In the company's ongoing effort to expand its blade business, IBM is introducing new management software that <A HREF="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2218387,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594">adds I/O virtualization to its BladeCenter portfolio.</A> Open Fabric Manager, which IBM announced Nov. 19, will allow IT administrators to monitor and control I/O virtualization across 100 BladeCenter chassis, containing 1,400 individual blades, from a single console. The new tool supports a number of different I/O fabrics for network and storage, including Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, Ethernet, iSCSI and SAS (serial-attached SCSI).

The software automates the interaction between the blades, storage and the network. Once the connections, such as the MAC (media access control) address, are established, the management software then controls the interaction between the chassis and the network. If one blade is removed and another blade is plugged into the chassis to replace it, the software automatically makes the connection to the SAN (storage area network) or the LAN.