Brocade DCX: The Chairman of Directors

Brocade introduced the
DCX Backbone, the first in a new class of high-performance
data center networking products designed to address the demanding
requirements of the evolving data center.

Built on four generations of proven data center technology and designed
to integrate seamlessly with existing Brocade products – including
existing McDATA solutions – the Brocade DCX provides industry
breakthroughs in terms of performance, scalability, and efficiency. As
a result, customers can use the Brocade DCX to build data center
fabrics that enable extremely high levels of consolidation and cost
savings along with lower deployment and operational risk.

"The virtual server phenomenon has been awesome to watch. Massive
consolidation, efficiency improvements and fluidity are all now
possible – assuming that the rest of the infrastructure can support
it,” said Enterprise Strategy Group Founder and Senior Analyst Steve
Duplessie. “The Brocade DCX Backbone has the same value proposition,
and actually should make production virtualization deployments happen
more rapidly by taking away many of the performance and scalability
concerns that server virtualization may present downstream. Bandwidth,
density, power consumption and scale can really matter when you are
collapsing thousands of physical servers down to hundreds."

The Brocade DCX plays a key role in delivering on the Brocade Data
Center Fabric (DCF) architecture announced in October 2007. The Brocade
DCF is an architectural framework that allows customers to evolve their
data center infrastructures for maximum performance, flexibility, and
investment protection, while enabling important industry trends such as
server virtualization and the greening of the data center.

“SunGard is looking forward to upgrading both the mainframe FICON and
the Open Systems Fibre Channel environments with Brocade DCX Backbone
technology,” said Tom Tucker, Storage Product Director for SunGard. “It
will offer higher performance to our customers, and allow SunGard to
consolidate individual directors and switches into this high port count
Backbone product for ease of management in our constantly changing
environment.”

“We have used Brocade technology for many years at the heart of our
data center,” said Bertram Schön, Chief Technology Officer at Lufthansa
Systems. “As we evolve our data center fabric architecture to meet the
growing needs of our users, the DCX Backbone provides native
interoperability and the lowest-risk way to evolve our architecture for
new levels of performance and capabilities for many years to come.”

“The demand for applications and data in our business continues to
grow, and our infrastructure must grow seamlessly and
non-disruptively,” said Germar Braam, Lead Architect of KPN. “To meet
these needs, we chose to evolve our data center fabric architecture
with the 8 Gbit/sec Brocade DCX Backbone.”

“We are excited to get the 8 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel Brocade DCX
Backbone installed in the EDEKA data center in Hamburg,” said Rainer
Zander, head of the EDEKA Data Center in Hamburg. “The Brocade DCX
enables seamless integration with our existing infrastructure,
sustaining our future growth in storage and performance as part of a
global data center fabric architecture.”

The new Brocade DCX platform brings many new and enhanced capabilities
to customers to drive higher levels of consolidation, cost savings, and
data center efficiencies:
The Brocade DCX Offers the Highest Levels of Performance and
Scalability: To facilitate broad expansion and greater mobility of
virtualized servers and networked storage, the Brocade DCX provides the
industry’s highest performance, joining the Brocade 48000 Director as
the industry’s first solutions with 8 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel
capabilities. With up to 896 ports of 8 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel, the
Brocade DCX provides more than five times the switching bandwidth of
existing SAN directors and supports eight times as many virtual
servers.

The Brocade DCX Utilizes Innovative Adaptive Networking Services to
Better Enable Server Virtualization: The Brocade Adaptive Networking
services features included in the Brocade DCX enable the fabric to
dynamically allocate shared resources as changes occur in the
requirements of virtual servers and networked 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.

The Brocade DCX Offers the Highest Levels of Interoperability and
Flexibility: Designed for investment protection and extension, the
Brocade DCX is fully interoperable with Brocade and existing McDATA
SANs, complementing the Brocade family of data center infrastructure
products –including the Brocade M6140, Brocade Mi10K, and Brocade 48000
directors; Brocade 200E, Brocade 4900, and Brocade 5000 switches; and
Brocade SAN extension solutions. Moreover, the Brocade DCX provides
comprehensive and flexible deployment options, including the capability
to support Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Data
Center Ethernet (DCE), Gigabit Ethernet, and iSCSI protocols.

The Brocade DCX Simplifies Data Center Management: The Brocade DCX
supports advanced fabric applications for data migration, continuous
replication, and data encryption, enabling customers to better protect
and secure their corporate data. The new platform is also supported by
a broad range of network management tools, including offerings from
Brocade and its OEM Partners.

The Brocade DCX Continues Brocade’s Leadership in Energy Efficiency:
Reducing energy consumption and accommodating data growth are critical
requirements in today’s IT strategies. The Brocade DCX is 10 times more
power-efficient per unit of bandwidth than competitive offerings,
allowing customers to better manage data center energy requirements and
operational costs.

“The Brocade DCX Backbone sets a new standard for data center
networks,” said Ian Whiting, Vice President and General Manager for the
Brocade Data Center Infrastructure Division. “Through massive
consolidation of SANs, virtual server networks and Data Center Ethernet
networks, the Brocade DCX Backbone will enable customers to drive
significant costs out of their data center operations while ensuring
the performance, scalability, and five-nines availability required for
current and future applications.”

The Brocade DCX is available today from Brocade and is supported by a
broad portfolio of Brocade professional and support services. The new
platform is also immediately available from Sun Microsystems, and is
expected to be available from all Brocade OEM Partners during the first
half of 2008.

Brocade