Brocade unveils new switch, McData interoperability

Brocade on Thursday unveiled a Fibre Channel switch and enhancements to its storage-area network (SAN) assessment software that are interoperable in McData environments.

The company, which closed its acquisition of rival McData last month, introduced the Brocade 5000 Switch, a 4G-bit/sec. Fibre Channel switch that is interoperable in both Brocade and McData SANs. It is the first Brocade switch that can operate in both environments.

The switch is intended to “fulfill the company’s commitment of providing investment protection and extension for customers with existing McDATA storage networks,”a Brocade spokesperson said.

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Brocade on Thursday unveiled a Fibre Channel switch and enhancements to its storage-area network (SAN) assessment software that are interoperable in McData environments.

The company, which closed its acquisition of rival McData last month, introduced the Brocade 5000 Switch, a 4G-bit/sec. Fibre Channel switch that is interoperable in both Brocade and McData SANs. It is the first Brocade switch that can operate in both environments.

The switch is intended to “fulfill the company’s commitment of providing investment protection and extension for customers with existing McDATA storage networks,”a Brocade spokesperson said.

The Brocade 5000 Switch has Port on Demand capability, allowing it to scale from 16 to 32 ports. It is available in a rack-mountable 1U (1.75-inch-high) enclosure.

The switch also features E-Port operability for connectivity into Brocade environments and M-Enterprise OS capability for connection to McData switches and Fibre Channel director-level switches. It also features FICON capability for connection to mainframe environments and can interoperate in Windows, Linux, Solaris and IBM AIX environments.

The Brocade 5000 is compatible with Brocade 1, 2 and 4G-bit/sec switches. The switch features a nonblocking architecture, in which as many as 32 ports can be concurrently active at 4G-bit/sec full duplex and provide an aggregate bandwidth of 256G-bits/sec.

The switch is managed via a command line interface, Brocade Web Tools, Brocade Enterprise Fabric Connectivity Manager (EFCM) or Brocade Fabric Manager.

The Brocade 5000 Switch is expected to be available the first of next month through OEM partners EMC, Dell, Hitachi Data Systems and IBM.

Brocade also added change-management capabilities and the ability to monitor McData switches to its SAN Health Professional. Brocade SAN Health Professional software, which now can monitor McData environments, allows storage administrators to analyze SAN components and configuration data. SAN Health Professional is freely downloadable here >>

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