Making use of its existing networking investments, Dell (News - Alert) has unveiled Dell FlexAddress, a patent pending tool for blade chassis virtualization and persistent identity. With this, the company is following up on the successful introduction of its PowerEdge M-Series blade server solution.

 

Any M-Series blade enclosure can now abstract the Fibre Channel World Wide Name (WWN) and Ethernet/iSCSI Media Access Control (MAC) from the blade hardware and, instead, tie it persistently to a slot in the M1000e chassis with the help of Dell FlexAddress. Customers can now get an efficient, flexible and consistent infrastructure with this feature. Keeping it agnostic to the IO module and avoiding the need to “switch your switch,” Dell FlexAddress is managed by the Chassis Management Controller (CMC) in the PowerEdge M1000e.

 

The customers of Dell can now get the dual advantage of the powerful capabilities Dell’s new FlexAddress technology delivers and the flexibility of choice in industry standard networking products. The combination of Brocade’s Access Gateway (News - Alert) technologies and FlexAddress will help the customers to get rid of costly training and translates into greater IT simplification.

 

By enabling automated deployment configuration in advance and network stacking, customers can achieve 100 percent more network and storage (LAN and SAN) connectivity at half the cost of HP Virtual Connect. This makes the switches appear as a single virtual switch by virtualizing the switches across up to 8 chassis (up to 128 servers) as the network configuration and management is speeded up. FlexAddress also works with all Dell pass-through modules.

 

The customers of M-Series can now take advantage of the intelligent network, management and advanced security capabilities of Cisco's (News - Alert) Ethernet switches as well as simplify the management of the data center with this new product from Dell. Cisco network and device management tools provide seamless integration with Dell’s FlexAddress and gets rid of the need for additional changes to existing management and infrastructure.

 

“We delivered one of the greenest, most energy-efficient blade solutions on the planet with the PowerEdge M-Series and now we’re making it one of the most flexible,” said Rick Becker, vice president of software and solutions, Dell Product Group. “FlexAddress frees customers from existing high-cost, proprietary tools, and enables them to utilize existing networking infrastructure and knowledge to handle predictable or even unplanned changes in their data center without affecting the network.”