Dell announced today Dell FlexAddress, which allows any M-Series blade enclosure to abstract the Fibre Channel World Wide Name (WWN) and Ethernet/iSCSI Media Access Control (MAC) from the blade hardware and tie it to a M1000e chassis slot.
Dell FlexAddress is managed by the Chassis Management Controller (CMC) in the PowerEdge M1000e. It’s agnostic to the IO module, which avoids having to switch switches and should, claims Dell, yield improved network and storage connectivity at a lower cost than of HP Virtual Connect by “enabling automated deployment configuration in advance and network stacking—this speeds network configuration and management by virtualizing the switches across up to 8 chassis (up to 128 servers), making them appear as a single virtual switch.”
FlexAddress is also compatible with all Dell pass-through modules.