Channel Register

Cisco finds brand for Topspin gear, puts server switches on sale

Insert tennis pun here

By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View • Get more from this author

Posted in PC Builder, 28th September 2005 19:41 GMT

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Nearly five months after completing its purchase of Topspin Communications, Cisco has managed to put the acquired server networking gear up for sale.

Cisco has presented the old Topspin kit as the SFS 7000 Series Infiniband Server Switches, the SFS 3000 Series Multifabric Server Switches and the Infiniband Host Channel Adapters. In addition, customers will find Version 3.0 of the VFrame software that has been on the market from Topspin since May of 2004.

Cisco pitches the SFS or Server Fabric Switch hardware as the virtualization answer for companies building out server clusters and grid computing centers. In Cisco's perfect world, companies will buy its Fibre Channel, Ethernet and Infiniband switches and then use the SFS gear to link all this hardware and tap VFrame for management.

As the horse's mouth puts it, "A server switch is a new class of data-center infrastructure product that provides a platform to interconnect discreet server resources into a high-performance fabric, connects that server fabric with shared pools of I/O and storage resources, and maps the resources to deliver virtual 'compute services' based on application or business policy and priority."

Topspin managed to tempt a number of high-profile OEMs - Sun Microsystems, Dell, HP and IBM - with its Infiniband pitch. But all of those server makers along with major storage and networking players also want to virtualize data centers on their own via various software and hardware products.

As you can see, Cisco hasn't found the time yet to Photoshop the old Topspin photos and add its SFS brand. It does, however, have plenty of information on the gear available here, correct branding and all. ®

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