Brocade has launched an advanced storage area networking (SAN) hardware and software solution it claims maximizes uptime, dramatically simplifies SAN deployment and management and provides unprecedented levels of visibility and insight into the storage network.
Brocade Fabric Vision technology is made up of features and tools that Brocade said enhance the company’s purpose-built, data center-proven Gen 5 Fibre Channel portfolio to achieve industry-leading reliability, scalability and 16Gbps performance.
It also announced what it claims is the industry’s highest-density fixed-configuration SAN switch along with enhancements to its fabric management software.
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 utilization for data center 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, Brocade said.
Brocade said it is also 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 data centers.
It said it wants to develop open source software that will simplify management of Fibre Channel fabrics in cloud architectures. Next month, it said along with OEM partners, it will be proposing its Fibre Channel SAN Zone Manager blueprint at the OpenStack Summit.
“Our customers run their most critical applications and store their most important data on Brocade Fibre Channel infrastructure to support highly virtualized and emerging cloud-optimized data centers,” Jason Nolet, VP of the Data Center Networking Group at Brocade said.
“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 (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 analyze 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 visualization of bottlenecks and identifying exactly which devices and hosts are impacted
- Customizable 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