The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3120 represents the next generation networking solution for blade server environments. Built upon Cisco's proven hardware and IOS software, the Cisco Catalyst 3120 is engineered with unique technologies specifically designed to meet the rigors of the blade server infrastructure. Both switches are designed to deliver scaleable, high performance, highly resilient connectivity while supporting ongoing data center initiatives to reduce server infrastructure complexity, management and TCO.

With the Cisco CBS 3120 series switches, HP and Cisco introduce a technology unique to blade server enclosures that allows multiple switches to act as a single entity. This switch stacking technology takes the individual physical switches within a rack and treats them as one logical switch. This innovation is the foundation of the switches' ability to simplify operations and management. Additional IOS upgrades make the CBS 3120 extremely versatile.

Cisco Stacking Technology

• Up to nine switches can be combined into a single logical switch


Multiple IOS options

• Base IOS contains the most popular feature set including PVLANs, IPv6 host support and most Layer 3 routing protocols


Greater manageability

• The entire stack is managed as a single switch and looks as one single switch to provisioning software


Security

• Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) is a logical network topology configured on top of a physical network topology which conserves bandwidth and improves security by limiting traffic to specific groups of devices