Brocade offers the highest level of fabric switching and SAN device interoperability, helping organizations maximize the value of their SAN investments. True SAN Interoperability is possible only through extensive testing, a broad range of partnerships, and the right technology.

Because Brocade supports native fabric interoperability throughout its comprehensive family of SAN directors and switches, organizations can expand their existing SANs and build new SANs in the most seamless, efficient, and supportable manner possible. This level of interoperability means that host and/or storage nodes communicate using interconnected Fibre Channel switches from multiple vendors.

Fabric interoperability is often associated with the following types of situations:

• Migrating a fabric from vendor A to vendor B
• Optimizing port availability, when a fabric of vendor A's switch is out of ports while a fabric of vendor B's switches has many ports available
• Temporarily merging vendor A and vendor B fabrics for an array migration or other infrastructure change
• Merging two organizations that require a single SAN using switches from multiple vendors

Today, Brocade provides unique solutions to enable fabric interoperability: direct E_Port interoperability, Fibre Channel Routing interoperability, and Brocade Access Gateway interoperability.

E_Port interoperability involves directly connecting switches from two different vendors to form a fabric. This approach is used most frequently when an organization already has switches from both vendors and needs to build a single fabric.

This unique SAN technology enables secure communication between hosts and storage in two or more separate, unmerged fabrics. By using this approach to communicate non-disruptively between two separate SAN fabrics, organizations can manage those fabrics independently.

Access Gateway technology is the application of NPIV to blade server switches. By applying NPIV to an embedded blade server switch, the external ports appear to another NPIV-enabled switch as N_Ports (as if they were server HBAs). Access Gateway provides a reliable interoperability solution when an organization is using a SAN director vendor that does not also offer embedded blade switches.

Interoperability within a SAN today is commonplace, since no single vendor provides switches, storage nodes, and host nodes (HBAs). In fact, virtually every SAN has more than one HBA vendor and multiple storage vendors (a disk vendor and a tape vendor, or two different disk vendors, for example). Moreover, SAN device interoperability is well understood: SAN vendors provide interoperability matrices and have extensive experience designing, implementing, managing, and troubleshooting heterogeneous SANs.

Brocade performs rigorous interoperability testing of its products with those from leading OEMs, strategic partners, and system integrators. In addition to testing, Brocade maintains the largest portfolio of Fibre Channel-based solutions and publishes certified interoperability solutions for enterprise SANs. Brocade provides a detailed list of devices and applications tested by Brocade, OEM Partners, and developer partners for compatibility with the Brocade SAN solutions. View the Compatibility Matrix.

The Brocade Data Center Ready program is a compatibility assessment and certification program for third-party SAN solutions. The program is a comprehensive testing and configuration initiative designed to foster end-to-end SAN interoperability in multivendor, heterogeneous environments.

Standards Initiative
FCIA SANmark	Brocade has been an active participant in the FCIA SANmark program to promote the development of SAN standards conformance tests.
SNIA Fibre Channel Working Group	Brocade chairs the Fibre Channel Working Group.
SNIA Interoperability Committee	Brocade participates in joint Marketing and communications programs to promote the availability of interoperable solutions and is heavily involved in showcasing these solutions at SNIA conferences.
Storage Management Initiative (SMI)	Brocade is a major contributor of the Storage Management Initiative (SMI)
T11 FC-MI Working Group	Brocade is a major contributor to the FC-MI working group whose focus is to provide clarification on industry best practices for Fibre Channel devices.
T11 FC-SP Working Group	Brocade is a major contributor to the FC-SP working group whose focus is to develop standards for security.