New Features Across Brocade Portfolio

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. announced new features and capabilities across its networking hardware, software and management portfolio that provide storage area networks (SANs) more awareness and visibility of virtual machines (VMs) – and vice versa – while extending essential networking services beyond physical servers and into the virtual realms.

These enhancements that Brocade is demonstrating at VMworld 2009 address a number of management challenges that arose since the advent of server virtualization that did not impact physical servers on SANs.

"We had predicted years ago that these limitations would be problematic for server and VM administrators as they grow the number of VMs in their IT environments," said Bob Gill, managing director of servers research at TheInfoPro, an independent research network and leading supplier of market intelligence for the IT industry. "The fact is, if these limitations are not addressed, they will become an impediment toward moving server virtualization to the next step in terms of scale and full functionality."

These enhancements currently apply for use in Brocade SANs but will support open, heterogeneous computing and storage environments established through Brocade’s long-standing industry partnerships with the leading server and storage vendors.

Specifically, Brocade is announcing:

DCFM 10.3:
SAN Management Optimized for Server Virtualization
Brocade is introducing the following advancements in release 10.3 of its DCFM SAN management application, which are designed to improve VM functionality and performance with Brocade SANs:

• Visibility of VMs on Brocade fabrics through DCFM integration with VMware environments. Benefits of this integration will include SAN administrators being able to view VMs running inside of physical servers and the ability to view VM properties end-to-end from the server to storage via Brocade HBAs and switches;
• Support for a management "plug-in" for VMware vCenter that, once installed and activated, will supply key metrics and alerts through VMware vSphere. This capability will help VMware administrators troubleshoot issues pertaining to the fabric, which may impact VM and application performance. Further, the combination of Brocade DCFM 10.3 and the VMware management plug-in will be able to trigger a dynamic vMotion if a critical alert occurs in the SAN and provide administrations a set of recommendations on resolving the issue;
• Tight integration with third-party storage resource management (SRM) tools designed to enable users of those software solutions to take advantage of DCFM 10.3 advancements directly from their management environments.

"The inability for SANs and VMs to ‘see’ each other and understand how issues on either side may impact performance and functionality limits what we can do with server virtualization technology with our SAN," Michael Kilmer, primary storage administrators at Daktronics, the world’s largest supplier of large-format LED display systems, including digital LED billboards, large-screen video displays and control systems for sports and commercial venues. "These limitations have serious repercussions in our ability to scale our VM environment and what types of applications we can virtualize. As a Brocade SAN and DCFM user, we believe the advanced management and diagnostics capabilities that Brocade is introducing for VMware environments are an important step in the right direction in making server virtualization more useful with SANs."

Server Application Optimization (SAO)
for Brocade FC adapters and switches:
Extending Essential Fabric Services to VMs
Brocade is also introducing SAO, new advanced VM-aware network functionality compatible with existing Brocade Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) and switches through the newest release of the Brocade Fabric Operating System (release 6.2), Benefits include:

• Extending key SAN network services to VMs by introducing the concept of ‘application-aware’ Quality of Service (QoS). This feature helps preserve service level agreements and improves performance-under-load for mission-critical applications running on VMs. According to research by TheInfoPro, server administrators have consistently identified performance-under-load as being among the top three most critical concerns to deploying virtualized environments;
• Through SAO, server administrators will also have access to application-level performance monitoring, statistics and diagnostics. By being able to isolate and prioritize traffic according to the needs of a particular VM/application, server administrators will now be able to enable heterogeneous VM/applications to share a single HBA and to manage more VMs per physical server.

Brocade will demonstrate the benefits of both DCFM 10.3 and SAO as part of a multi-vendor, multiprotocol booth demo through the duration of the event – Aug. 31 through Sept. 3, 2009. The demo will feature a live, dynamic VM migration (or vMotion) between two VMware virtual machines relying on the full complement of Brocade networking technologies available today including:

• Fibre Channel connectivity through the Brocade 300 Switch and Brocade 825 HBAs,
• FCoE connectivity through the Brocade 8000 Switch and Brocade 1020 Converged Network Adapters
• 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connectivity through the Brocade TurboIron 24X Switch;
• Gigabit Ethernet connectivity through the Brocade FastIron GS Switch to network the management consoles.

 
Availability
Brocade DCFM 10.3 is expected to be available in September from Brocade OEMs and resellers. The Brocade management ‘plug-in’ for VMware is in early development phase and is expected to be available in mid-2010. Brocade SAO is available today as a license to Brocade FC switches when used in conjunction with Brocade HBAs.