IBM Storage Networking SAN64B-6

Overview

The IBM® Storage Networking SAN64B-6 switch is designed to meet the demands of hyper-scale virtualization, larger cloud infrastructures and growing flash-based storage environments by delivering market-leading Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology and capabilities.

SAN64B-6 provides a high-density storage networking building block for increased scalability designed to support growth, demanding workloads and data center consolidation in small to large-scale enterprise infrastructures.

Uncover, predict, enhance performance

Uncover performance issues with up to 100 million IOPS for demanding workloads across 32 Gbps links. Utilize built-in latency and IOPS metrics to identify degradation. Prior to deployment, validate and benchmark the physical infrastructure for predictable performance and reliability.

Gain industry-leading port density

Leverage high scalability in an ultra-dense, 1U, 64-port switch and deliver greater hardware consolidation with fewer switches.

Improve hardware consolidation

Utilize 128 Gbps port speeds for greater hardware consolidation with fewer optics and cables required to connect switches.

Improve resiliency

Increase resiliency by automatically discovering and recovering from device or network errors. Simplify troubleshooting with real-time and historical visibility in a single dashboard.

Features

Extension trunking

Combines multiple WAN connections into a single, logical, high-bandwidth trunk, providing active load balancing and network resilience to protect against WAN link failures.

Lossless Link Loss (LLL)

Part of Extension Trunking, provides recovery of data lost in-flight when a link goes offline. From the perspective of the storage applications, nothing ever occurred because all data is delivered, and is delivered in order.

Failover/failback with failover groups

Circuits are assigned metrics and put in a failover group. If all circuits of the lower metric within the failover group go offline, the higher metric circuits take over. The storage application will not know that a failover/failback has occurred.

IO Insight and VM Insight Intelligence

Gain deep insights into performance and availability across physical and virtual infrastructures, to quickly identify issues and understand key performance, health and utilization trends. This will allow administrators to optimize performance and safeguard operational stability.

Technical specifications

Specifications	Specification details
Product Number	8960-F64 (Front/Port-Side Exhaust) 8960-N64 (Rear/Non-Port Side Exhaust)
Hot-swap components	Small form-factor pluggables SFPs
Warranty	One-year; customer-replaceable unit (CRU); and onsite, next-business-day response; warranty service upgrades are available
Optional features	Please refer to the IBM Storage Networking SAN128B-6 Redbooks Product Guide to review most current optional features.
Size	Width: 44.0 cm (17.32 in.); Depth: 35.56 cm (14 in.); Height: 4.39 cm (1.73 in.)
System weight	7.73 kg (17 lb) with two power supplies, without transceivers.