Brocade Announces New Fabric Vision Technology

Brocade, the fabric-based datacentre networking solutions provider, has announced Brocade Fabric Vision technology, an advanced storage area networking (SAN) hardware and software solution that maximises uptime, dramatically simplifies SAN deployment and management, and provides unprecedented levels of visibility and insight into the storage network. Brocade Fabric Vision technology is a collection of breakthrough features and tools that enhance the company’s purpose-built, datacentre-proven Gen 5 Fibre Channel portfolio to achieve reliability, scalability and 16 Gbps performance.

Brocade also announced high-density fixed-configuration SAN switch along with enhancements to its fabric management software. The new switch, the Brocade 6520 Switch, bolsters a comprehensive portfolio of Gen 5 Fibre Channel modular, fixed port and embedded solutions, and further distances Brocade ahead of competitors with more than a year of broad customer deployment of products based on the 16 Gbps Fibre Channel standard.

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Based on continued strong customer demand and market growth for Brocade Fibre Channel SAN products, coupled with its 17-year heritage as the Fibre Channel innovator, Brocade stated its commitment to develop new SAN solutions based on components that conform to the soon-to-be-ratified Gen 6 Fibre Channel industry standard. In addition, the company is working closely with its storage partners to lead efforts in the OpenStack community to ensure that ongoing customer investments in Fibre Channel SANs are protected as enterprises and service providers move to cloud orchestration frameworks, such as OpenStack, in their datacentres.

“Our customers run their most critical applications and store their most important data on Brocade Fibre Channel infrastructure to support highly virtualised and emerging cloud-optimised datacentres. They depend on Brocade to continue innovating and developing solutions that solve real-world problems today and that can adapt to evolving requirements into the future,” said Jason Nolet, Vice President of the Data Center Networking Group at Brocade. “Today’s announcement underscores our investment and laser-focus on leading the Fibre Channel industry with innovative technology and solutions built upon standards-based networking and management.”

Brocade Fabric Vision technology is an advanced hardware and software solution that combines capabilities from Brocade hardware, the embedded operating system (Brocade Fabric OS) and management software (Brocade Network Advisor). Leveraging innovative diagnostics, monitoring and management capabilities, Brocade Fabric Vision technology provides administrators with the ability to anticipate and preempt problems before they impact operations, accelerate application deployments and dramatically reduce operational costs—critical factors in today’s fast-paced, budget-constrained business climate.

Brocade Fabric Vision technology includes:

• Policy-based tools that simplify fabric-wide threshold configuration and monitoring

• Management tools that allow administrators to identify, monitor and analyse specific application data flows, without the need for expensive, disruptive, third-party tools

• Monitoring tools that detect network congestion and latency in the fabric, providing visualisation of bottlenecks and identifying exactly which devices and hosts are impacted

• Customisable health and performance dashboard views, providing all critical information in one screen

• Cable and optic diagnostic features that simplify the deployment and support of large fabrics

Continuous innovation has been the hallmark of the Fibre Channel industry. Efforts are well underway by the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) T11 Technical Committee, with technical leadership from Brocade, to finalise the standards for Gen 6 Fibre Channel (32 Gbps) by the end of 2013. Brocade has already initiated research and development for Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology to address the evolving storage networking needs of enterprise datacentres.

Brocade is also working with the OpenStack Foundation to develop open source software that will simplify management of Fibre Channel fabrics in cloud architectures. Next month, Brocade and its OEM partners will be proposing the Fibre Channel SAN Zone Manager blueprint at the OpenStack Summit. Additionally, Brocade was involved in the Fibre Channel Volume Manager blueprint proposal that will be included in the new OpenStack Grizzly software, also scheduled for release next month.

Enterprise IT continues to face unprecedented data and application growth, increased infrastructure complexity and datacentre space constraints. In addition, IT managers are looking for ways to build SAN fabrics that can scale to meet business demands, while increasing reliability, simplifying management and reducing costs.

The new Brocade 6520 Switch addresses each of these issues with 96 Fibre Channel ports in a 2U form factor, delivering industry-leading port density and space utilisation for datacentre consolidation projects. In addition to Gen 5 Fibre Channel advanced functionality, reliability and performance, the density of the Brocade 6520 means fewer inter-switch links, fewer cables and fewer switches to manage—resulting in more reliable fabrics and lower overall costs.