IBM Storage Networking SAN256B-6 Switch
Network innovation for the virtualized, all-flash data center

IBM Storage Networking SAN256B-6 Switch

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The IBM Storage Networking SAN256B-6 director is ideal for midsize networks and includes the following features:

4 horizontal blade slots/up to 192 32-Gbps Fibre ports
16 additional 128-Gbps UltraScale ICL ports

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Overview:

The IBM Storage Networking SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors with Fabric Vision technology combine innovative hardware, software and built-in instrumentation to ensure high levels of operational stability and redefine application performance. Fabric Vision technology enhances visibility into the health of storage environments, delivering greater control and insight to quickly identify problems and achieve critical service level agreements (SLAs). The modular building block increases scalability to accommodate growth for large-scale enterprise infrastructures.

Enhance operational stability, maximize application performance and increase business agility with enterprise-class b-type Gen 6 directors
Shatter application performance barriers across 32 Gbps links and support up to 1 billion input/output operations per second (IOPS) without oversubscription
Consolidate infrastructure with highdensity solutions built with 128 Gbps UltraScale ICL connectivity for simpler, flatter, low-latency fabrics
Increase agility by enabling flexible architectures with concurrent Fibre Channel, FICON, non-volatile memory express NVMe, or FCoE connectivity
Simplify end-to-end management of large-scale environments by automating monitoring and diagnostics to detect degraded application or device performance with built-in monitoring

Enhance operational stability, maximize application performance and increase business agility with enterprise-class b-type Gen 6 directors

Digital transformation is pushing mission-critical storage environments to the limit, with users expecting data to be accessible from anywhere, at any time, on any device. Faced with exponential data growth, the network must evolve to enable businesses to thrive in this new era. To meet these dynamic and growing business demands, organizations need to deploy infrastructure that can deliver the consistency, predictability and performance that legacy infrastructures cannot. These outdated architectures were not designed to support the performance requirements of evolving workloads and flash-based storage technology and in fact, an aging network will impede the performance of an all-flash data center.

A new approach to storage networking is needed to enable databases, virtual servers, desktops and critical applications, and to unlock the full capabilities of flash. By treating the network as a strategic part of a storage environment, organizations can maximize their productivity and efficiency even as they rapidly scale their environments and prepare for next generation flash storage technologies such as non-volatile memory express (NVMe) protocol over Fibre Channel.

IBM Storage Networking SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors with Fabric Vision technology combine innovative hardware, software and built-in instrumentation to ensure high levels of operational stability and redefine application performance. They provide a modular building block for increased scalability to accommodate growth for large-scale enterprise infrastructures.

Fabric Vision technology enhances visibility into the health of storage environments, delivering greater control and insight to quickly identify problems and achieve critical service level agreements (SLAs). Breakthrough 32/128 Gbps performance shatters application throughput barriers and provides support for more than 1 billion IOPS for flash-based storage workloads. And with diverse deployment options, organizations can smoothly adapt and optimize their businesses to meet next-generation storage requirements.

Gen 6 Fibre Channel

Gen 6 Fibre Channel is the purpose-built network infrastructure for mission-critical storage that delivers operational stability, breakthrough performance and increased business agility to accelerate data access, adapt to evolving requirements and drive always-on business operations. SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 b-type directors, with Gen 6 Fibre Channel and Fabric Vision technology with IO Insight and VM Insight, are designed to deliver outstanding 32/128 Gbps performance, data center-proven availability and seamless scalability to ensure greater consistency, predictability and performance.

IBM Fabric Vision technology

Fabric Vision technology with IO Insight and VM Insight, an extension of b-type Gen 6 Fibre Channel, provides outstanding insight and visibility across the storage network. With its powerful built-in instrumentation, management and diagnostic tools, organizations can simplify monitoring, increase availability and dramatically reduce costs.

Outstanding mainframe technology innovation and leadership

SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 b-type directors deliver seamless FICON connectivity for mainframe storage environments. SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 complement IBM Z mainframes by offering a fast, reliable and scalable FICON infrastructure, along with innovative features-all of which help deliver significant ROI. These b-type Gen 6 directors are built on mainframe leadership that includes designing the FICON standard and authoring many FICON patents.

