New Brocade VDX Switch models and zero-touch virtual machine discovery, configuration and mobility enhance the industry’s only shipping Ethernet Fabric portfolio to increase business agility and simplify operations
Today at VMworld, Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD), the leader in fabric-based data center networking solutions, today announced it is delivering more choice, flexibility and automation to customers deploying virtualization and cloud IT infrastructures. Specifically, the company announced enhancements to the Brocade® Ethernet fabric portfolio that utilizes Brocade VCS™ technology. These enhancements are designed to increase scalability, improve virtual machine (VM) awareness, further simplify management and significantly reduce operational overhead.
The new additions and enhancements include:
- New VCS technology extensions that automate VM discovery, configuration and mobility within Brocade Ethernet fabrics
- Increases in Ethernet fabric scalability by doubling the number of switches within a VCS fabric, allowing customers to easily and quickly scale out their data center networks
- The new Brocade VDX 6730 Data Center Switch, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switch that protects existing SAN infrastructure investments by seamlessly bridging VCS Ethernet fabrics to Fibre Channel SAN fabrics
- The new Brocade VDX 6710 Data Center Switch, a high-density, 1/10 GbE switch that provides a low-cost entry point for VCS fabric technology by enabling 1 GbE servers to connect to Ethernet fabric environments as well as classic data center LAN deployments
- Unified management of Brocade Ethernet fabrics with other data center LAN, SAN and application delivery infrastructures in a single enterprise-class application: Brocade Network Advisor
With these new enhancements, Brocade is delivering Ethernet fabric integration that uses Brocade Network Advisor to work with the VMware vCenter™ Server virtualization and cloud infrastructure management platform, reducing overall networking administration costs and unplanned downtime. Brocade VCS fabric uses Brocade Network Advisor to work with with VMware vCenter Server so that VMs running within an Ethernet fabric are automatically configured based on information stored in VMware vCenter Server and automatically maintain their connectivity services as VMs move within the fabric. In contrast, configuring today’s legacy networks for virtualized data centers can be an error-prone, time-consuming manual process for most organizations. This new VCS fabric enhancement offers a secure connection to VMware vCenter Server to eliminate those problems and ensure consistency between server and network configurations.
Brocade has also enhanced its Brocade Network Advisor, the industry’s only unified network management platform for IP and SAN environments, to improve operational simplicity by allowing all VCS nodes in a fabric to be managed as a single logical switch as well as enabling the ability to associate VMware port groups to port profiles across fabrics and VMware vCenter Server instances. These enhancements are designed to ensure successful VM migrations within and across Ethernet fabrics.
“Brocade is known for building efficient data center networks that just work. Ethernet fabrics based on Brocade VCS technology are highly differentiated, providing unmatched automation and simplicity compared to traditional, outdated network architectures,” said Jason Nolet, vice president of Data Center and Enterprise Networking at Brocade. “Our differentiation is based on 15 years of expertise in building high-performance fabrics for the world’s most demanding data centers. With this second major wave of Ethernet fabric capabilities, we are extending our lead in this important new technology category and delivering greater agility to our customers through superior simplicity, automation and reliability.”
Expanding the Brocade VDX Data Center Switch Family
Brocade is expanding the award-winning Brocade VDX product family with two new switch models designed to deliver a comprehensive solution for future-proofing data center networks, cost effectively supporting 1 GbE server and storage environments and allowing Ethernet-based server access to all the data stored on Fibre Channel SANs. The Brocade VDX switches support VCS fabric technology, enabling enterprises to gracefully evolve their traditional network architectures to an Ethernet fabric in order to better support virtualized and cloud-optimized data centers.
According to Gartner research1, “The ongoing cost and growth pressures on the enterprise data center continue to stress the data center network. The data center network is undergoing significant and, in some cases, radical changes, where network planners will have to consider and plan for several network and technology changes. As we see it, these changes will evolve the network from the traditional tiered-tree topology to a flat-meshed Layer 2 network topology architecture.”
Brocade’s leadership position in Ethernet fabrics has been bolstered by rapid customer adoption for the Brocade VDX 6720 Data Center Switch, which began shipping in December 2010, and is now deployed globally in numerous production environments. Sales have continued to grow quarter-over-quarter, exceeding the company’s sales expectations.
“By standardizing on Brocade and its Ethernet fabric technology, we have simplified management while increasing performance and agility by an order of magnitude,” said Jorge Montoto, chief technology officer at Tissat, a Valencia, Spain-based cloud managed service provider that currently deploys Brocade VDX 6720 switches in its award-winning Class IV data center and will be the first company to deploy the new Brocade VDX switch models. “When building our new facility, we wanted to be able to provide both Ethernet and Fibre Channel support across a common network to support VM mobility, but at the same time radically simplify management and operational processes. Brocade Ethernet fabric technology has exceeded our requirements.”
Brocade delivers highly differentiated features and functionality through Brocade VCS fabric technology, allowing organizations to enhance their classic hierarchical network architectures and deploy flatter scale-out fabrics for virtualized data centers to meet changing business requirements. Brocade VCS fabric technology provides automated VM mobility without manual port configuration and reconfiguration. Sharing intelligence automatically between fabric nodes enables the entire fabric to be managed more efficiently, significantly reducing operational overhead.
Agility and operational simplicity for data center networks architected with VCS fabric technology are further enhanced by the Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter, which is a new class of server adapter with each Brocade AnyIO universal port supporting Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Ethernet connectivity for flexible server I/O consolidation and long-term investment protection. The Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter delivers wire-speed performance for both 16 Gbps Fibre Channel and 10 GbE, and more than 1 million IOPS for storage applications. In addition, it unifies the management of adapter, SAN and LAN resources via a single interface with Brocade Network Advisor.
Availability and Pricing
The new Brocade Ethernet fabric solutions will be available beginning in calendar Q3 2011. For pricing information, please contact your local Brocade value-added reseller or OEM.
Partner Quote
“Cloud computing has caused a paradigm shift, which has profoundly changed the way in which IT supports business processes. Integration of Brocade Ethernet fabric technology into Fujitsu’s Dynamic Infrastructures architecture will enable our customers to further enhance the reliability, flexibility and performance delivered by our solutions to enable them to achieve their key business objectives.”
Jens-Peter Seick, Senior Vice President, Product Development Group, Fujitsu Technology Solutions
Videos
- Jason Nolet, Vice President of Data Center and Enterprise Networking at Brocade
Photos
- Brocade VDX 6710
- Brocade VDX 6730
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33437642@N02/6090300290/in/photostream
- Brocade VDX Data Center Switch Family
- Brocade Network Advisor (screen capture)
Brocade Global Services
Brocade Global Services has the expertise to help organizations build scalable, efficient cloud infrastructures. Leveraging 15 years of expertise in storage, networking and virtualization, Brocade Global Services delivers world-class professional services, technical support, and education, enabling organizations to maximize their Brocade investments, accelerate new technology deployments and optimize the performance of networking infrastructures.
About Brocade
Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD) networking solutions help the world’s leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)
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1Eight Key Impacts on Your Data Center LAN Network, Bjarne Munch, Gartner, April 21, 2011, Pg. 2
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