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Buyer's Guide: Storage-area networks

Network World, 05/06/02

Using SANs for business continuity
Business continuance - the ability to get your network up and running after a disaster with minimal impact on business - has emerged as the leading driver behind storage-area network and network-attached storage adoption in the post-Sept. 11 world.

Brocade's switch earns big numbers
In a contest between two of only three shipping high-port-density, director-class storage-area network switches today, our Blue Ribbon Award goes to Brocade Communications Systems' SilkWorm 12000, primarily on the strength of its showing in our configuration and performance test categories. McData's Intrepid 6000 Series 64-Port Director is a solid product with some impressive high availability and management tools.

How we did it
SAN performance testing was a collaborative effort with Spirent Communications, which provided equipment and personnel for the duration of the review.

Bandwidth distribution charts

The feature presentation
We invited both participants to specify features not tested under any of the other categories that they felt set them apart from their competitors. Brocade offered several, from which we picked the ones that intrigued us the most.

Interactive Buyer's Guide
Download this flexible guide to compare the offerings of six of the top storage-area networking vendors. (Excel spreadsheet)

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