Brocade unveils file management software, Fibre Channel enhancements

Brocade on Tuesday launched wide-area file services and storage virtualization products intended to consolidate and manage remote office data. The company also announced new capabilities for its hardware-based Fibre Channel switches and directors.

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Brocade rolled out a software package called Brocade Branch File Management Solutions that consists of its StorageX file management software and its Branch File Manager file consolidation software. It acquired StorageX last year when it bought NuView; its Branch File Manager acts as an OEM from Tacit Networks.

The company’s StorageX file-area network software is now more tightly integrated with Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003 R2. StorageX now supports the Unix/Linux Network File System and has enhanced migration capabilities. It supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Solaris 10, EMC Celerra network-attached storage systems (NAS), AIX and HP-UX.

Brocade’s File Lifecycle Manager product now lets administrators more easily automate file migration and recovery without system downtime. It also supports Network Appliance's NAS environments. The software lets administrators overwrite policies and manually re-migrate files to a secondary storage device. It enables Microsoft Active Directory groups to be specified for file restoration.

On the hardware side, Brocade announced support for 10Gbps Fibre Channel connectivity for its Brocade 48000 Director via the new Brocade FC10-6 blade. With the FC10-6 installed in a Brocade 48000 Director, customers can interconnect systems between remote sites for disaster recovery and fully use the available dark fiber or wide division multiplexing bandwidth.

Advanced Call Home technology has been added to the Brocade Enterprise Fabric Connectivity Manager (EFCM). This capability lets customer's equipment automatically call to the respective storage OEM if trouble is detected.

The Brocade Fabric Manager has added performance monitoring functionality. Real-time performance monitoring coupled with fault management helps users proactively identify and quickly isolate bottlenecks and errors. Real-time and historical information help capacity planning in all fabric designs.

Further, both the Brocade 48000 router blade (FR4-18i) and the Brocade 7500 feature fast write acceleration, which more than doubles performance in disk mirroring or remote disaster recovery operations.

The company’s virtualization technology -- the Brocade Access Gateway -- provides interoperability between Brocade and legacy McData switches and is being extended to the entry-level Brocade 200E switch.

In addition, Brocade introduced the FA4-18 application blade for the Brocade 48000 Director and the Brocade 7600 Application Platform, which provide storage virtualization and data protection capabilities. Both support EMC’s Invista virtualization platform and EMC Recoverpoint continuous data protection and replication software.