The FlashBlade//S500 connects to the NCP converged network using 16 400GbE ports. Each XFM module, shown below, includes 8 of these ports. Since XFMs are deployed in pairs, the total number of ports doubles to 16.
Diagram 2. XFM port map
Each FlashBlade//S500 is connected to disparate pairs of NVIDIA Spectrum SN5600 Ethernet switches as needed, based on workload distribution.
Diagram 3. Aggregate connection uplinks from XFMs to the NCP HPS converged network NVIDIA Spectrum SN5600 Ethernet switches
FlashBlade//S500 XFMs require an active-active port channel to be configured on the NVIDIA Spectrum™ SN5600 Ethernet switches to ensure proper distribution of data traffic. Once connected to an NVIDIA NCP converged network via a pair of NVIDIA Spectrum SN5600 Ethernet switches, changes to the number of chassis or blades within the FlashBlade//S500 do not affect the network connectivity and remain transparent to the NVIDIA converged fabric.
Aggregated data traffic connections to the FlashBlade//S500 are passed from the XFMs to the chassis and then to the blades within each chassis, fully distributing all connections across all blades in the system. All blades within the FlashBlade//S500 have access to all storage across the FlashBlade//S500 and can respond to any client request. See Diagram 4.
Diagram 4. FlashBlade//S500 and NVIDIA Spectrum SN5600 HPS network connectivity