Brocade DCX-4S Backbone Scales to 192 Ports
Vs. 384 for the initial DCX
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on January 28, 2009 at 3:37 pmBrocade announced the DCX-4S Backbone, a multipurpose core and edge network switching platform designed to facilitate server, storage area network (SAN), and data center consolidation while helping to reduce infrastructure and administrative costs for IT environments.
Following the introduction of the industry-leading 384-port 8 Gbit/sec Brocade DCX Backbone in 2008, the new Brocade DCX-4S Backbone scales to 192 ports at up to full 8 Gbit/sec speed through its four modular blade slots and leverages the same breakthrough technology as the larger model to deliver industry-leading performance, scalability, and energy efficiency. The Brocade DCX Backbone family was designed to address the data growth and application demands of evolving enterprise data centers.
“Leveraging the DCX Backbone portfolio is essential to the evolution of our data center architecture which will allow us to achieve new levels of performance and energy efficiency while ensuring the ability to continuously implement advanced features and functionality to leap-frog our competition,” stated Gary Oberg, vice president of technical operations at Applied Discovery, a top provider of end-to-end e-discovery solutions.
The Brocade DCX-4S offers flexible deployment and investment protection in both new and existing storage networks. For example, it can be deployed as a lower-cost core backbone solution in midsize enterprise network environments that do not require the throughput and port density of the larger Brocade DCX Backbone. Large enterprise customers can also implement the Brocade DCX-4S at the network edge to provide complete and highly cost-effective backbone-class capabilities throughout their data centers. The Brocade DCX-4S can also connect natively to Brocade B-Series and M-Series network environments without disruption.
The Brocade DCX-4S leverages the newly available Brocade Fabric OS (FOS) 6.2 release, including a new Virtual Fabrics capability that enables the logical partitioning of a physical SAN into logical fabrics. The Brocade DCX-4S also offers integration with several key management products, including the HP StorageWorks Secure Key Manager, and supports advanced features such as fabric-wide encryption for data-at-rest for disk and tape. In addition, the Brocade DCX-4S provides a full suite of Adaptive Networking features that help optimize fabric behavior and help ensure ample bandwidth for critical applications. To enable network convergence at the server edge, the Brocade DCX-4S utilizes a multiprotocol architecture that is future-built to support emerging Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) by simply adding a blade at any time that is right for the customer.
“Customers can reduce costs, improve asset utilization and increase energy efficiency in storage environments with high performance networking solutions,” said Bob Wilson, vice president, Storage Platforms Division, HP. “HP’s storage hardware, software and services combined with Brocade’s DCX-4S provide a more affordable SAN consolidation solution for the most demanding enterprise data centers.”
The Brocade DCX-4S can be managed using Brocade Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM) Enterprise or Professional to provide unified, end-to-end management of data center fabrics – from storage ports on networked storage systems to Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) attached to physical or virtualized servers. Customers also have the option of continuing to use Brocade Fabric Manager or Enterprise Fabric Control Manager (ECFM) to manage their backbone environments.
"As virtualization has spread throughout the data center, Fibre Channel continues to play a critical role. Now with the introduction of the Brocade DCX-4S Backbone, Sun offers customers incredible performance, scalability and energy efficiency with long-term investment protection via support for both existing and emerging connectivity protocols," said Gautam Chanda, director, Networking Products, Sun Microsystems. "As one of the first vendors to offer the Brocade DCX-4S, Sun’s mid-tier and enterprise class customers will be able to consolidate server, SAN, and data center resources while reducing energy costs and total cost of ownership.”
The Brocade DCX-4S Backbone is available today from Brocade and is also immediately available from HP and Sun Microsystems.
Comments
Brocade has sold 1,600 DCX directors since its introduction one year ago, representing around half of its total revenues.
Here are the main differences between the first DCX and the new lower-end DCX-4S:
- 192 ports rather than 394 at 8Gb speed
- the blades are positioned horizontally rather than vertically (see the picture) in a 9U chassis
- 4 slots (4S)
- 1.5Tb/s of chassis bandwidth (rather than 3Tb/s)
- 256Gb/s - and not 512Gb/s - of ICL bandwidth
- logical partitioning of a physical SAN into logical fabrics (a new capability also available on the DCX)
With ICLs (Inter Chassis Links), it's possible to connect two DCX-4S together - and maybe three in the future - , or one DCX to one DCX-4S.
The prices were not revealed but, in number of ports, the DCX-4S is supposed to be 15% to 20% cheaper than the DCX, and 15% to 20% more expansive than the former 48000 director, this one with up to 384 ports.
The company is studying an eventual lower version of the new model and is working on a new unit currently coded "Top of the Rack". During the year, the company could reveal new switches for the mid-range market with up to 80 ports.
Brocade has revised its projections concerning FCoE because the standard - also adopted by Cisco, now its big competitor since the acquisition of Foundry - is not finalized and the economic crisis could slower its acceptance by big users. Now, the company projects an adoption from 2011 to 2015.
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