ProLiant BL p-Class Interconnect Overview - White Paper

ProLiant GbE2 Interconnect Kit

The second generation ProLiant GbE2 Interconnect Kit is also designed to significantly reduce the

number of Ethernet network cables attached to the rear of the server blade enclosure. However, it is

designed for applications that require network adapter consolidation to 1000 Mb/s (Gigabit

Ethernet), advanced network functionality, future upgradeability including layer 3-7 switching and 10

Gigabit Ethernet uplink bandwidth, and BL20p G2 Fibre Channel signal pass-through.

The GbE2 Interconnect Kit contains two hot-swappable, fully managed layer 2 GbE2 Interconnect

Switches and two LAN interconnect modules (Figure 10). Like the first generation GbE Interconnect

Kit, the GbE2 Interconnect Kit is available for copper-based (C-GbE2) and fiber-based (F-GbE2)

networks. These interconnect kits are identical with exception of the interconnect modules. The

C--GbE2 Interconnect kit includes two QuadT2 interconnect modules, each with four 10/100/1000T

ports with RJ-45 connectors. The F-GbE2 Interconnect Kit includes two QuadSX interconnect modules,

each with four 1000SX ports with LC connectors.

Figure 10. ProLiant BL p-Class GbE2 Interconnect Switch front panel and rear view

In addition to providing a 32 to 1 server networking cable reduction per server enclosure like the

GbE Interconnect Kit, the GbE2 Interconnect Kit offers the following features:

• All switch ports provide Gigabit Ethernet performance to support applications that require network

adapter consolidation to 1000 Mb/s. Each GbE2 Kit provides 24 Gb/s full duplex external port

(uplink) bandwidth per server blade enclosure.

• A multi-port 10-Gb/s fabric standard on each GbE2 Interconnect Switch supporting future layer 3-7

IP load balancing option and 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplink upgradeability (Figure 11). The switching

layer and the uplink bandwidth can be independently selected within a single switch offering.

• Advanced network feature support and system availability including spanning tree per VLAN, 9k

jumbo frames, RADIUS, redundant syslog servers, redundant operating system firmware images and

configuration files in memory, and more.