The Lenovo RackSwitchTM G8272 that uses 10Gb SFP+ and 40Gb 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 hot-swap redundant power supplies and fans (along with numerous high-availability features) help provide high availability for business sensitive traffic.
The RackSwitch G8272 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 G8272 can use 1 GbE connections. The G8272 supports the newest protocols, including Data Center Bridging/Converged Enhanced Ethernet (DCB/CEE) for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), iSCSI and network-attached storage (NAS).
The RackSwitch G8272 is considered particularly suited for the following environments:
The G8272 supports several types of configurations: 1 GbE, 10 GbE, 40 GbE, vNIC, Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE/DCB), NAS, and iSCSI.
The G8272 with SFP+ technology is the ideal solution for customers who are looking for low latency and low power consumption.
The G8272 supports Data Center Bridging (DCB), the group of protocols from IEEE that provide lossless Ethernet with which clients can reduce the costs of implementing one of the following:
NAS or iSCSI convergence and priority-based flow control
FCoE by aggregating switch ports before connecting to more costly upstream Fibre Channel gateway devices
Lenovo offers the on-switch VMready(R) software that reduces the complexity of managing virtual machines (VMs) in the network.
The G8272 is SDN ready with its OpenFlow support. With OpenFlow, you can easily create user-controlled virtual networks, optimize performance dynamically, and minimize complexity when used with an OpenFlow controller.
The G8272 plays a vital role with Virtual Fabric, which reduces costs and complexity in environments where four or more NICs are needed per server. An example is virtualization, where clients often need up to eight NICs per server.
The RackSwitch G8272 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 1.44 Tbps.
Lower power and better cooling
The RackSwitch G8272 uses as little as 123 W of power, which is less than comparable switches use. The front-to-rear or rear-to-front cooling design of the RackSwitch G8272 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.
Virtual Fabric
The RackSwitch G8272 can help customers address I/O requirements for multiple NICs while reducing cost and complexity. By using Virtual Fabric, you can carve a physical NIC into multiple virtual ports (2 - 8 vPorts) and create a virtual pipe between the adapter and the switch for improved performance, availability, and security.
VM-aware networking
VMready software on the switch simplifies configuration and improves security in virtualized environments. VMready automatically detects VM movement between physical servers and instantly reconfigures each VM's network policies across VLANs to keep the network up and running without interrupting traffic or impacting performance. VMready works with all leading VM providers, such as VMware, Citrix Xen, and Microsoft Hyper-V.
Layer 3 functionality
The RackSwitch G8272 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.
Seamless interoperability
RackSwitch switches perform seamlessly with other vendors' upstream switches.
Fault tolerance
RackSwitch switches learn alternate routes automatically and perform faster convergence if there is a link, switch, or power failure. The switch uses proven technologies, such as L2 trunk failover, advanced VLAN-based failover, VRRP, and Hot Links.
Multicast
The G8272 supports IGMP Snooping v1, v2, and v3 with 2 K IGMP groups. It also supports Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM), such as PIM Sparse Mode or PIM Dense Mode.
Management
Network Address Translation (NAT) allows a single device, such as a router, to act as an agent between the Internet (or ""public network"") and a local (or ""private"") network. This means that only a single, unique IP address is required to represent an entire group of local IP addresses to the external network. In addition to reducing the number of public IP addresses that are required, NAT provides security by acting as a firewall between internal and external networks.
Converged fabric
The RackSwitch G8272 switch supports CEE and connectivity to FCoE gateways. CEE helps enable clients to combine storage, messaging traffic, VoIP, video, and other data on a common data center Ethernet infrastructure. FCoE helps enable highly efficient block storage over Ethernet for consolidating server network connectivity. 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.
OpenFlow enabled
The RackSwitch G8272 offers benefits of OpenFlow. OpenFlow is the open API that enables the network administrator to easily configure and manage virtual networks that control traffic on a "per-flow" basis. It creates multiple independent virtual networks and related policies without dealing with the complexities of the underlying physical network and protocols. The RackSwitch G8272 is also the ideal switch to use with industry compliant OpenFlow controllers.