Lenovo ThinkSystem NE2552E Flex Switch

The Lenovo ThinkSystem NE2552E Flex Switch is part of the Lenovo Flex System embedded blade solution family, paired with ThinkSystem QLogic Ethernet adapters, providing the high-speed network connectivity needed for Data Warehouse, SAP, Cloud, and Virtual Desktop solutions.

The Lenovo ThinkSystem NE2552E Flex Switch is an embedded switch module for Flex System that is designed for the data center to provide 10 Gb/25 Gb/50 Gb Ethernet server connectivity with 50 Gb/100 Gb Ethernet upstream links. It is an enterprise class Layer 2 and Layer 3 full featured switch that delivers line-rate, high-bandwidth switching, filtering, and traffic queuing without delaying data. Large data center-grade buffers help keep traffic moving, while the numerous high-availability software features help provide high availability for business sensitive traffic.

The NE2552E Flex Switch has 28 internal ports that can be configured as 28x10 GbE ports, 28x25 GbE ports, 14x50 GbE ports, or certain combinations of 10 GbE, 25 GbE, and 50 GbE ports.

Supported capabilities and features of these switches include the following:
  • High performance: the 10 Gb/25 Gb/50 Gb Ethernet NE2552E Flex Switch with 50 Gb/100 Gb Ethernet uplinks provides a combination of low latency, non-blocking line-rate switching, and ease of management.
  • Lower power and better cooling: the embedded design of the NE2552E Flex Switch helps reduce data center air conditioning costs and power consumption.
  • Layer 3 functionality: the NE2552E Flex Switch includes Layer 3 functionality, which provides security and performance benefits, as inter-VLAN traffic stays within the switch. This switch also provides the full range of Layer 3 protocols from static routes for technologies, such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) for enterprise customers.
  • Converged fabric: The NE2552E Flex Switch supports Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) which helps enable customers to combine storage, messaging traffic, VoIP, video, and other data on a common data center lossless Ethernet infrastructure. As a result, customers can deploy a single server interface for multiple data types, which can simplify the deployment and management of server network connectivity while maintaining the high availability and robustness that is required for storage transactions.
  • Fault tolerance: The NE2552E Flex Switch learns alternate routes automatically and performs faster convergence if there is a link or switch failure.
  • Seamless interoperability: The NE2552E Flex Switch performs seamlessly with other vendors' upstream switches.
  • Virtualization: The NE2552E Flex Switch can help customers address I/O requirements for multiple NICs while reducing cost and complexity. By using Unified Fabric Port, customers can partition a physical NIC into multiple virtual ports (2 - 8 vPorts) and create a virtual pipe between the adapter and the switch for improved performance, availability, and security. Switch Partition (SPAR) allows clients to virtualize the switch with partitions that isolate communications for multi-tenancy environments.
  • Transparent networking capability: With a simple configuration change to "easy connect" mode, the NE2552E Flex Switch becomes a transparent network device that is invisible to the core and eliminates network administration concerns of Spanning Tree Protocol configuration and interoperability and VLAN assignments and avoids any possible loops. By emulating a host NIC to the data center core, it accelerates the provisioning of VMs by eliminating the need to configure the typical access switch parameters.
  • Advanced network management: The NE2552E Flex Switch integrates with Lenovo XClarity (planned for July 2018) for centralized data center management. Integration with third-party automation, deployment, and monitoring tools, such as VMware vRealize Orchestrator and Log Insight, Ansible DevOps tools, and OpenStack cloud, provides rapid resource provisioning and simplified configuration management across the network.
The following documentation is available for this switch: