Brocade Delivers Fabric Networking Support For Windows Server 2012

Brocade has announced support for Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Server 2012 server operating system across all product lines, including the company’s Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) and Ethernet fabric solutions. Together with Windows Server 2012, Brocade networks simplify operations and management for highly virtualised cloud datacentres, which serve as the infrastructure for enterprises and service providers in supporting their key datacentre initiatives such as scale-out server virtualisation, private cloud deployments and software-defined networking (SDN).

To ensure compatibility and enable new networking functionality with Windows Server 2012, Brocade has implemented enhancements across its SAN and Ethernet fabric switching and adapter products that help enable new features such as:

• Virtual Fibre Channel: Simplifies and enables direct access to ultra-reliable, high-performance Fibre Channel SAN storage by multiple-guest virtual machine (VM) partitions in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V environments.

• Dynamic Circuit Network (DCN): Enables Quality of Service (QoS) configuration from a Data Center Bridging (DCB) network. This allows users to initiate ad-hoc dedicated allocation of network bandwidth for high-demand, real-time applications and network services.

• Network Virtualisation Using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE): As a component of Brocade’s network virtualisation strategy, the company is reaffirming its commitment to provide future support for NVGRE in Brocade Ethernet fabric switches.

These new capabilities offer enterprise IT and cloud providers new storage and networking options that help ensure non-stop operations, increase business agility and optimise application performance. Brocade also now supports interoperability and integration with Microsoft System Center 2012. By working closely with the System Center team to test and build integrations, organisations can easily manage any Brocade network as part of a complete Windows-based cloud environment.

“Windows Server 2012 was built from the cloud up and introduces innovations such as software-defined networking and NVGRE for network virtualisation and isolation to help enable cloud deployments,” said Mike Schutz, General Manager, Windows Server Marketing, Microsoft. “From the early design stages of Windows Server 2012, Microsoft worked closely with Brocade to give customers new networking technologies such as software-defined networking via NVGRE and virtual Fibre Channel for more dynamic connectivity to storage resources.”

“To support next-generation cloud environments, many new networking technologies require support in the operating system to help organisations realise the full benefit of highly virtualised IT architectures,” said Jason Nolet, Vice President, Data Center Networking Group, at Brocade. “By working closely with the Microsoft engineering team in the early stages of the new OS’s development, we have ensured that Brocade Ethernet and Fibre Channel fabric solutions work seamlessly with Windows Server 2012 as well as deliver innovative new networking functionality for highly virtualised, cloud-based datacentres.”