Brocade Communications Systems manual Silkworm 24000 Director

The Brocade SilkWorm 24000 Director provides a highly reliable and intelligent solution for enterprise-class Storage Area Networks (SANs) in mission-critical environments.

SILKWORM 24000 DIRECTOR

S I L K W O R M S W I T C H FA M I LY

Highlights

• Delivers up to 128 ports in a single

domain and a 14U enclosure with up

to 384 ports in a single rack, facilitat-

ing more easily managed SAN fab-

A H i g h - P o r t - D e n s i t y, M u l t i p r o t o c o l D i r e c t o r f o r E n t e r p r i s e S A N s

	rics with thousands of ports
•	Meets ultra-high-availability require-
	ments with redundant, hot-pluggable
	components, no single points of
	failure, non-disruptive software
	upgrades, and hot code activation
•	Provides FICON® support for IBM
	zSeries server environments, includ-
	ing intermix mode on a port-by-port
	basis, cascaded FICON fabrics,
	1 and 2 Gbit/sec FICON speeds,
	and CUP support
•	Increases performance through reduced
	latency and Brocade Inter-Switch Link
	(ISL) Trunking
•	Leverages intelligent Brocade SAN
	management and security tools to
	increase operational efficiency and
	maximize SAN investments
•	Protects investments by enabling
	upgrade paths to future technologies,
	increased port speeds, IP connectivity,
	and more

With state-of-the-art performance and enhanced scalability for both open system and IBM zSeries server enterprise SAN environments, the Brocade® SilkWorm® 24000 Director provides unique capabilities to meet demanding mission-critical require- ments. It scales non-disruptively from 32 to as many as 128 concur- rently active 2 Gbit/sec full-duplex ports in a single domain or two domains of up to 64 ports each. In addition, it offers improved perform- ance and the potential to upgrade to higher-speed connectivity in the future.The SilkWorm 24000 also leads the industry in power and cooling efficiency, helping to reduce total cost of ownership.

With its intelligent fourth-generation ASIC, the SilkWorm 24000 provides a reliable foundation for core-to-edge SANs, enabling fabrics capable of

supporting thousands of hosts and storage devices (see Figure 1).Whether used as a core building block for an enterprise fabric or as a standalone director, the SilkWorm 24000 is a reliable, high-availability solution.These capabilities make it ideal for enterprise management and high-volume trans- action processing applications such as ERP and data warehousing, as well as data backup, remote mirroring, and high-availability clustering.

The SilkWorm 24000 is designed to integrate with heterogeneous envi- ronments that include IBM zSeries server and open platforms with multiple operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX,AIX, and i5/OS. As a result, Brocade-based SANs can help serve as the foundation for implementing utility computing and Information Lifecycle Management (ILM).