Features:

Purpose-built for enterprise deployments

Designed to meet relentless growth and mission-critical application demands, SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors are an ideal platform for large enterprise environments that require increased capacity, greater throughput and higher levels of resiliency.

SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors are available in two modular form factors. This modular chassis design increases business agility with seamless storage connectivity and flexible deployment offerings. Built for large enterprise networks, the 14U SAN512B-6 director has eight vertical blade slots to provide up to 512 32-Gbps Fibre Channel device or Inter-Switch Link (ISL) ports and 32 additional 128-Gbps UltraScale Inter-Chassis Link (ICL) ports. An ideal choice for midsized networks is the 8U SAN256B-6 director with four horizontal blade slots to provide up to 256 32-Gbps Fibre Channel device or ISL ports and 16 additional 128-Gbps UltraScale ICL ports. Each blade slot can be populated with two optional blades.

IBM b-type directors build upon years of innovation and leverage leading technology to consistently deliver five-nines availability in the world’s most demanding data centers. And with nondisruptive, hot-pluggable components and a no-single-point-of-failure design, SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 are enterprise-class directors for today’s storage infrastructure.

Enhanced operational stability for always-on business operations

SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors with Fabric Vision technology provide a breakthrough hardware and software solution that helps simplify monitoring, increase operational stability and dramatically reduce costs. Fabric Vision technology now includes IO Insight and VM Insight, which provide organizations with deeper visibility into the performance of their environments. This enhanced visibility enables quick identification of degraded application performance at host and storage tiers, helping reduce time to resolution.

Innovative Fabric Vision monitoring, management and diagnostic capabilities enable administrators to avoid problems before they impact operations. Additional Fabric Vision capabilities include:

IO Insight: Proactively monitors application- and devicelevel input/output (I/O) to gain deep insights into performance and availability, ensuring predictable performance and operational stability.
VM Insight: Monitors virtual machine (VM) performance throughout a storage fabric to quickly determine the source of VM/application performance anomalies and fine-tune the infrastructure based on VM/application requirements.
Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS): Simplifies fabric-wide threshold configuration, monitoring and alerting with prebuilt, rule-/policy-based templates.
Fabric Performance Impact (FPI) Monitoring: Leverages predefined MAPS policies to automatically detect and alert administrators to different latency severity levels, and to identify slow-drain devices that could impact network performance.
Dashboards: Provide integrated, at-a-glance views that display an overall storage area network (SAN) health view, along with details on out-of-range conditions, to help administrators easily identify trends and quickly pinpoint issues occurring on a switch or in a fabric.
Configuration and Operational Monitoring Policy Automation Services Suite (COMPASS): Simplifies deployment, safeguards consistency and increases operational efficiencies of larger environments with automated switch and fabric configuration services.
ClearLink Diagnostics: Ensures optical and signal integrity for Fibre Channel optics and cables, simplifying deployment and support of high-performance fabrics.
Flow Vision: Enables administrators to identify, monitor and analyze specific application flows in order to simplify troubleshooting, maximize performance, avoid congestion and optimize resources. Flow Vision includes flow monitor, flow generator, flow mirroring, forward error correction (FEC) and credit loss recovery.
Forward Error Correction (FEC): Enables recovery from bit errors in device connections and ISLs, enhancing transmission reliability and performance.
Credit Loss Recovery: Automatically detects and recovers buffer credit loss at the virtual channel level, providing protection against performance degradation and enhancing application availability

Simplified Fibre Channel management with IBM Network Advisor

IBM Network Advisor simplifies Gen 6 Fibre Channel management and helps organizations dramatically reduce deployment and configuration times by allowing fabrics, switches and ports to be managed as groups. Customizable dashboards graphically display performance and health indicators out of the box, including all data captured using Fabric Vision technology.

Maximum performance for highly virtualized workloads

Evolving critical workloads and higher density virtualization are continuing to demand greater, more predictable performance. SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors feature industry-leading Gen 6 Fibre Channel that increases performance for demanding workloads across 32 Gbps line-speed links and up to 20 Tbps of chassis bandwidth to address next-generation I/O- and bandwidth-intensive applications. In addition, SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors increase scalability with double the throughput for high-density virtual machine deployments and larger fabrics. This allows organizations to support more storage devices and meet bandwidth requirements using the same number of Fibre Channel links.

