IBM Resells Brocade 10-port and 20-port 8Gb SAN Switch Modules

Blades have made inroads into enterprise data centers by delivering higher density with a lower footprint and reduced costs for power and cooling compared to traditional rack servers. Now with multicore environments, there is an increased need for faster I/O such as 8 Gb Fibre Channel.

Brocade 10-port and 20-port 8Gb SAN Switch Modules
for IBM BladeCenter
The Brocade 10-port and 20-port 8Gb SAN Switch Modules for IBM BladeCenter deliver embedded Fibre Channel switching with the industry’s fastest Fibre Channel throughput performance (8 Gb). This latest iteration of Fibre Channel speeds can deliver business benefits in virtually any server / storage workload, such as e-mail and database. The switches can be hot-plugged into the BladeCenter chassis, thereby helping keep your operations running. Because the switches are integrated, they free up rack space, reduce cabling, and have no need for SFP modules on the host side. The resulting savings is enough to cover much of your infrastructure cost, for example the BladeCenter chassis. The accompanying management application enables you to set up and deploy the switches quickly, while integration into IBM Director ensures that your management costs are kept optimized.

Brocade Enterprise 20-port 8Gb SAN Switch Module
The Brocade Enterprise 20-port 8Gb SAN Switch Module comes with Brocade’s latest SAN management software to improve your SAN fabric management at a lower cost. This switch with included software will greatly benefit those customers who have Brocade SANs and are planning to upgrade their networks to the higher performance capability. The Brocade tool set includes Server Application Optimization, Adaptive Networking, Enterprise Group Management, Fabric Watch, ISL Trunking, Advanced Performance Monitoring, and Extended Fabric.

Function benefits:

Server Application Optimization – Allows Virtual Machine QoS, Authentication, and Monitoring from adapter through SAN to allow greater utilization of VMs per server blades
Adaptive Networking – Leverages device-to-device QoS bandwidth, Ingress Rate Limiting for slow storage devices, and Traffic Isolation to manage performance across interswitch links
Enterprise Group Management – Enables centralized group management of Brocade fabrics (downloads, configurations …) when using Brocade Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM) software
Fabric Watch – Monitors and creates alerts based on the health of switch and SAN fabric elements such as link failure, CRC, and performance thresholds
ISL Trunking – Combines up to six ISLs into a single, logical 96 Gbps full duplex trunk with greater performance and reliability
Advanced Performance Monitoring – Provides end-to-end visibility into fabric performance for simplified SAN planning, tuning, and management
Extended Fabric – Extends Fibre Channel links beyond traditional distance limitations to over 400 km for business continuity solutions