The Brocade SAN Directors provide the "core" components of core-to-edge SANs, with support for up to 384 full duplex 4Gb/sec ports in a 14U rackmountable enclosure (48000).

Current offerings in the Brocade SAN Director family include:

- The 48000; a 14U modular chassis accepting a total of 10 possible card possibilities; 8 customer-selected line cards plus 2 dedicated controller cards. The line card slots can include up to 8 16, 32, or 48-port 4 Gb/cards, and now up to 8 6-port 10 Gb/sec cards; as well as combinations of specialized cards (described below). Formerly known as the SilkWorm director, the 48000 supports ISL trunking of up to 8 ports on the 4 Gb/sec blades (ISL trunking is not supported on the 10 Gb/sec blade); and built-in redundancy leads the list of high availability features--including the redundant control processor cards with support for stateful failover as well as redundant power and cooling systems.

Additional specialty line cards that can be loaded into the 48000 (beyond the FC port line cards mentioned above) include the FC4-16IP (up to 4 cards per chassis; each card with 8 Gig Ethernet and 8 4 Gb/sec FC ports) that adds iSCSI connectivity options; the FR4-18i (up to 2 cards per chassis; each card with 16 4 Gb/sec ports and dual Gig Ethernet ports) that adds FCIP-based WAN connectivity between directors; and the new FA4-18 (also up to 2 cards per chassis; each card with 16 4 Gb/sec ports and dual Gig Ethernet ports) which is billed as a Storage Application card with initial support for Brocade's Data Migration Manager and "other planned solutions" including storage virtualization and data protection capabilities.

Usage and management of the devices is facilitated through the embedded Fabric OS software; supported services include Brocade Advanced Zoning, Fabric Watch, Remote Switch, the aforementioned ISL Trunking, and performance monitoring. The devices can be managed via SNMP support, CLI, or Brocade's Web Tools.

- The Mi10K, also a 14U chassis with support for 256 ports. Both 4 Gb/sec and 10 Gb/sec speeds are supported; and the Mi10K additionally boasts FICON support for SAN LPARs. The Mi10K is managed via Brocade's Enterprise Fabric Connectivity Manager (EFCM), SNMP v1/2/3, CLI (Telnet, SSH, SSHv2), or FICON Management Server (CUP).

- The M6140, with support for up to 140 ports (4 Gb/sec and 10 Gb/sec) in 4 port increments. FICON is also supported, and management is via EFCM, SANavigator, SNMP, or FICON Management Server (CUP).

The Brocade SAN directors are available now; the new FC10-6 director and FA4-18 cards for the 48000 are currently in final qualifications with OEMs.

Visit the Brocade Web site for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

E-Mail this page to a colleague
send info about Brocade SAN Directors

Suggest a link
for the Brocade SAN Directors fact sheet