Brocade advances replication and disaster recovery capabilities

Enterprises today face significant challenges from the explosive growth of data and application workload traffic driven by virtualisation. To address these challenges and to provide near-zero downtime and continuous application availability, Brocade has expanded its Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN portfolio with the addition of the Brocade 7840 Extension Switch, which delivers a six-fold increase in performance, along with unprecedented availability and simplified management between remote data centres. The solution also doubles the performance, at half the cost, compared to WAN optimisation appliances that are often mismatched when deployed as a DR alternative.

To complement the new switch, Brocade has also extended Fabric Vision technology between data centres to provide new levels of control and visibility to pinpoint problems faster and avoid unplanned outages. This new functionality reduces the complexity and operating costs for remote data centres, helping them to achieve always-on operations with maximum application uptime.

“Managing multiple data centres is inherently complex and time-intensive,” said Jack Rondoni, vice president, Storage Networking, at Brocade. “By deploying the Brocade 7840 Extension Switch with enhanced Fabric Vision technology, organisations can create better solutions that meet or exceed their requirements and expectations for faster replication and recovery to achieve always-on operations.”

In addition, the company also announced the Brocade FC16-64, a new port blade for the Brocade DCX® 8510 Director that provides the industry’s highest density and most energy-efficient connectivity to maximise system utilisation and reduce both capital and operating costs. The new blade increases Brocade DCX 8510 scalability up to 512 Gen 5 Fibre Channel ports with a total system bandwidth of 10.2 Terabits per second (Tbps). Each blade consumes 70 percent less power compared to competitive offerings, while simultaneously increasing port density by 33 percent and reducing cabling requirements by 75 percent—greatly improving operational efficiency.

Brocade 7840 Improves Enterprise Disaster Recovery Readiness
Furthering the company’s reputation for innovation in storage fabrics, Brocade 7840 switches offer both the industry’s first 40 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and 10 Gbps FCIP connectivity options, with data throughput speeds that are at least six times faster than competitive solutions. Brocade 7840 systems deliver an unprecedented 80 Gbps of application data throughput while securing data flows over distance with 256-bit IPsec encryption without a performance penalty.

In addition, Brocade 7840 switches significantly improve replication performance over distance using data compression and disk and tape protocol acceleration.

Other advanced extension features that maximise availability and increase overall network reliability include:
• Non-disruptive Upgrades: Facilitate always-on business operations and maximise application uptime with the industry’s only WAN-side non-disruptive firmware upgrades.
• Extension Trunking: Combines multiple WAN connections into a single, logical, high-bandwidth trunk, providing active load balancing and network resilience to protect against WAN link failures.
• Adaptive Rate Limiting: Dynamically adjusts bandwidth sharing between minimum and maximum rate limits to optimize bandwidth utilisation and maintain WAN performance during disruptions.

Fabric Vision Technology Enables Long-Distance Monitoring, Management, and Diagnostics
Unique to the Brocade Fibre Channel SAN family, and now extended over distance, Fabric Vision technology is a hardware and software solution that helps enterprises accelerate new deployments, optimise resources, dramatically reduce operational costs, and overcome infrastructure complexity between data centres.
With Fabric Vision technology, administrators have new tools and automation capabilities that simplify day-to-day management tasks, increase productivity, and enable proactive monitoring of critical metrics between data centres to automatically detect WAN anomalies, help ensure performance, and avoid unplanned downtime.

Key features for DR include:
• Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS): Simplifies monitoring with policy-based automation between data centres to automatically detect WAN anomalies and avoid unplanned downtime.
• Flow Vision: Accelerates troubleshooting of end-to-end I/O flows over distance with integrated diagnostics and eliminates the need for expensive third-party tools.
• Dashboards: Quickly discover and resolve WAN network issues via root-cause analysis and point-in-time playback. In addition, administrators can view all critical information from thin-client, Web-accessible dashboards, which saves significant administrative time and effort.