Dell Launches Its First 40 GbE Force10 S4810 Switch

Shown off by Dell, the Force10 MXL 10/40GbE is designed to be attached to PowerEdge M1000e blade servers.

According to the manufacturer, the device can deal with the most demanding workloads and highest performance needs for large enterprises, government networks, education and research institutions, as well as high performance computing. The company claims that the device can enable up to 10 times greater application performance over the previous switch generation.

The Force10 MXL 10/40GbE comes with integrated Ethernet stacking technology that supports up to six switching modules within single or multiple enclosures to be managed as one logical device. The FlexIO interfaces support 40GbE QSFP+, 10GbE SFP+, and 10GBase-T ports. Users can also take advantage of a converged I/O feature that combines for end-to-end IP storage (iSCSI and Data Center Bridging) into a single 10GbE connection. Dell uses its own Force10 operating system (FTOS) with integrated virtual link trunking (VLT), data center bridging (DCB), as well as auto-provisioning support for virtual LANs to run the switch.

Dell is currently showcasing the switch at Interop Las Vegas 2012.