Simplified, scale-out network design

Organizations need to adapt to continuous data growth and seamlessly scale out their storage environments. UltraScale chassis connectivity leverages optical ICLs, which provide 128 Gbps bandwidth through a quad small form-factor pluggable (QSFP) link. These links can support up to 2 kilometers and connect up to 12 directors, enabling flatter, faster and simpler fabrics that increase consolidation while reducing network complexity and costs.

Extended distance and replication with a scalable, multiprotocol extension solution

Connecting distributed data centers enables data mobility for advanced data protection. Enterprise data centers need their disaster-recovery infrastructure to ensure fast, continuous and easy replication of mission-critical data to anywhere in the world. Storage administrators need to replicate large amounts of data quickly, securely, reliably and simply while minimizing operational and capital expenses.

With 32 Gbps Extension Blade, SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors provide integrated metro and global connectivity with a purpose-built data center extension solution for Fibre Channel and IP storage environments. This solution delivers outstanding performance, strong security, continuous availability and simplified management to handle the unrelenting transfer of data between data centers and maintain SLAs. SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors can scale up to four 32 Gbps Extension Blades per chassis.

With the 32 Gbps high-density port blade, the IBM b-type Gen 6 Storage Networking Directors can now scale even further-up to 256 and 512 ports - offering 33 percent more device ports than before while increasing total system bandwidth up to 20 Tbps. This blade provides 64 Fibre Channel ports in an elegant, high density form factor designed with Q-Flex connections, enabling administrators to simplify cabling infrastructure.

Extending Fabric Vision technology between data centers provides outstanding insight and visibility across the storage network. With its powerful, built-in monitoring, management and diagnostic tools, Fabric Vision technology enables organizations to minimize the impact of disruptions and outages for nonstop business operations. Consolidating Fibre Channel/FICON flows and IP storage flows into a single tunnel contributes significantly to operational excellence. And by using custom, browser-accessible dashboards for combined Fibre Channel and IP storage, storage administrators have a centralized management tool to monitor the health and performance of their networks.

Flexible deployment options for next-generation storage requirements

To realize the full benefits of flash, organizations must transition their high-performance, latency-sensitive workloads to flash-based storage with non-volatile memory express (NVMe). The simplicity and efficiency of NVMe enable significant performance gains for flash storage. Moreover, NVMe over Fibre Channel enables users to achieve faster application response times and harness the performance of hundreds of solid-state drives for better scalability across virtual data centers with flash.

Benefits:

Shatter application performance barriers

Increase performance and support high-density, high-performance server virtualization, cloud architecture and flash with 32 Gbps port speeds and up to 1 billion IOPS, based on IBM internal testing.

Consolidate infrastructure

Consolidate infrastructure with high-density solutions built with 128 Gbps UltraScale Inter-Chassis Links (ICL) connectivity for simpler, flatter, low-latency fabrics without using any device ports.

Simplify management

Simplify end-to-end management of large-scale environments by automating monitoring and diagnostics.

Future-proof your technology

Seamlessly integrate next-generation flash based on non-volatile memory express (NVMe) flash with current and future b-type Gen 6 Fibre Channel networks and mitigate risk with backward compatibility.

Simplify configuration automation

Simplify configuration automation and enable integrated advanced services across the fabric with standard Representational State Transfer (REST) application programming interfaces (APIs).

Specifications:

SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 Switch Specifications
System Architecture
Chassis	Single chassis: SAN512B-6 provides up to 384 32-Gbps ports or a 512-port equivalent with 128 Gbps (4 x 32 Gbps) UltraScale ICL ports (32 Gbps x 4 QSFP ports). SAN256B-6 provides up to 192 32-Gbps ports or a 256-port equivalent with 16 UltraScale ICL ports. Each supports E, F, D, M, SIM, AE, and EX Fibre Channel ports using 48-port 32-Gbps Fibre Channel blades: SAN512B-6 8-blade slots: 14U rack-mountable chassis; 68.58 cm (27 in.) to 78.74 cm (31 in.) and 55.88 cm (22 in.) rail kits for the four-post rack; mid-mount kit for the two-post rack. SAN256B-6 4-blade slots: 8U rack-mountable chassis; 68.58 cm (27 in.) to 78.74 cm (31 in.) rail, 45.72 cm (18 in.) to 60.96 cm (24 in.) rail, and airflow diversion rack mount kits for the four-post rack; mid-mount kit for the two-post rack.
Control processor	Redundant (active/standby) control processor modules.
Scalability	Full-fabric architecture of 239 switches.
Certified Maximum	6,000 active devices per switch; 56 switches, 19 hops in FOS fabrics; larger fabrics certified as required.
Fibre Channel blades	SAN512B-6 48 port Blade provides 48 ports of 32-Gbps Gen 6 Fibre Channel.
IBM b-type Gen 6 Extension blade	32 Gbps Extension Blade provides Fibre Channel extension (16 x 32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports) and IP extension over IP networks (16 x 1/10-GbE and 2 x 40-GbE ports).
Performance	Fibre Channel: 4 Gbps line speed, full duplex 8 Gbps line speed, full duplex 10 Gbps line speed, full duplex 16 Gbps line speed, full duplex 32 Gbps line speed, full duplex Autosensing of 4, 8, 16, and 32 Gbps port speeds depending on SFPs used. Speed matching between 4, 8, 16, and 32 Gbps port speeds. 10 Gbps port speeds with dedicated SFPs.
ISL Trunking	Frame-based trunking with up to eight 32 Gbps ports per ISL trunk; up to 256 Gbps per ISL trunk. Exchange-based load balancing across ISLs with DPS included in FOS.
UltraScale ICL trunking	Chassis-to-chassis linkage through connectors on the Core Routing (CR) blade. Can configure the following maximum QSFPs per trunk depending on blade type, connecting these objects: Up to four 4 x 32 Gbps QSFP ports in a trunk group to form a 512 Gbps trunk between two CR32-4 blades. For trunks that contain four or fewer QSFP ports, ports in a trunk must be located in the same port group on each blade. Up to four 4 x 32 Gbps QSFP ports in a trunk group to form a 512 Gbps trunk between a CR32-4 and CR32-8 blade. For trunks that contain four or fewer QSFP ports, ports in a trunk must be located in the same port group on each blade. A minimum of two QSFP connections are required for a trunk, and up to four 4 x 16 Gbps QSFP trunks between pairs of CR32-8 (CR32-4) and CR16-8 (CR16-4).
Multichassis with UltraScale ICL ports	Up to 4,608 non-blocking 32 Gbps Fibre Channel ports; UtraScale ICL ports (32 for 8 slot or 16 per 4 slot chassis, optical QSFP) connect up to nine chassis in a full mesh topology or up to 12 chassis in a core-edge topology.
UltraScale ICL bandwidth	SAN512B-6: 4.096 Tbps; 32 UltraScale ICL ports provide the equivalent of 128 32 Gbps ports. Each UltraScale ICL port provides 128 Gbps bandwidth over a QSFP (32 Gbps x 4) link. SAN256B-6: 2.048 Tbps; 16 UltraScale ICL ports provide the equivalent of 64 32 Gbps ports. Each UltraScale ICL port provides 128 Gbps bandwidth over a QSFP (32 Gbps x 4) link. Both models: Frame-based trunking is enabled between four UltraScale ICLs. DPS distributes exchanges across all frame trunks.
Chassis bandwidth	SAN512B-6: 12.2 Tbps per chassis (384 ports x 32 Gbps) data rate + 4.096 Tbps UltraScale ICL bandwidth (32 x 128 Gbps). SAN256B-6: 6.1 Tbps per chassis (192 ports x 32 Gbps) data rate + 2.048 Tbps UltraScale ICL bandwidth (16 x 128 Gbps).
Slot bandwidth	1,536 Gbps (line rate).
Switch latency	SAN512B-6 48 port blade at Gen 6 32 Gbps speeds: <900 nanoseconds (ns), including FEC; any-port-to-any-port local switching and 2.7 miscrosecond (µsec) blade to blade at 32 Gbps, cut-through routing. IBM b-type Gen 6 32 Gbps Extension Blade, Fibre Channel to Fibre Channel: <900 ns (including FEC) and 2.7 µsec any-port-to-any-port at 32 Gbps, cut-through routing.
Maximum frame size	2,112-byte payload
Frame buffers	15,000 per switching ASIC
