Reduce complexity and costs associated with appliance sprawl by consolidating on an IBM® BladeCenter® platform with a high-performance, low-latency statistical load balancer integrated into a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) blade switch: IBM iFlow Director. iFlow Director’s traffic load...

1. IBM Systems and Technology
Data Sheet
IBM iFlow Director
Reduce complexity and costs associated with appliance sprawl by consoli-
Highlights dating on an IBM® BladeCenter® platform with a high-performance,
low-latency statistical load balancer integrated into a 10 Gigabit Ethernet
● Provides network traffic load distribution (GbE) blade switch: IBM iFlow Director. iFlow Director’s traffic load
system for IBM BladeCenter H and
HT integrated into a high-performance, distribution and policy-based traffic forwarding is designed to deliver high
low-latency 10 GbE switch availability, scalability and lower cost of ownership for wireless gateways,
security gateways, traffic management, service differentiation, lawful
● Delivers high availability with extensive
server health-check mechanisms for interception and network surveillance solutions.
rapid failure detection and recovery
Networks are changing. Voice, video, storage and data are quickly
● Includes policy-based traffic steering and
routing converging onto a single backbone. Growth in cloud services and
Web 2.0 multimedia content is pushing bandwidth demand to the net-
● Operates in transparent Layer 2 mode or
full Layer 3 mode
work edge. The convergence of fixed and mobile networks to a common
next-generation network Interface Protocol (IP) infrastructure is driving
● Supports load distribution of IPv4 and exponential growth in network traffic. Threats due to malicious attacks
IPv6 traffic with flow affinity to a server
are increasing, and both businesses and consumers are demanding that
● Is extremely cost-effective compared to their service providers incorporate more defenses into the network. As a
external load balancers
result, there is a growing demand for network appliance vendors who
● Is scalable from 1 to 84 servers across provide traffic inspection, bandwidth optimization, security and lawful
multiple BladeCenter chassis interception services to offer gateway solutions at high-speed traffic
choke points.

2. IBM Systems and Technology
Data Sheet
In addition, network and security administrators must deliver
extreme levels of availability—the ability to scale dynamically
without having to reconfigure their network devices—while also
minimizing costs and downtime. IBM System Networking uses
industry-leading Layer 2-7 Ethernet switching experience to
deliver iFlow Director (patents pending)1—a high-throughput,
low-latency, traffic load distribution system in a 10 Gbps
Ethernet switch for BladeCenter H and HT.
IBM iFlow Director
High availability and reliability
iFlow Director is designed with a number of advanced features
to deliver high availability in mission-critical environments.
The solution is built around industry-leading hardware to
help eliminate any single point of failure. iFlow Director uses
BladeCenter innovations—like internal monitoring, redundant
mid-plane, redundant network connections per blade, redun-
dant power supplies and fans—and switching features like
uplink failure detection and controlled failover with network
interface card (NIC) teaming to deliver high availability.
Supported BladeCenter chassis
iFlow Director also includes these high availability features:
Capacity on demand and performance
iFlow Director provides up to 480 Gbps of nonblocking, ● Rapid failure detection using Layer 2 - 7 server health-check
wire-speed bidirectional throughput to BladeCenter, to meet mechanisms (link, ips, arp, ping, tcp, tcp-script, http, etc.)
your network traffic load distribution needs. With ten 10 Gbps ● Failover options that allow distribution of flows from a failed
uplink ports and 14 nonblocking 10 Gbps internal ports, iFlow blade to active blades or a standby blade in the chassis
Director offers unmatched performance, with latency as low as ● Ability to restore a recovered blade into service automatically
1.60 microseconds. or manually
● Redirection of traffic through alternate ports if a threshold
In conjunction with the latest high-performance multicore- number of blades fail in order to bypass critical failures.
processing blade servers equipped with 10 Gbps Ethernet
adapters, network appliance vendors can offer cost-effective The iFlow Director solution improves overall system availabil-
and robust solutions based on BladeCenter. iFlow Director ity by reducing the number of components that can fail and
distributes traffic across 1 to 84 blade servers at line rate for all disrupt communications.
packet sizes. The system throughput can be scaled linearly by
simply adding more blade servers and up to five additional
BladeCenter chassis as demand grows.
2

