To remain competitive, IT organizations must keep pace with ever-increasing workloads without a similar increase in their budgets or resources. While virtualization has provided some relief by enabling the benefits of faster deployment and consolidation, it tends to put additional stress on data center networks. The HP SN3000B 16Gb Fibre Channel Switch meets the needs of hyper-scale, private cloud storage environments by delivering market-leading 16Gb Fibre Channel technology and capabilities that support highly virtualized environments. Designed to enable maximum flexibility and investment protection, the SN3000B switch scales from 12 to 24 ports and supports 4, 8, or 16 Gb/s speeds in an efficiently designed 1U package. It also provides a simplified deployment process and a point-and-click user interface making it powerful and easy to use. It offers low-cost access to SAN technology while providing "pay-as-you-grow" scalability to meet the needs of an evolving storage environment. Flexible Fabrics High Speed 16Gb optimized inter switch links (ISLs) provide twice the performance as previous generation Fibre Channel switches. The net result is there are fewer links, fewer cables, fewer ports and less power for the same performance. High Performing Operating speeds of 16, 8, and 4 Gb/s offer a wide range of performance for flexibility in connectivity options and investment protection. Operational Simplicity Diagnostic Ports (D_Ports) are a new port type that enable administrators to identify and isolate optics and cable problems, reducing fabric deployment and diagnostic times. Organizations also can use D_Ports to run a variety of tests for ports, SFPs, and cables for faults, latency, and distance. SAN Network Advisor, offered as an option, provides comprehensive management of data center SAN fabrics, including configuration, monitoring, diagnostics, best-practices validation, and management of B-series Directors, Switches, and Host Bus Adapters (HBAs). Cloud Optimized Performance Provides aggregate 768Gb full-duplex throughput and any eight ports can be trunked for 128Gb Inter-Switch Links (ISLs). Exchange-based Dynamic Path Selection (DPS) optimizes fabric-wide performance and load balancing by automatically routing data to the most efficient available path.