Classes of service	Class 2, Class 3, Class F (inter-switch frames)
Fibre Channel port types	SAN512B-6 48-port blade: F_Port, E_Port, EX_Port, M_Port, SIM, and D_Port. IBM b-type Gen 6 Gbps Extension Blade: F_Port, E_Port, and EX_Port on FC, and VE_Port on GbE. Note: Self-discovery is based on switch type (U_Port) with an optional port-type control.
Data traffic types	Fabric switches supporting unicast, multicast (255 groups), and broadcast.
Hot-swap components	Control processors, core routing modules, power supplies, fan modules, Fibre Channel port blades, extension blade, small form-factor pluggables (SFPs), and quad small form-factor pluggables (QSFPs).
Warranty	One year; 24x7 same-day maintenance; service options are available.
Media types	SAN512B-6 48 port blade: Supports hot-pluggable Fibre Channel SFP+ at 32 Gbps SWL/LWL and SFP+ at 16 Gbps SWL/LWL/ELWL, 10 Gbps SWL/LWL SFP. IBM b-type Gen 6 Extension Blade: Supports hot-pluggable Fibre Channel SFP28 at 32 Gbps SWL/LWL; SFP+ at 16 Gbps SWL/LWL/ELWL; SFP at 10 Gbps FC SWL/LWL and Ethernet SFP+ at 1 GbE copper, 1 GbE 1000BASE-SX/LX/CWDM, SFP+ at 10 GbE SR/LR; SFP+ at 10 GbE tunable DWDM 80 km, and QSFP at 40 GbE SR4/LR4/ER4. CR blades, CR32-4 and CR32-8: Support hot-pluggable Fibre Channel QSFP at 4x32 Gbps SWL, 4x16 Gbps SWL, and 4x16 Gbps 2 km QSFP for ICL connections.
USB	One USB port per control processor for firmware download, support save, and configuration upload or download.
Fabric services	Adaptive Networking (Traffic Isolation, QoS) BB credit recovery Advanced Zoning (default zoning, port/worldwide name (WWN) zoning, peer zoning, target-driven zoning, broadcast zoning) Dynamic path selection (DPS) Extended Fabrics FDMI; FICON CUP Flow Vision Frame Redirection Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) Internet Protocol over Fibre Channel (IPFC) ISL Trunking Management Server Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS) N_Port Trunking N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) Network Time Protocol (NTP) v3 Port Fencing Registered state change notification (RSCN) Reliable Commit Service (RCS) Simple Name Server (SNS) Syslog Virtual Fabrics (Logical Switch, Logical Fabric)
Extension	Supports DWDM, CWDM, and FC-SONET devices; Fibre Channel, in-flight compression (LZO), and encryption (AES-GCM-256); BB credit recovery; FCIP, IP Extension, Adaptive Rate Limiting (ARL), data compression, Fast Write, read/write Tape Pipelining, QoS.
FICON	FICON cascading, support for lossless DLS, FICON CUP, and Advanced Accelerator for FICON (IBM z/OS Global Mirror and read/write Tape Pipelining).
System Components
Fibre Channel ports	SAN512B-6: Up to 384 32-Gbps ports, universal (E_Port, F_Port, EX_Port, M_Port, D_Port, SIM Port, FICON) SAN256B-6: Up to 192 32-Gbps ports, universal (F_Port, E_Port, EX_Port, M_Port, D_Port, SIM Port, FICON)
Classes of service	Class 2, Class 3, Class F (inter-switch frames)
ANSI Fibre Channel protocol	FC-PH (Fibre Channel Physical and Signaling Interface standard)
Fabric initialization	Complies with FC-SW 5.0
Port to port latency	Local switching: 900 nsec Blade to blade: 2.7 µsec
Switching capacity	An aggregate switching capacity of 13.5 billion frames per second (for Class 2, Class 3, and Class F frames for a 384-port chassis)
High Availability Features
Architecture	Non-blocking shared memory, passive backplane, redundant active/passive control processor, redundant active/active core switching blades, and redundant WWN cards.
Chassis power	SAN512B-6: Four power supplies are required for AC Low Line (100 - 120 VAC). Two power supplies are required for AC High Line (200 - 240 VAC). Device includes three PSUs or empty (3 for 2+1 redundancy). Two provide system power, but four must be installed to provide power efficiency and 2+2 redundancy. SAN256B-6: Two power supplies are required for AC Low Line (100 - 120 VAC). One power supply is required for AC High Line (200 - 240 VAC). The device includes two power supplies. One provides system power, but both must be installed to provide power efficiency and 1+1 redundancy.
