With a wide range of new SAN offerings, Brocade continues to develop industry-leading solutions that extend the value of your SAN investment. These new offerings optimize SAN performance, scalability, and affordability by integrating next-generation technologies—such as 4 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel speeds—with superior investment protection across the entire Brocade family of SAN Solutions.

Click below to see how these exciting new solutions can transform your SAN environment into a strategic competitive advantage!

As the industry's first 4 Gbit/sec SAN switch, the Brocade 4100 combines breakthrough performance and flexibility, giving you enterprise-class features and the ability to non-disruptively scale with Ports on Demand. With twice the data transfer rate of current switches and full backward compatibility with the world's largest installed SAN infrastructure, the Brocade 4100 provides you with superior investment protection for your mission-critical SAN environment.

Available in configurations of 16, 24, and 32 ports, the Brocade 4100 is ideal for use as an edge switch in large core-to-edge SANs or as the foundation of relatively small SANs. Because each port features auto-sensing capabilities to operate at 1, 2, or 4 Gbit/sec, you can easily integrate with existing SAN devices.

To ensure the highest level of performance, the Brocade 4100 features non-blocking aggregate bandwidth up to 256 Gbit/sec. It supports the most demanding business applications through enhanced Brocade Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Trunking, enabling full-duplex links of 32 Gbit/sec. In addition, the Brocade 4100 provides extremely high system availability with redundant, hot-swappable power supplies and cooling fans; hot-swappable SFP media; hot code loading and activation; and enterprise-level security.

The latest version of Brocade Fabric OS improves SAN performance and manageability to increase your productivity and reduce operating costs for all sizes of Brocade SANs. Key enhancements in Fabric OS 4.4 include:

• Support for the industry's first 4 Gbit/sec switch
• Higher port density that doubles certified scalability to 2560 ports and 50 domains per fabric
• FICON CUP support as well as FICON support across ISL trunks for the Brocade 3900, 12000, and 24000
• Longer-distance connectivity for individual links up to 500 kilometers and distances up to 50 kilometers for 4 Gbit/sec ISL trunks
• Ultra-high throughput with up to 32 Gbit/sec ISL Trunking
• Improved security (RADIUS, SSL, HTTPS, DH-CHAP, SNMP v3)
• Enhanced SAN health monitoring

Fabric OS 4.4, in combination with Brocade Fabric Manager, simplifies management by automatically compiling performance history that gives you "instant insight" for real-time analysis, capacity planning, and resource optimization. You can also access this performance data through third-party tools such as Microsoft Excel and Crystal Reports. In addition, Fabric Manager now offers Wizard-based tools for zoning and security — further streamlining your administration and configuration tasks.

To maximize your enterprise SAN investment, Fabric OS 4.4 now supports mixed deployments of Brocade director blades in a single chassis. In addition, it facilitates the Brocade product roadmap for new director blades featuring 4 Gbit/sec technology and intelligent multiprotocol routing.

With IBM-certified FICON CUP in-band management capabilities, Brocade now offers you a broader range of SAN solutions for mainframe environments. Full-feature FICON support is available on Brocade 12000 and 24000 directors as well as on the Brocade 3900 midrange switch. As a result, you can now use Brocade solutions to standardize your enterprise SAN infrastructure across your mainframe and open system platforms.

For example, integrating FICON CUP into your enterprise enables mainframe applications to perform a variety of configuration, management, monitoring, and error handling tasks. Because single SAN ports can support multiple CUP sessions, multiple mainframe applications can simultaneously utilize these new functions. In addition, "supercharged" FICON capabilities enable you to expand your SAN's reach over greater distances to facilitate more effective business continuance.

To help you extend your SAN's value, the Brocade Multiprotocol Router provides a unique set of routing services that enable secure connectivity and resource sharing across separate SANs. The Multiprotocol Router provides both Fibre Channel-to-Fibre Channel (FC-to-FC) routing and Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) for SAN-to-SAN connectivity over Fibre Channel or IP networks.

This intelligent platform gives you a new way to consolidate your enterprise resources, simplify data migration, and connect your SANs over longer distances—in a cost-effective and non-disruptive manner. With multiple Brocade OEM Partners—including CNT, EMC, HP, and STK—now delivering the Multiprotocol Router, you can utilize your vendor of choice to help increase the functionality and versatility of your SAN environment.

For more information about Brocade SAN solutions, visit the SAN Info Center.