Transform Your IT Infrastructure into a Next-Generation Data Center

The Brocade Data Center Fabric (DCF) provides an evolutionary strategy for next-generation data centers. Anyone who has spent time around a data center realizes that change is everywhere, and it's occurring at an unprecedented pace. When that data center is yours, the pace of change seems even faster. As you face a wave of new business requirements, your data center infrastructure must be able to keep up with the rest of your business.

In particular, it must help you:

• Optimize resource utilization
• Simplify application deployment and data management
• Increase business agility and flexibility
• Reduce both costs and risk

Unfortunately, many data centers are already pushed to the limit in managing the unprecedented growth in digital data and application deployment. As a result, enterprise data centers are beginning to undergo a distinct architectural transformation.

THE NEW BROCADE DCF APPROACH

To address these dynamic and varied requirements, Brocade has developed an architectural foundation and evolutionary strategy for building next-generation data centers: The Brocade Data Center Fabric (DCF). This application-oriented architecture is designed to help you build the most efficient, cost-effective data center fabric based on your particular business needs. Leveraging a decade of Brocade experience in enterprise fabrics, the Brocade DCF architecture supports strategic functions for multiprotocol connectivity, policy-based automation, and uniform management across the data center. Utilizing this application-focused approach, you can deploy intelligent, fabric-based services for key initiatives such as:

• Continuous data protection and disaster recovery
• File and block data migration across heterogeneous environments
• Server and storage virtualization
• Encryption for data in-flight and at-rest

A FUTURE-BUILT, STRATEGIC SOLUTION

The Brocade strategy avoids an expensive and risky "rip-and-replace" data center overhaul by providing built-in investment protection. That means you can utilize your existing equipment and processes, choosing how and when to incorporate new technologies as they become available.

For maximum flexibility, the architecture is interoperable with all types of SAN environments, including those from other vendors. Brocade provides the "enabling" layer and builds on its strategic partner relationships to provide the "orchestration" layer for unified management.

Existing Brocade solutions play a key role in the Brocade DCF architecture strategy by facilitating non-disruptive expansion and delivering unmatched performance and energy efficiency. However, implementing large-scale server virtualization, adaptive networking, and multiple high-performance protocols ultimately requires a new class of network infrastructure: the data center backbone. Designed to meet these growing performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency requirements, the Brocade DCX Backbone complements any data center environment, providing the core foundation for the Brocade DCF. It features breakthrough performance, a highly robust services platform, seamless interoperability across fabrics, and future-built extensibility for next-generation data centers.

BROCADE DCF ADVANTAGES

• Data-centric and application-aware
• Non-disruptive, with built-in investment protection
• Multiprotocol connectivity
• Consolidation and virtualization
• "Plug-in" services that leverage fabric intelligence
• Unified management with third-party software
• Support for block, file, and other data types

DEMO The Evolution of the Data Center (Flash)

RELATED LINKS Webcasts The Brocade Data Center Fabric Webcast Choosing the Right Architecture for Your Evolving Data Video Brocade: Faster and Greener Than the Competition?

• Technical Briefs

  • Adaptive Networking - Advanced Data Center Fabric Technology (399.8 KB)

  • Introducing the Brocade Data Center Fabric (738.7 KB)

• White Papers

  • Simplifying Virtualization through Adaptive Networking Technology (192.1 KB)