Voltaire has announced the immediate availability of the Voltaire Vantage 6024, a low-latency, high-performance Layer 2/3 top-of-rack switch optimized for next generation and virtualized data centers and cloud computing environments. The switch provides the industry’s most power-efficient and lowest latency capabilities on 10 Gigabit Ethernet, enabling new levels of efficiency, scalability and real-time application performance. The switch also supports converged enhanced Ethernet (CEE) capabilities enabling the consolidation of multiple network tiers and fabrics to significantly reduce infrastructure expenses.

The combination of the Voltaire Vantage 8500 Layer 2 core switches and new Vantage 6024 switches enables customers to build flat data center fabrics of more than 3,400 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports with non-blocking, lossless switch capacity of 69.12 Terabits per second. Voltaire Unified Fabric Manager(UFM) software orchestrates the fabric as a single logical entity, enforcing fabric-wide service policies, providing real-time fabric and application level monitoring, and simplifying fabric administration across many physical and virtual switching elements.

“Data center network architectures are in the midst of a dramatic change, moving towards flat, scale-out 10 GbE fabrics designed for performance, efficiency and virtual machine mobility,” said Lucinda Borovick, research vice president, Datacenter Networks, IDC. “Solutions such as Voltaire Vantage 10 GbE switches and UFM software enable these new architectures and also provide virtual machine awareness on the network.”

Voltaire also announced the industry’s first turnkey 10 GbE switching and software infrastructure solution for low latency trading. The solution is comprised of the Voltaire Vantage 6024 switch, Voltaire Messaging Accelerator (VMA) software, network interface cards and cables. It is ideal for co-located low latency trading and smaller high-frequency trading environments where one rack handles the full trading operations. Voltaire’s unique VMA software dramatically improves performance of high frequency trading and other multi-cast applications, further reducing networking latency and increasing application throughput per server.

Voltaire also offers VMA software for 20-40 Gb/s InfiniBand fabrics, which continue to deliver the lowest latencies – as much as 30% lower than Ethernet-based solutions. Voltaire’s VMA software and low latency InfiniBand fabrics are used in many of the world’s top banks, hedge funds and exchanges, including the recently announced next-generation equities trading platform to be deployed at Singapore Exchange (SGX).

“Voltaire’s unique approach to low latency trading networks is heavily focused on software that reduces application latency even more than what can be achieved in hardware,” said Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. “By coupling Voltaire VMA software and our new Vantage 6024 10 GbE switch, customers can rest assured that they are getting the lowest possible latency on 10 GbE for high frequency trading in a package that is well-suited for the limited space in co-located environments.”

Voltaire offers the solution in a variety of pre-configured bundles that include the Layer 2/3 switch, VMA software licenses, 10 GbE Network Interface Cards (NICs) and cables to provide a turnkey, out-of-the box solution that’s optimized for both exchange connectivity and external clients. Customers also have the option to purchase Voltaire professional services for installation and testing, giving them access to technical expertise and faster time to production.

Voltaire will showcase the Vantage 6024 switch and VMA software in booth 1842 at the SIFMA Financial Services Technology Expo, June 22-24, 2010, in New York City.

The Voltaire Vantage 6024 switch, VMA software and bundled solutions are available today.