BLADE Network Technologies has announced the new RackSwitch G8052, a top-of-rack Gigabit Ethernet edge switch with 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) uplinks for 40Gbps connectivity to upstream networks and a rich combination of networking features for today's highly virtualized enterprise data center. The RackSwitch G8052 is an addition to BLADE's 10GbE RackSwitch family, and is designed to address the large market for 1GbE connectivity, while providing an easy path to 10GbE and virtualization-aware networks.

"With our RackSwitch G8052, BLADE continues to lead the way in providing greater speed and intelligence at the edge of the network," said Dan Tuchler, vice president of Strategy and Product Management, BLADE Network Technologies. "Our new top-of-rack switch is designed for the demands of the data center to connect vast deployments of servers equipped with Gigabit Ethernet to 10G networks."

The RackSwitch G8052 incorporates a number of enhancements for virtualization awareness, enhanced stacking, low latency, line-rate performance, congestion prevention and additional packet buffers in a single-ASIC design.

-- A single state-of-the-art switch ASIC and management processor result in lower latency, faster boot times for larger configuration files, better multicast performance, higher IGMP join rates, faster failover and larger route tables.

-- BLADE RackSwitch G8052 includes VMready 3.0 with Virtual Vision to secure and automate Virtual Machine migrations across large data center environments. BLADE's innovative and proven VMready "sees" Virtual Machines (VMs) as they move from server to server, protecting virtual machines by automatically synchronizing network policies among switches and hypervisors. With the Virtual Vision central policy database, BLADE's VMready provides a single point of management for VM traffic and security across an entire data center with hundreds of servers and thousands of VMs, all designed for easy transition to emerging IEEE 802.1Qbg standards.

-- Because network traffic between highly virtualized multi-core servers generates large amounts of server-to-server network traffic, virtualized servers need congestion notifications much earlier than enabled by conventional switches. BLADE RackSwitch G8052 incorporates Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) and Weighed Random Early Detection (WRED), which control packet flow from servers to avoid large saw-tooth fluctuations in network throughput that can slow application performance.