Brocade Qualification Program for SSD System Vendors

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. announced continued innovation in storage networking to support solid state storage system vendors who have adopted FC as the protocol of choice to optimize application performance in enterprise SANing (SAN) environments.

In addition to a new solid state storage system qualification program, the company also announced support for recent launch of Gen 6 FC by the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA).

Solid state storage vendors continue to choose FC as the networking protocol of choice by solid state storage system vendors because of its reliability, stability and ability to optimize application performance and availability. Today, a majority of solid state storage system vendors are now shipping systems with FC connectivity including Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp, Nimbus Data, Pure Storage, Tegile Systems and Violin Memory.

Some vendors are shipping solid state storage systems with Gen 5 connectivity and Brocade expects this trend to continue. In addition, HBA companies, including Emulex and QLogic, are also now shipping Gen 5 FC-enabled products with increased functionality and performance designed for solid state storage.

To support this growing trend of solid state storage system vendors using FC, Brocade has launched a new qualification program, Brocade Solid State Ready, to help ensure seamless interoperability and optimum performance with solid state storage in Brocade SAN fabrics.

The program provides solid state storage system testing for proper operation across multiple fabrics, heterogeneous servers and HBAs in Brocade fabrics. It is designed for all solid state storage system providers.

“As our customer base increasingly moves to deploy solid state storage in their SAN environments, they are demanding FC as a requirement to meet increased application performance levels,” said Jack Rondoni, VP, data center storage and solutions, Brocade. “Because of this trend, our goal is to encourage solid state storage system vendors to complete qualification of their products in the Brocade Solid State Ready program so that our customers, which represent the vast majority of the global installed base of storage networks, can enjoy optimum performance and seamless deployment into their existing SAN fabrics.“