Lenovo RackSwitch G8296
Introduction
The Lenovo RackSwitch™ G8296 that leverages 10 Gb SFP+ and 40 Gb QSFP+ Ethernet technology is specifically designed for the data center. It is ideal for today's big data, cloud, and optimized workload solutions. It is an enterprise class Layer 2 and Layer 3 full featured switch that delivers line-rate, high-bandwidth switching, filtering, and traffic queuing without delaying data. Large data-center grade buffers help keep traffic moving, while the redundant hot-swap power supplies and fans along with numerous availability features help provide high availability for business sensitive traffic.
The RackSwitch G8296 that is shown in the following figure is ideal for latency sensitive applications such as high performance computing clusters and financial applications. In addition to the 10 Gb Ethernet (GbE) and 40 GbE connections, the G8296 also has the capability for traditional 1 GbE connections.
The RackSwitch G8296 supports both 10 Gb and 40 Gb Ethernet. With 2.56 Tbps throughput, the G8296 provides massive scalability and low latency ideal for latency-sensitive applications such as high-performance computing clusters and financial applications.
Key features
The RackSwitch G8296 is considered particularly suited for these environments:
- 10 GbE server connectivity with 40 GbE upstream aggregation
- Virtualized environments with VM-aware networking
- Converged SAN and LAN network via NAS, iSCSI, or FCoE
- Reduced I/O cost (CAPEX) with fewer adapters, cables, and transceivers to purchase
- Reduced complexity (OPEX) with fewer components to manage and lower energy cost
- Accelerated communications with lower latency across clustered applications and storage arrays with RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE)
- Investment protection with 40 Gb Ethernet, Cloud, and SDN
The RackSwitch G8296 offers the following features and benefits:
- High performance
The 10 Gb/40 Gb switch provides the best combination of low latency, non-blocking line-rate switching, and ease of management. It has a throughput of 2.56 Tbps.
- Lower power and better cooling
The RackSwitch G8296 uses as little as 210 W of power, and the front-to-rear or rear-to-front cooling design of the G8296 reduces data center air conditioning costs by having airflow match the servers in the rack. In addition, variable speed fans help to automatically reduce power consumption.
- Layer 3 functionality
The RackSwitch G8296 includes Layer 3 functionality, which provides security and performance benefits, as inter-VLAN traffic stays within the switch. This switch also provides the full range of Layer 3 protocols from static routes for technologies, such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) for enterprise customers.
- Network virtualization
The RackSwitch G8296 switch supports VXLAN Gateway for VMware NSX integration. VMware NSX is a virtualized network software platform that offers a full set of networking services, such as logical switching, routing, firewall, load balancing, VPN, quality of service (QoS), and monitoring.
- Converged fabric
The RackSwitch G8296 switch supports Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) which helps enable customers to combine storage, messaging traffic, VoIP, video, and other data on a common data center lossless Ethernet infrastructure. As a result, clients can deploy a single server interface for multiple data types, which can simplify the deployment and management of server network connectivity while maintaining the high availability and robustness that is required for storage transactions.
- Seamless interoperability
RackSwitch switches perform seamlessly with other vendors' upstream switches.
- Fault tolerance
The RackSwitch G8296 offers redundant hot-swap hardware components, learns alternate routes automatically, and performs faster convergence if there is a link, switch, or power failure.
- Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) (Requires an optional license key)
The ONIE is a small Linux-based operating system that provides an open install environment for networking devices without operating systems. ONIE enables a network switch ecosystem for end users to choose among different Network Operating Systems by discovering NOS installer images and loading them onto the switch.