Cooling	SAN512B-6: Requires three fan tray assemblies. A failure condition is one failed fan from any fan tray. Each assembly contains two fans for a total of six. The system requires five of six functioning fans for operation in SAN512B-6. One fan tray assembly can be hot-swapped and should be replaced immediately in the event of a failure. SAN256B-6: Requires two fan tray assemblies. A failure condition is one failed fan from any fan tray. Each assembly contains two fans for a total of four. The system requires three of four functioning fans for operation in SAN256B-6. One fan assembly can be hot-swapped and should be replaced immediately in the event of a failure.
Airflow	Non-port-side intake to port-side exhaust or port-side intake to non-port-side exhaust options are available.
Solution availability	Designed to provide 99.999% uptime capabilities; hot-pluggable redundant power supplies, fans, WWN cards, processors, core switching, port blades, and optics; online diagnostics; nondisruptive firmware download and activation.
Management
Supported Management software	HTTP, SNMP v1/v3 (FE MIB, FC Management MIB), SSH Auditing, Syslog Advanced Web Tools, IBM Network Advisor SAN Enterprise, or IBM Network Advisor SAN Professional Plus Command-line interface (CLI) SMI-S compliant; RESTful API Trial licenses for add-on capabilities.
Security	DH-CHAP (between switches and end devices) FCAP switch authentication FIPS 140-2 L2-compliant HTTPS, IPSec, IP filtering LDAP with IPv6 OpenLDAP Port Binding RADIUS User-defined role-based access control (RBAC) Secure Copy Protocol (SCP) Secure RPC SFTP SSH v2, SSL Switch Binding TACACS+, Trusted Switch
Management access	10/100/1000 Ethernet (RJ-45) per control processor, in-band over Fibre Channel Serial port (RJ-45) and one USB per control processor module DHCP/DHCPv6 Call-home integration enabled through IBM Network Advisor.
Diagnostics	IO Insight for IO monitoring ClearLink optics and cable diagnostics, including electrical/optical loopback, link traffic/latency/distance Built-in flow generator POST and embedded online/offline diagnostics, including environmental monitoring, FC ping and Pathinfo (FC traceroute), flow mirroring, frame viewer, nondisruptive daemon restart, optics health monitoring, power monitoring, RAStrace logging, and Rolling Reboot Detection (RRD).
Mechanical
Enclosure	SAN512B-6 12-blade slots: 14U rack-mountable chassis; 27 in. to 31 in. and 22 in. rail kits for the four-post rack; mid-mount kit for the two-post rack SAN256B-6 8-blade slots: 8U rack-mountable chassis; 27 in. to 31 in. rail, 18-24 in. rail, and airflow diversion rack mount kits for the four-post rack; mid-mount kit for the two-post rack
Mounting	Rack-mountable in a standard 19-inch EIA cabinet
Size	SAN512B-6 Height: 61.23 cm (24.11 in., 14U) Width: 43.74 cm (17.23 in.) Depth: 61.04 cm (24.04 in.) SAN256B-6 Height: 34.45 cm (13.56 in., 8U) Width: 43.74 cm (17.23 in.) Depth: 61.04 cm (24.04 in.) SAN256B-6 with airflow diversion rack-mount kit Height: 40.00 cm (15.75 in., 8U) Width: 43.74 cm (17.23 in.) Depth: 61.29 cm (24.09 in.)
System Weight	SAN512B-6 35.61 kg (78.5 lb) for chassis 145.8 kg (321.5 lb) for 384-port configuration, fully populated SAN256B-6 24.5 kg (54 lb) for chassis 68.95 kg (152.0 lb) for 192-port configuration, fully populated
Environmental
Temperature	Operating: 0°C to 40°C (32°F to 104°F) Non-operating: -25°C to 70°C (-13°F to 158°F)
Humidity	Operating humidity: 5% to 93% RH non-condensing at 40°C (104°F) with a maximum gradient of 10% per hour Non-operating humidity: 10% to 93% RH non-condensing at 70°C (158°F)
Altitude	Up to 3,000 meters (9,842 feet)
Shock	Operating: 10 g, 11 ms, half sine wave Non-operating: 20 g, 11 ms, half sine wave
Vibration	Operating: 5 Hz to 10 Hz @ +5 db/Oct; 10 Hz to 200 Hz @ 0.0005 Grms; 200 Hz to 500 Hz @ -5 db/Oct; scale 0.05 Grms Non-operating: 3 Hz to 10 Hz @ +5 db/Oct; 10 Hz to 200 Hz @ 0.0065 Grms; 200 Hz to 500 Hz @ -5db/Oct; scale 1.12 Grms
Heat dissipation	SAN512B-6 384-port configuration: 14,485 BTU/hr (4,244 W) maximum per chassis Note: Input power is at 200 VAC with full PSU redundancy. SAN256B-6 192-port configuration: 8,139 BTU/hr (2,385 W) maximum per chassis Note: Input power is at 200 VAC with full PSU redundancy
Supported power range	Input voltage Standard AC input Range: 85 VAC to 264 VAC Auto-volt Nominal: 100 VAC to 240 VAC Power 85 to 132 VAC: 1,450 W 180 to 264 VAC: 2,870 W
In-rush current	35 Amps maximum, peak
Frequency	50 Hz to 60 Hz (Nominal: 50 Hz to 60 Hz)

