Brocade Introduces Adaptive Networking Services

Brocade introduced new
Adaptive Networking services, addressing evolving requirements to
dynamically manage virtualization in the data center. These innovative network
services are available as features on the new Brocade DCX Backbone, which
was also introduced today.

"As IT organizations deploy greater numbers of virtual servers with
networked storage to consolidate resources and improve utilization, they must
be able to efficiently adapt to the dynamic management and provisioning needs
of the ‘virtualized’ data center," said Enterprise Strategy Group Analyst Bob
Laliberte. "The replacement of static, dedicated connections between physical
servers and storage with dynamic connections between virtual resources creates
new management requirements and greater potential for congestion. Brocade
Adaptive Networking services combined with the Brocade DCX Backbone offer
innovative solutions to help simplify and accelerate effective management of
virtualized data centers."

To address new virtualization challenges, the data center network must be
able to rapidly and intelligently adapt in order to assign the appropriate
resources, workloads, and service levels to corporate applications as they
move and operate in a virtualized environment-a concept known as adaptive
networking.

Brocade’s policy-based approach provides a wire-once architecture that
optimizes resources and helps to eliminate human error. Brocade Adaptive
Networking services enable the fabric to dynamically allocate shared resources
as changes occur in the requirements of virtualized elements in the data
center, such as servers, networks, and storage. If congestion occurs (or is
predicted), the fabric can automatically adjust bandwidth and other resources
according to defined service levels-helping to ensure that higher-priority
workloads dynamically receive the resources they need.

Adaptive Fabric Quality of Service (QoS): This feature enables a
detailed allocation of data center fabric resources to applications
based on the relative importance of the application as defined by its
QoS assignment. Brocade virtual channel technology allows each QoS
priority to follow its assigned application as the application moves
between physical and/or virtualized server and network connections,
dynamically adjusting resources to avoid congestion.

• Adaptive Traffic Management services: This set of innovative Brocade
  technologies provides data flow and congestion management to support
  application service levels. Advanced queuing algorithms remove
  congestion potential and dedicate bandwidth to specific applications as
  needed.
• Dynamic Fabric Profiling services: With these services, Brocade
  uniquely provides end-to-end analysis of individual application data
  flows and resource usage, supplying in-depth information about the
  impact on overall fabric performance. These services identify possible
  points of congestion, and monitor and report on numerous statistics for
  physical resource utilization.
• Adaptive Policy Management services: This capability detects under-
  utilized shared physical resources, reclaiming or reallocating them to
  optimize application flow according to defined policies-further
  ensuring that virtualized resources receive the appropriate amount of
  physical performance. Adaptive Networking services from Brocade are
  available as part of the new Brocade Fabric OS(R) 6.0 software release,
  included with the new Brocade DCX Backbone. Many of the services also
  are available as an upgrade to the company’s large installed base of
  Brocade 48000 Directors.

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