Voltaire today announced that Voltaire’s new 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch, 40 Gb/s QDR InfiniBand director switch, and Unified Fabric Manager software (UFM) are available from HP as part of the HP Unified Cluster Portfolio. Known for its InfiniBand switching leadership, Voltaire recently entered the Ethernet networking market with the introduction of the Vantage 8500, a high-density, Layer 2 core, 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch.

“The addition of Voltaire’s scale-out Ethernet, 40 Gb/s InfiniBand director switches, and UFM software to HP’s Unified Cluster Portfolio provides customers designing clouds, large HPC systems and next generation, virtualized data centers, a choice of networking and management options that deliver scalability and performance in an efficient, cost-effective manner,” said Ronnie Kenneth, CEO and Chairman, Voltaire. “HP’s decision to offer both our 10 Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand switching platforms is further confirmation of the unique capabilities these products bring to scale-out data centers and HPC.”

“Customers building scale-out computing environments need high-performance, high-density switches that can efficiently scale from a hundred to thousands of servers,” said Steve Cumings, director of marketing, Scalable Computing and Infrastructure, HP. “Voltaire’s 10 GbE and 40 Gb/s InfiniBand switches, coupled with HP scale-out servers, storage, edge switches and middleware, creates a technology infrastructure that delivers flexibility as well as higher performance for demanding computing applications.”

The Voltaire Vantage 8500 switch is a 10 Gigabit Ethernet, high-density Layer 2 core switch that addresses the key networking requirements of virtualized, scale-out data centers. The Vantage 8500 features less than 1 microsecond latency and low 10 watts per port power consumption, delivering unmatched scalability and the lowest solution cost, power consumption, and latency available in the market today. The switch interoperates with HP ProCurve server edge and blade switches and has a unique capability to enable simplified, flat, scale-out fabrics. Unlike traditional hierarchical network designs, the data center manager is able to cluster up to twelve Vantage 8500 switches, thereby expanding their data center to many thousands of servers while preserving the same efficiency and price-per-port, without degrading performance or latency.

Beginning today, Voltaire’s recently introduced Grid Director™ 4700, a 40 Gb/s QDR InfiniBand director switch is also available from HP. The switch features 324 ports of 40 Gb/s InfiniBand connectivity, with the option to double capacity to 648 ports using Voltaire’s HyperScale fabric boards. Its unique stackable architecture enables customers to build larger configurations into the hundreds and thousands of nodes, with lower latency and greater simplicity than alternative solutions.

In addition to offering Voltaire switching fabrics, HP also recently became one of the first global systems vendors to offer Voltaire’s UFM software. Used in combination with Voltaire’s 20 or 40 Gb/s InfiniBand switches, UFM software optimizes performance and management for high-performance scale-out data centers. Voltaire’s UFM software provides an unparalleled level of visibility into the fabric, which is extremely valuable to IT managers running complex environments that may include virtualization or multiple applications with varying service level requirements.