Brocade offers several products primarily billed as SAN extenders--they facilitate the connection of disperse storage centers/SAN islands using existing IP, ATM, native FC, or Fibre media for both open and mainframe environments. Among the products listed in this category are the Edge M3000, USD-X, and 7500/7500E SAN Routers.

FC or FICON communications are supported from the SAN to the devices, while the vendor lists IP, ATM, native FC, or SONET communications as possible over the long distance link between two devices (i.e., to use the devices, a pair must be deployed; one at the local and one at the remote site). Targeted usages include synchronous or asynchronous disk mirroring; backup/restore or archive/retrieve to remote locations; extension of disks/tape; data migration; replication/disaster recovery; etc.

Key features of the platforms that assist in the delivery of data over long distances include support for the compression of transmitted data, WAN segmentation, network level cyclical redundancy checks for data integrity, and "tape pipelining," which enables the devices to act as a tape controller on the primary site (so that local hosts can access the remote tape drives as if they are locally attached), queuing up operations remotely and delivering them to the remote tape device as soon as the previous operation completes. Read and write tape pipelining are supported for both FC and FICON communications.

Other features include automatic link-level failover; dynamic load leveling/splitting (in redundant deployments); support for port-specific configuration; and support for multi-point routing.

The Edge 3000 is a fixed-port device consisting of a pair of 2 Gb/sec FC ports for routing or switching and a pair of Gig Ethernet ports for SAN extension over IP. Connections to a ATM/SONET transport are made by connecting the Edge 3000 to a MUX.

The USD-X (UltraNet Storage Director-eXtended) is a modular offering; served in a 6 or 12 slot cabinet and supporting FC, FICON, ESCON and Bus-and-Tag device interfaces as well as network interfaces including OC-3 ATM, 10/100 Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet. The USD-X supports one-to-many network connections where a single interface can be split into up to 32 destination IP addresses, each with its own allocated bandwidth. Other features include hot swappable and redundant components including power supplies and processors; independent data paths through the mid-plane switch (non-blocking); and Gb/sec capacity per blade, scalable from 1 to 12 channels and 1 to 8 WAN ports.

The 7500 and 7500E are 1U fixed boxes facilitating remote site SAN connectivity over WAN links using FCIP or (in the 7500 only) over native FC communications. Both boxes have 16 FC ports and a pair of Gig Ethernet ports; but on the 7500E only a pair of FC ports and the Gig Ethernet ports are initially activated. Targeted for entry level/remote site connectivity, the 7500E features Fast Write support (for enhanced FCIP performance over distance), compression, redundant power/cooling, Web-based management, throughput of 50 Mb/sec per Ethernet port, and support for only a single FCIP tunnel per port; while the 7500 adds the full 1 Gb/sec throughput per Ethernet port, up to 8 FCIP tunnels per port, and support for local FC switching, FC routing between fabrics, Tape Pipelining, and mainframe connections. Native FC connectivity, in particular, can be deployed at distances of up to 100km at 4 Gb/sec and up to 500km at 1 Gb/sec. The 7500E can be upgraded to the full functionality of the 7500 with a software license upgrade.

New to the 7500 (and FR4-18i below) is the vendor's Brocade Accelerator for FICON, which can be implemented via an optional software license and specifically enhances the performance of FICON-initiated communications over distance SAN-to-SAN connections. The Brocade Accelerator for FICON is available now for the 7500, and will be available by the end of the month for the FR4-18i.

Also included among the vendor's extension related products is the FR4-18i SAN Extension Blade, which can be deployed in the 48000 SAN director or the DCX Backbone. The FR4-18i encompasses the features of the 7500 (FCIP and FC Routing, 16 FC and 2 Gig Ethernet ports) and therefor provides SAN extension features to the 48000 or DCX.

Contact Brocade or their partners for further information; and please note that not all features described above may be available in all models.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

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