Abstract: A blade server is disclosed, comprised of multiple server blades that plug into a midplane from the front, and an I/O router including multiple IOCs (one for each server blade) and an embedded switch that plugs into the midplane from the back. The midplane carries PCI Express lanes for connecting the server blades to the I/O router. Each of the IOCs is physically couplable to a server blade over a separate PCI Express connection in the midplane, preserving existing driver compatibility, and is coupled to the embedded switch via an internal FC link within the I/O router. Each embedded switch may contain full fabric services ports. Alternatively, the full fabric services may be left out, and N_PORT virtualization or FC_AL stealth mode may be employed to allow the embedded switch to interoperate transparently with the external fabric switch and eliminate the third hop in the blade server chassis.