Brocade Accelerator for Ficon

Brocade Communications Systems announced that IBM Corp. has qualified Brocade Advanced Accelerator for FICON on the latest generation of Brocade storage area networking (SAN) extension solutions used to connect geographically dispersed data centers. This new solution optimizes mainframe application performance between data centers, allowing customers to more effectively accommodate applications that demand high bandwidth between their data centers, such as data replication and Virtual Tape Servers (VTS).

Cloud computing will increasingly require geographically distributed storage architectures, which are both critical and complex to deploy. The Brocade One vision is Brocade’s road map for creating products and solutions that allow applications and information to reside anywhere, leveraging Brocade’s technology heritage and leadership.

"At Kanematsu Electronics Limited, our clients rely upon mainframe environments for their most business-critical applications, especially our financial customers," said Mr. Yasuhiro Kikukawa, general executive officer, general manager of Business Development Division, Kanematsu Electronics Ltd., a Japan-based reseller. "We have installed more than 1,000 Brocade extension products in the Japanese market because we trust their ability to deliver the highest levels of reliability and performance in moving data over distance."

FICON is a high-speed input/output (I/O) interface for mainframe computer connections to storage devices. Brocade Advanced Accelerator for FICON delivers performance and robust mainframe extension solutions over 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 10 GbE connections utilizing Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) technology to connect and extend storage over virtually any distance for critical applications such as backup, disaster recovery and business continuity.

Brocade Advanced Accelerator for FICON on the Brocade 7800 Extension Switch and Brocade FX8-24 Extension Blade is qualified for extending IBM mainframe host to remote IBM TS7700 Virtualization Engine, a mainframe virtual tape solution. The Brocade Advanced Accelerator for FICON solution helps customers improve backup and recovery times and reduce operating costs. It is designed specifically for IBM z/OS Global Mirror (XRC) environments, allowing customers to protect their critical data assets in remote locations for disaster tolerance and business continuity purposes.

Brocade Advanced Accelerator for FICON increases operational efficiency by leveraging emulation techniques to reduce or eliminate performance degradation for mainframe applications across long-distance Ethernet/IP wide area networks.

Customers can reap benefits such as:

• Improved FICON read and write performance over distance
• Enhanced data protection while meeting recovery objectives
• Faster backup and disaster recovery operations
• Reduced WAN bandwidth use and cost
• Support for new solutions while protecting existing investments

"Brocade has more than 25 years of expertise and a deep heritage in building robust mainframe storage network extension solutions," said Doug Ingraham, vice president of Product Management, Data Center Products, at Brocade. "Today’s announcement reinforces both IBM’s and Brocade’s commitment to investment protection for our customers’ existing IT infrastructures, as well as our technology innovation in advancing remote storage application performance to the next level."

"IBM is committed to working closely with industry leaders like Brocade to offer clients a choice of network switching products," said Bob Mahoney, business line executive for IBM System Networking sales and marketing. "Brocade Advanced Accelerator for FICON for IBM z/OS Global Mirror environments is part of IBM’s effort to offer clients a better end-to-end server and networking solution that takes advantage of industry innovations to provide easy integration into IT environments."

Brocade Advanced Accelerator for FICON is available through IBM and other worldwide partners.