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HP GbE2c Ethernet Blade Switch for c-Class BladeSystem - key benefits


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HP GbE2c Ethernet Blade Switch for c-Class Blade System
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» Overview

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Key Benefits

The HP GbE2c Switch is designed specifically for the data center requiring superior efficiency in a low cost, standards based, manageable blade switch solution.
  » High Performance (10/100/1000 Mbps)
  » Comprehensive Layer 2 features
  » Easy-to-use, simple network management
  » High availability and resiliency
  » GbE2c deployment applications

High performance (10/100/1000 Mbps)

The HP GbE2c Switch (GbE2c) delivers the highest available switching performance for the HP BladeSystem at a very attractive price. With its full set of Layer 2 features and seamless integration into any network, the GbE2c is a perfect fit for deployment in the HP BladeSystem enclosure. The GbE2c provides wire speed switching for incoming or outgoing traffic, providing up to 20Gb of switching capacity or 7.8 Million packets per second switching performance. With the GbE2c, HP continues its leadership in offering the best price/performance ratio in high performance switching.

Comprehensive Layer 2 features

The HP GbE2c Switch provides a full set of advanced Layer 2 features including extensive support for VLANs, Spanning Tree, Rapid Spanning, Multiple Spanning Tree and Uplink Failure Detection. High availability in Layer 2 ensures that mission critical traffic is not impacted in the unlikely case of a switch or power failure. Overall network performance and bandwidth conservation can be boosted with IGMP Snooping which only forwards multicast traffic to the clients that have expressed interest in receiving such packets. The GbE2c's IGMP Snooping capability not only improves the overall bandwidth but also conserves CPU cycles of the servers, thus avoiding the cost of unnecessary server upgrades.

Network administrators can configure VLANs to logically separate traffic and contain broadcasts - improving the overall performance while improving security. Administrators can easily add or remove users from VLANs based on their department or job functions.

Security

VLANs can be configured to provide segregation for data - improving bandwidth, performance and limiting traffic to its designated domains. The GbE2c also provides secured access through SSH v2, protecting against IP spoofing as well as DNS spoofing. The GbE2c enables users to meet their security requirements by providing support of HTTPS, RADIUS and TACACS.

Easy-to-use, simple network management

The GbE2c's Web-based management interface enables administrators to easily configure the most advanced features such as Rapid Spanning Tree, Uplink Failure Detection and SNMP management by pointing and clicking.

The GbE2c also enables sophisticated administrators to configure and manage the switch through SNMP. It provides full support for SNMP v1/2/3.

High availability and resiliency

The GbE2c provides a full set of advanced support for high availability and resiliency features such as Spanning Tree, Rapid Spanning Tree, Multiple Spanning Tree and Uplink Failure Detection. High availability ensures that mission critical traffic is not impacted in the unlikely case of a switch or power failure. Overall network performance and bandwidth conservation can be boosted with IGMP Snooping, which only forwards multicast traffic to the clients that have expressed interest in receiving such packets. GbE2c’s IGMP Snooping capability not only improves the overall bandwidth but also conserves CPU cycles of the servers, thus avoiding the cost of unnecessary server upgrades.
  • Uplink Failure Detection (UFD) supports network adapter teaming, and allows the switch to monitor specific uplink ports to detect link failures. When the switch detects a link failure, it automatically disables specific downlink ports. The corresponding server’s network adapter can detect the disabled downlink, and trigger a network-adapter failover to another port on the switch, or another switch in the chassis.
  • Compatibility with Cisco® EtherChannel for trunking to non-HP devices,
  • 802.1d Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) ensures that only one path to a destination is available at any one time by detecting loops and blocking switch ports as required.
  • 802.1w Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) offers fast convergence - reducing packet loss and downtime in high-availability and high resilient networks. GbE2c’s industry-standard based RSTP offers instant failover to secondary links in an unlikely event of primary link failure. RSTP is an enhancement to the 802.1d Spanning Tree Protocol and offers improved spanning tree convergence time when network topologies change.
  • 802.1s Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) provides seamless integration, resiliency and availability for network topologies utilizing Virtual LANs (VLANs) into networks running 802.1s. MSTP enables networks to utilize individual uplinks for separate VLANs, thus improving the overall performance of the network. MSTP also enables Network administrators to map multiple VLANs to a reduced number of Spanning Tree instances to provide multiple forwarding paths and load balancing for data traffic.
  • Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) Snooping allows the GbE2c to intercept IGMP packets to build multicast tables for hosts that want to receive or stop receiving multicast streams. Networks that experience heavy multicast traffic benefit from the ability to "prune" the traffic so that it travels only those hosts that require that multicast frames.
  • Compatibility with Cisco® PortFast feature allows a port to transition rapidly to forwarding state upon bootup, without the usual Spanning Tree calculation period that may cause some applications to time out.

GbE2c deployment applications

The HP GbE2c Switch is an ideal choice for the HP BladeSystem because of its port density, price/performance ratio, high availability, and advanced Layer 2 feature sets. The GbE2c offers advanced Layer 2 features including extensive support for VLANs, Spanning Tree, Uplink Failure Detection and Link Aggregation (compatible with Cisco® EtherChannel).

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