lBM b-type Gen 6 Extension Blade Specifications:

lBM b-type Gen 6 Extension Blade Specifications
Supported Features and Protocols
IPSec	Helps ensure secure transport over WAN links by encrypting data in flight.
Extremely efficient architecture	Allows the high-speed, low-latency processing of IP datagrams and Fibre Channel/IBM FICON frames.
WAN-optimized TCP	Offers an aggressive TCP stack, optimizing TCP window size and flow control, and accelerating TCP transport for high throughput storage applications.
Streams	Helps prevent head-of-line blocking (HoLB) across the WAN.
PerPriority TCP quality of service (PTQ)	Provides high-, medium-, and low-priority handling of flows within the same tunnel for transmission over the WAN.
Extension Trunking	Combines multiple WAN connections into a single, logical, high-bandwidth trunk, providing active load balancing and network resilience.
Lossless link loss (LLL)	Provides recovery of data lost in flight when a link goes offline.
Failover/failback with failover groups	Assigns metrics to circuits and puts circuits into a failover group. If all circuits of the lower metric within the failover group go offline, the higher-metric circuits take over.
Adaptive Rate Limiting (ARL)	Dynamically adjusts bandwidth sharing between minimum and maximum rate limits to optimize bandwidth utilization and maintain maximum WAN performance during disruptions.
Advanced compression architecture	Provides multiple modes to optimize compression ratios for various throughput requirements.
FCIP Fast Write (FCIP-FW)	Accelerates SCSI write processing, maximizing performance of synchronous and asynchronous replication applications over any distance.
Open Systems Tape Pipelining (OSTP)	Accelerates read and write tape processing over distance, significantly reducing backup and recovery times.
Advanced Accelerator for FICON	Uses advanced networking technologies, data management techniques, and protocol intelligence to accelerate IBM Global Mirror, mainframe tape read and write operations, and IBM z/OS host connections.
System Architecture
Fibre Channel ports	Sixteen 32 Gbps ports; E, F, EX, D, and AE ports
Ethernet ports	Sixteen 1/10 GbE ports and two 40 GbE ports
Scalability	Full-fabric architecture with 239 switches maximum
Certified Maximum	Single fabric: 56 domains, 7 hops Multiprotocol routing fabric: 19 hops
Fibre Channel performance	4.25 Gbps line speed, full duplex 8.5 Gbps line speed, full duplex 10.53 Gbps line speed, full duplex 14.025 Gbps line speed, full duplex 28.05 Gbps, full duplex Auto-sensing of 4, 8,16, 32 Gbps port speeds 10 Gbps optionally programmable to fixed port speed
System scalability	Up to four IBM b-type Gen 6 blades per IBM b-type Gen 6 Director family chassis
ISL Trunking	Up to eight 32 Gbps ports per ISL trunk; up to 256 Gbps bandwidth per ISL trunk
Fabric latency	700 ns with no contention, cut-through routing at 32 Gbps
Maximum Fibre Channel frame size	2,112-byte payload
Maximum IP MTU size	Jumbo frames at 9,216 bytes
Classes of service	Class 2, Class 3, Class F (inter-switch frames)
