InfiniSwitch Unveils Integrated InfiniBand Solution

Alisa Nessler, president and CEO of InfiniSwitch, said IBM also certified the new products for its Server Proven Program after testing them for its xSeries 335, 345 and 440 servers.

InfiniSwitch shipped an InfiniBand switch and a dual-port InfiniBand host channel adapter (HCA), along with management software it received as part of its acquisition of Lane15 last month.

Together, the products allow customers and solution providers to provide an end-to-end, integrated InfiniBand solution for less than $1,000 per port, Nessler said. "This is a huge announcement not only for us, but also for the industry," she said. "Everyone has been waiting for a tier-one vendor to certify InfiniBand products, especially after the lukewarm reception InfiniBand has received so far."

The InfiniBand switch fits 12 or 24 ports into a 1U footprint and offers high-availability features such as redundant cards and hot-swap power supplies, cooling and switch cards, Nessler said. It lists for about $10,000 for the 12-port version and $14,500 for the 24-port version.

The HCA connects to industry-standard servers to allow clustering using InfiniBand, Nessler said. The list price for the adapter is $750.

Tying them together is the Lane15 Fabric Manager. The software scales to up to several thousand nodes and provides auto discovery of nodes, plug-and-play capability, GUI and command-line interface, and automatic recovery, Nessler said. It also integrates with legacy enterprise management consoles such as IBM Tivoli, Hewlett-Packard's OpenView and Computer Associates International's UniCenter, she said.

InfiniSwitch currently works with a handful of solution providers but is looking to add a few more to its list of partners, Nessler said. The company is looking for solution providers that work with high-performance clustering for applications such as biological IT, engineering research, oil and gas, CAD, and classic engineering and scientific applications, she said.