3. IBM Systems and Technology
Data Sheet
Intelligent traffic distribution ● Support for two command line interface (CLI) options: the
When used in Layer 3 mode, iFlow Director can intelligently BLADEOS CLI, as well as an industry-standard CLI.
classify data streams and proxy requests for applications such as ● Easy software upgrades through a web user interface, trivial
real time video rendering, caching content and geographically file transfer protocol (TFTP), telnet or serial download allow
based services on mobile wireless gateways. iFlow Director for easy adaptation to existing maintenance procedures.
provides intelligent flow classification, persistent flows and ● Enhanced security with a dedicated virtual local area network
parallel load distribution to significantly accelerate server and (VLAN) for managing traffic between the management
application performance. module and the switch improves overall performance and
security by segregating management traffic from data traffic.
Cost-effective and energy-efficient
The iFlow Director solution provides significant savings Sample deployment scenarios:
compared to a solution consisting of multiple stand-alone
appliances, Layer 2/3 switches and load balancers. With
● Wireless gateway solutions
480 Gbps of raw throughput, the iFlow Director solution
● Data optimization, content adaptation, traffic analysis, and
provides a game-changing price/performance advantage. more
● Prepaid billing and access controls
IBM System Networking switches in general also save on long
● Security solutions
term energy costs, by using as little as three watts of power per
● Scalable appliances for firewall, intrusion detection systems
port. These switches also provide more performance per watt (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS), web filtering,
than comparable switches from other vendors. and more
● Security-in-a-box consolidation
By collapsing the network access, aggregation and load-
● Traffic management and service differentiation
balancing layers, iFlow Director offers lower total power
● Bandwidth management
consumption, fewer cables and uses less rack space, which
● Application prioritization
significantly reduces your total cost of ownership.
● Lawful interception and network surveillance
● Deep packet inspection
Easy integration and management
iFlow Director provides the following advantages:
● Standards-based integration with Cisco and other networks to
help reduce downtime and learning curves.
● Common look and feel among IBM System Networking
BNT® switches helps administrators minimize the learning
curve when they have a requirement for different switches
and load balancers
3

4. IBM Systems and Technology
Data Sheet
Load
Balancer Load Intrusion Wireless
Gateway
Router Balancer Detection Router
Internet Firewall
Load
Balancer
Intranet
Appliances Load Balancer
Internet Intranet
Fully Integrated
Scalable appliance consolidation with IBM iFlow Director2
Why IBM? and service, IBM offers a broad choice of networking partners
IBM is your trusted source to provide the right solutions as you that uses industry innovation, avoids costly vendor lock-in and
design your data center network. Our lengthy experience in helps you evolve your data center using your current supplier
workload optimization, virtualization and network convergence and management tools, avoiding a forced “rip and replace”
allows us to deliver a solution that meets your unique network approach to upgrading your infrastructure.
needs. As a single point of contact for consultation, products
4

5. IBM Systems and Technology
Data Sheet
IBM iFlow Director at a glance
External ports Up to ten 10 GbE SFP+ ports; also designed to support 1 Gb SFP, if required; flexibility of mixing 1 Gb/10 Gb
transceivers:
● IBM SFP+ BNT SR transceiver, part number 46C3447
● IBM BNT SFP+ LR Transceiver+, part number 90Y9412
● IBM BNT SFP RJ45 Transceiver, part number 81Y1618
● IBM BNT SFP SX Transceiver, part number 81Y1622
● IBM BNT SFP LX Transceiver, part number 90Y9424
For more information, visit: ibm.com/networking/options/
● SFP+ copper direct attach cables (up to 10 meters) 1 m/3 m/5 m/8.5 m.
For more information, visit: ibm.com/networking/options/cables.html
● One 10/100/1000 Mb copper RJ-45 port used for management or data
Internal ports 14×10 GbE data paths to the server blades
Internal 2 ports: 100Base-T management through the AMM
Console interface 1 port: RS 232 mini-USB connector
Full-line rate performance 480 Gbps
Latency (average LILO) From 1.60 μsec with 64-byte packets to 4.28 μsec with 1,518 byte packets
Load balancing Statistical
Supports IPv4 & IPv6
Supports 802.1Q and Q-in-Q (802.1ad) encapsulated traffic
Configurable hash Source MAC, Destination MAC, Source IP, Destination IP
parameters
Scalability Multichassis support in Layer-3 mode delivers scalability to up to 84 servers across up to six BladeCenter chassis
High availability Active-Active, Active-Standby (N+1) blade server deployments
Application health checks Link, IPS, ARP, ICMP, TCP, Script based, HTTP, HTTPS/SSL, DNS, SMTP
Policy-based traffic steering Configurable rules to match on Layer 2 - 4 packet header fields and redirect packets to an outgoing port, trunk or
and routing IP next-hop.
CLI Industry-based CLI (Cisco-like) and BLADEOS CLI
Secure management ● Management via CLI, telnet, Web, SNMP
● Secure management via HTTPS, SSH v1/v2, SNMP v1-3
● Dual software images
● Upgrade via TFTP, FTP and serial download
● Detailed statistics and switch diagnostics
● Management ports physically isolated from data ports
Configuration tracking Complete logging of all changes:
●Identification of the user, time and date stamp, parameters changed
●Changes attempted and denied
●Local log with the option to export data to a remote server
1

6. For more information
To learn more about IBM iFlow Director, visit
ibm.com/networking or contact your IBM marketing
representative or IBM Business Partner.
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011
IBM Systems and Technology Group
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Produced in the United States of America
October 2011
All Rights Reserved
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and BladeCenter are trademarks of
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marks of others.
1
20110026527 tag-based interface between a switching device and servers for
use in frame processing and forwarding 20110026403 traffic management
of client traffic at the ingress location of a data center
2
Any single function within the multifunction service chain may consist of
up to eight blade servers. Multichassis support in Layer-3 mode delivers
scalability to up to 84 servers across up to six BladeCenter chassis.
Please Recycle
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