It sports two 10G Ethernet connections to switch backplane, and future capabilities include virtualization, scalability, other form factors, and closer coupling with the switch management and forwarding plane, HP says.

The modules runs from Microsoft (security and network access), McAfee (Web security, filtering and IPS), Avaya (unified communications), F5 (application delivery control and load balancing), Riverbed (WAN optimization) and others. The zl module can only run one application per module, however, but two modules can run in one 8200 or 5400 switch chassis.

City College of San Francisco is using the zl module to run a network monitoring application from HP partner InMon Corp.

"InMon's Traffic Sentinel on the module handled all the sFlow reporting we threw at it with lower CPU utilization rates than our production server," says Glen Van Lehn, network engineer at the college.

"This gave me a server with zero footprint -- no extra space (assuming empty slot), no extra electrical outlets or UPS outlets, and no extra Ethernet ports as the two 10 Gigabit interfaces plug directly into the backplane," he says.