Brocade Communications Systems 5000 manual INDUSTRY-LEADING Performance

Figure 1.

ISL Trunking with 2 and 4 Gbit/sec links.

1 G

Optimal bandwidth utilization using

4 Gbit/sec with 8 trunks

4 G

up to four 2 Gbit/sec links

2 G

1.5 G

3 G

1.5 G

0.5 G

0.5 G

1 G

0.5 G

2 G

1 G

1 G

2 G

4 G

Without Trunking

With Trunking

With Trunking

1 G

congestion

...n

2 G

2 G

8 Gbit/sec

4 G

32 Gbit/sec

3 G

1.5 G

1.5 G

0.5 G

0.5 G

ASIC Preserves

0.5 G

ASIC Preserves

1 G

1 G

2 G

2 G

2 G

In-order Delivery

4 G

In-order Delivery

...n

1 G

The Brocade 5000 is designed to protect both Brocade and McDATA technology investments. It is fully compatible with Brocade 1, 2, and 4 Gbit/sec devices and provides native E_Port interoperability for existing McDATA devices. The Brocade 5000 is also backed by FOS and M-EOS engineering, test, and support expertise to provide reliable operation in SAN fabrics using any of the supported configurations.

In addition, the switch features lower power dissipation as well as consolidated power and fan assemblies to improve environmental performance and reduce ownership costs. These capabilities help make the Brocade 5000 a cost- effective solution for a wide range of SAN environments, including the edge

of enterprise core-to-edge networks.

INDUSTRY-LEADING PERFORMANCE

To support mission-critical environments, the Brocade 5000 provides best-in-class performance for midrange SAN switches.

It features a non-blocking architecture with as many as 32 ports concurrently active at 4 Gbit/sec full duplex to provide an aggregate bandwidth of 256 Gbit/sec.

The Brocade 5000 utilizes ASIC technology featuring four 8-port groups. Within these groups, an Inter-Switch Link (ISL) trunk can supply up to 32 Gbit/sec of data throughput (see Figure 1). In addition to reducing congestion and increasing bandwidth, enhanced Brocade ISL Trunking utilizes ISLs more efficiently to free up the number of usable switch ports.

Additional performance capabilities include:

•Eight virtual channels on each ISL enhance Quality of Service traffic prioritization and anti-starvation capabilities at the port level to avoid performance degradation.

•Exchange-based Dynamic Path Selection

(DPS) optimizes fabric-wide performance and load balancing by automatically routing data to the most efficient available path in the fabric (see Figure 2). It augments ISL Trunking to provide more effective load balancing in certain configurations. In addition, DPS can balance traffic between the Brocade 5000 and McDATA devices enabled with Brocade Open Trunking.

ENTERPRISE-CLASS AVAILABILITY FOR BUSINESS CONTINUANCE

The Brocade 5000 provides a reliable foundation for disaster recovery and business continuance by employing enterprise-class availability features such as hot-swappable, redundant, and integrated fan and power supply assemblies. Moreover, hot code load and activation helps maximize application uptime with faster system upgrades and maintenance to reduce the dependency on scheduled outages. Combined with a wide range of diagnostic and monitoring functions, these capabilities help provide a highly available SAN environment.

To support business continuance operations, the Brocade 5000 enables industry-leading distances between servers and storage devices. Support for distances

up to 500 kilometers at 1 Gbit/sec and 125 kilometers at 4 Gbit/sec facilitates the deployment of high-performance, long-distance SAN initiatives such as data center consolidation.

HIGH SCALABILITY WITH

PORTS ON DEMAND

Delivering up to 32 ports in a 1U form factor, the Brocade 5000 combines cost- effectiveness with highly scalable Ports on Demand capabilities. It has a minimum of 16 ports enabled, and organizations can easily expand to 24 or 32 ports by activating a license as their requirements change.

As a result, the Brocade 5000 provides a modular “pay-as-you-grow” approach to business expansion.

SUPERIOR ROI AND

INVESTMENT PROTECTION

The Brocade 5000 combines performance, availability, interoperability, and scalability advantages with investment protection.

As a result, it is designed to enable rapid installation in existing SAN environments— reducing both deployment cost and complexity.

The Brocade 5000 utilizes the same Fabric OS that supports the entire Brocade SAN product family—from the 8-port Brocade 200E Switch to the 768-port Brocade DCX Backbone. This helps ensure forward and backward compatibility among Brocade SAN switches while simplifying maintenance and field upgrades. Moreover, organizations can manage the Brocade 5000 with existing management applications such as Brocade EFCM 9.x and Brocade Fabric Manager.