IBM Storage Networking SAN48C-6 Fibre Channel Switch provides high-speed Fibre Channel connectivity for all-flash arrays and supports multicloud environments. It offers state-of-the-art analytics and telemetry capability built into its next-generation Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) platform. This switch allows seamless transition to FC-NVMe workloads whenever available without any hardware upgrade in the SAN. It empowers small, midsize, and large enterprises that are rapidly deploying cloud-scale applications using extremely dense virtualized servers, providing the benefits of greater bandwidth, scale, and consolidation.
SAN48C-6 offers state-of-the-art SAN analytics and telemetry capabilities that are built into the hardware platform. The telemetry data can be streamed to any analytics-visualization platform.
IBM provides FEC between switch ports and HBA ports on all 32-Gbps Fibre Channel fixed switches. This ensures errors initiated in flight are corrected before it reaches the device side.
Protects the entire system from malicious attacks by securing access to critical components such as the bootloader, system image loader, and Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) interface.
SAN48C-6 provides Inter-Switch Link (ISL) diagnostics, HBA diagnostics with leading HBA vendors, network analysis tools, and integrated IBM Call Home for quick resolution and reduced service costs.
SAN48C-6 provides visibility into all virtual machines accessing storage LUNs in the fabric. This feature is offered by tagging the Virtual Machine Identifier (VMID) on every Fibre Channel frame.
SAN48C-6 architecture, with centralized nonblocking arbitration, provides consistent 32-Gbps low-latency performance across all traffic conditions for every Fibre Channel port on the switch.
Fibre Channel and Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) headers can be inspected without the need for any external taps or appliances. The resulting metrics can be analyzed on the switch and also exported using a dedicated 1- or 10-Gbps Small Form-Factor Pluggable Plus (SFP+) port for telemetry and analytics purposes.
The SAN48C-6 Fibre Channel switch is powered by the same high-performance 32-Gbps IBM ASIC that powers the IBM MDS 32-Gbps Fibre Channel product portfolio.
Auto-zone, Smart Zoning, slow-drain detection and isolation, Virtual SAN (VSAN) and Inter-VSAN routing (IVR), and fabricwide Quality of Service (QoS) enable migration from SAN islands to enterprise-wide storage networks. Traffic encryption is optionally available to meet stringent security requirements.
The SAN48C-6 provides powerful Representational State Transfer (REST) and IBMNX-API capabilities to enable flexible and rapid programming of utilities for the SAN.
Users can provision, manage, monitor, and troubleshoot the SAN48C-6 using IBM Data Center Network Manager (DCNM), which currently manages the entire suite of IBM data center products.
The SAN48C-6 uses onboard hardware that protects the entire system from malicious attacks by securing access to critical components such as the bootloader, system image loader, and Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) interface.
The 32-Gbps ports allow users to deploy them with existing 16- or 8-Gbps transceivers provide investment protection with an option to upgrade to 32-Gbps transceivers and adapters whenever needed.
The SAN48C-6 Fibre Channel switch provides an option to deploy as few as twenty-four 32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports in the entry-level variant, which can grow in increments of 8 ports to up to 48 ports. This setup allows four possible configurations of 24, 32, 40, and 48 ports.