Port types	F_Port, E_Port, EX_Port, D_Port, and AE_Port. For FCIP, VE_Port (Virtual E_Port)
Data traffic types	Fabric switches supporting unicast
Media types	Fibre Channel: hot-pluggable SFP and SFP+, short wavelength (SWL), long wavelength (LWL), and extended long wavelength (ELWL) transceivers (available wavelength options vary for 16 Gbps and 32 Gbps SFPs) Ethernet: hot-pluggable SFP and SFP+, short reach wavelength (SRWL), long reach wavelength (LRWL), extended long wavelength (ELWL), and copper SFP/SFP+ transceivers (available reach options include 1 GbE, 10 GbE, and 40 GbE)
Fabric services	Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS) Flow Vision Adaptive Networking (Ingress Rate Limiting, Traffic Isolation, QoS) Fabric Performance Impact (FPI) Monitoring Slow Drain Device Quarantine (SDDQ) Advanced Zoning (default zoning, port/WWN zoning, broadcast zoning, peer zoning, target driven zoning) Dynamic Fabric Provisioning (DFP) Dynamic path selection (DPS) Extended Fabrics; Enhanced BB Credit Recovery FDMI Frame Redirection Frame-based Trunking; FSPF Integrated Routing IPoFC ISL Trunking Management Server NPIV Time Server Registered state change notification (RSCN) Reliable Commit Service (RCS) Simple Name Server (SNS) Virtual Fabrics (Logical Switch, Logical Fabric) Read Diagnostics Parameter (RDP)
Management
Supported Management software	HTTP, SNMP v1/v3 (FE MIB, FC Management MIB), SSH Auditing, Syslog; NTP v3 Advanced Web Tools IBM Network Advisor SAN Enterprise or IBM Network Advisor SAN Professional/Professional Plus Command-line interface (CLI) SMI-S compliant REST API
Security	AES-GCM-256 encryption on ISLs, AES-GCM-256 IPSec encryption on virtual ISLs (VE_Port), DH-CHAP (between switches and end devices), FCAP switch authentication FIPS 140-2 L2-compliant, HTTPS, IP filtering, LDAP with IPv6, OpenLDAP, Port Binding, RADIUS, TACACS+, RBAC, SCP, Secure RPC, SFTP, SSH v2, SSL, Switch Binding, Trusted Switch
Diagnostics	POST and embedded online/offline diagnostics, including ClearLink D_Port, FCIP ping, FCIP traceroute, FCping, Pathinfo (FCtraceroute), Wtool, and Ftrace
Mechanical
Size	Width: 42.1 cm (16.57 in.) Height: 3.63 cm (1.43 in.) Depth: 28.98 mm (11.41 in.) Occupies one slot in an IBM b-type Gen 6 Director family chassis
System Weight	5.22 kg (11.5 lb) without SFP/SFP+
Environmental
Temperature	Operating: 0°C to 40°C (32°F to 104°F) Non-operating: -25°C to 70°C (-13°F to 158°F)
Humidity	Operating: 10% to 85% (non-condensing) Non-operating: 10% to 90% (non-condensing)
Altitude	Operating: Up to 3,000 m (9,842 ft) Storage: Up to 12 km (39,370 ft)
Shock	Operating: 20 g, 6 ms, half-sine Non-operating: 33 g, 11 ms, half-sine, 3/eg Axis
Vibration	Operating: 0.5 g sine, 0.4 grs random, 5 to 500 Hz Non-operating: 2.0 g sine, 1.1 grs random 5 to 500 Hz
Power	425 W

Documentation:

Download the IBM Storage Networking SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 Switch Datasheet (.PDF)

Pricing Notes:

All Prices are Inclusive of GST
Pricing and product availability subject to change without notice.

IBM Products

IBM Storage Networking b-type Switches