The Cisco SFS 3504 is a next-generation InfiniBand double-data-rate (DDR) multifabric server switch designed to interconnect server resources to centrally shared storage arrays in storage area networks (SANs) and network attached storage (NAS). Customers with intense storage I/O needs will benefit from higher throughput to centrally shared storage resources by deploying the Cisco SFS 3504 as an aggregation gateway. The Cisco SFS 3504 includes 12 20-Gbps (DDR) InfiniBand ports, a 6-port Gigabit Ethernet InfiniBand-to-Ethernet gateway, and a 4-port 4-Gbps InfiniBand-to-Fiber Channel gateway. A customer can have up to 24 Gigabit Ethernet ports or 16 4-Gbps Fiber Channel ports in one chassis.The Cisco SFS 3504 server switch connects servers to a pool of shared Fiber Channel and Ethernet ports through wire-rate gateways and creates virtual I/O subsystems on each host, including virtual host bus adapters (HBAs) and virtual IP interfaces. The Cisco SFS 3504 gateways are hot-pluggable expansion modules, allowing real-time capacity expansion to both Fiber Channel and Ethernet storage devices with no changes to existing storage or Ethernet infrastructures. By sharing aggregated gateway ports in conjunction with the 20-Gbps InfiniBand connection, clustered servers gain access to more bandwidth than an individually connected server could access.