Servers, ensuring fast, reliable and flexible access to data and storage networks. All Connection Blades are integrated within the BX chassis and benefit from a high-speed midplane as well as from energy-efficient power and cooling. A wide range of different Connection Blades are available to address current and next-generation I/O requirements for standards-based Fiber Channel, InfiniBand and Ethernet networks.
The Intelligent Blade Panel function combines the switch advantage of cable and port consolidation with the pass-thru advantages of working fully (VLAN) transparent and lacking of any protocol compatibility issues. Server blade LAN ports may be grouped together with one or more external ports into independent named port groups. When using the so-called management VLAN grouping feature, a separate VLAN-based management access to each server blade may be assigned. Highly appreciated will be the fact, that this connection blade allows simultaneous access from 1 as well as from 10 GbE ports, thus providing non-constraining operability of differently equipped server blades in a chassis with the identical connection blade.