A smart network switch is a "blade" server that supports special applications such as protocol sessions, remote mirrors,
Network Security,tape
emulation, and internal network files and data sharing. From the
architecture of the extra processing capability for each port and the
high integration of the bandwidth between the blade servers to the
relatively simple architecture of each server is equipped with a
dedicated processor, memory and the input and output functions for
communication between various ports, the smart network switch has many
different architectures.
Different businesses use different
words to name their switches, there are "smart exchange", "application
exchange", "organization exchange" and so on, which are used to make
themselves outstanding in competition. Cisco's MDS 9000 series, for
example, has blades that support Veritas volume managers and IBM SAN
volume controllers (SVCs). These blades can coexist with other blades,
including fiber channel ports and IP servers. The Brocade 7420
multi-protocol router is another example of advanced smart switches,
which was originally used to support protocol conversion (from
minicomputer interface to fiber channel), SAN segmentation and routing,
and IP based remote storage that uses the FCIP protocol.
Other
switches support special blades, these servers cover everything from
Maxxan to Marranti. CNT and McData also announced their plans to support
special blades. Since the word "smart" can have many different
understandings in the field of data network communication, we should
first define the "smart switch" or "smart network managed switch".
Before defining such a type of switch, we should start with a
traditional switch product category to understand why there is a strong
demand for such a product category on the market.
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