Brocade rolls out 8Gbit Fibre Channel

Brocade follows Emulex and QLogic by introducing 8Gbit Fibre Channel switches and host bus adapters

Developments of the week in storage

Brocade, following the lead of Emulex and QLogic, this week introduced 8Gbit Fibre Channel switches and host bus adapters (HBA).

The company’s new SAN switches and HBA’s double the performance of Brocade’s previous 4Gbit products and include advanced end-to-end capabilities that increase data center efficiency. The switches will be generally available in mid-2008 from Brocade and its OEM partners - IBM and Sun. the HBAs will be available in June.

The 5300, 5100 and 300 Brocade switches have 8 to 80 ports: the 5300 is configured with 48, 64 or 80 ports; the 5100 has 24, 32 or 40 ports; and, the 300 has 8, 16 or 24 ports. Each has 4G or 8Gbps small form-factor pluggables (SFP) and supports Microsoft’s Simple SAN. They are scalable to 56 domains and capable of performance of 500,000 IOPS per port. In addition, an on-chip encryption engine is included for in-flight data protection.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Brocade, following the lead of Emulex and QLogic, this week introduced 8Gbit Fibre Channel switches and host bus adapters (HBA).

The company’s new SAN switches and HBA’s double the performance of Brocade’s previous 4Gbit products and include advanced end-to-end capabilities that increase data center efficiency. The switches will be generally available in mid-2008 from Brocade and its OEM partners - IBM and Sun. the HBAs will be available in June.

The 5300, 5100 and 300 Brocade switches have 8 to 80 ports: the 5300 is configured with 48, 64 or 80 ports; the 5100 has 24, 32 or 40 ports; and, the 300 has 8, 16 or 24 ports. Each has 4G or 8Gbps small form-factor pluggables (SFP) and supports Microsoft’s Simple SAN. They are scalable to 56 domains and capable of performance of 500,000 IOPS per port. In addition, an on-chip encryption engine is included for in-flight data protection.

Each HBA supports N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), and the T10 CRC, FC-SP, SFP+, DMI, SCSI-FCP, FC-TAPE and IP-FC. T10 CRC (cyclic redundancy check) provides end-to-end data integrity; the FC-SP is the Fibre Channel Security Protocol includes protocols that authenticate Fibre Channel devices, provide key exchange and secure communications between Fibre Channel devices.

The 415/425 and 815/825 HBAs are available either as single or dual-ported adapters. They have 1,600Mps throughput per port and consume 6 watts of power. Drives for the adapters support Windows Server 2003, 2008, MPIO, Red Hat Linux, SUSE, Solaris and VMware ESX 3.5.

QLogic shipped its 8Gbit switches and HBAs in March; Emulex shipped its 8Gbit products earlier this year.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.