Brocade
SilkWorm 2400, 2800 Fibre Channel Switches
Brocade fabric switches create the core infrastructure for constructing a Storage or Server Area Network (SAN). The switches provide full fabric support, true line-speed switching, and modular components to build a wide range of SAN solutions.
The SilkWorm 2400 and SilkWorm 2800 create an intelligent connectivity infrastructure, or Fabric, to support connectivity of a wide range of host and storage types. Users share these resources efficiently in a SAN. Fabric services are deployed automatically and transparently throughout the Fabric to assure it is resilient to failures. The Fabric is scalable, expanding rapidly to increasing demands by users for highly available, heterogeneous access to growing storage pools.
SilkWorm switches provide the cornerstone for a wide range of SAN configurations - from NT-based workgroups to large enterprise solutions. Fabric switches have the capability to cascade, further increasing a Fabric`s scalability and resiliency. A multiple-switch Fabric can connect thousands of Fibre Channel ports. SilkWorm switches meet the needs of a broad range of SAN applications, including storage consolidation, enterprise backup, and clustering environments.
16-Port Entry-Level Fibre Channel Switches
The SilkWorm 2200 entry-level family of 16-port Fibre Channel switches is designed to address the Storage Area Network (SAN) requirements of mid-sized and large workgroups. This product family complements the 8-port entry-level switches (SilkWorm 2010, 2040, and 2050) by delivering higher density connectivity for entry- and mid-level SANs and media flexibility via GBIC interfaces.
All three entry-level 16-port switches support business-critical SAN applications, such as LAN-free backup, storage consolidation, remote mirroring, and high-availability configurations. This product family provides investment protection as it allows cost-effective, "pay-as-you-grow" migration to-and integration with-advanced SAN environments.
Highlights
- SilkWorm 2200 switches easily scale from a Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) configuration to an entry-level switch fabric, and from an entry-level switch fabric to a full fabric switched SAN.
- SilkWorm 2210 supports Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) configurations.
- SilkWorm 2240 enables high-speed (100 MB/sec full duplex) entry-level SAN fabrics.
- SilkWorm 2250 provide a robust framework for multi-switch full SAN fabrics.
- SilkWorm 2200 switches provide all the benefits of an any-to-any high-performance Storage Area Network (SAN) for small and mid-sized workgroups.
- Fabric OS provides powerful fabric management capabilities.
- SilkWorm 2210 and SilkWorm 2240 can be easily upgraded via a software key: no new hardware or software is required.
McData
McData ED-5000 Director (IBM 2032)
Data-Center High Availability for the SAN Backbone
Enterprise SANs allow all of your data to be centralized for simpler administration, management and backup. The data center is the backbone for your enterprise SAN. And SAN backbones require director-class switches.
Directors provide:
- 99.999% high availability-If 99.9% availability were enough, 3,056 copies of tomorrow`s Wall Street Journal would be missing one of its three sections. The 99.9% achievable with fabric switches can cost millions in down time.
- Scalability to large, but well managed multi-Director fabrics-not cobbled together clusters of switches.
- Fast, consistent performance of 3,200 MB/s bandwidth-even without taking into account high availability issues, 800 or 1,600 MB/s just isn`t good enough for a SAN backbone.
- Proactive management-not just a fabric view through browsers and telnet sessions.
McDATA`s ED-5000 Director is the industry`s leading Director-class switch holding 99.8% of the director market. With 32 ports and any-to-any connectivity, no other Director provides the same high availability, fault detection and isolation, and continuous uptime. Based on McDATA`s data-center experience in developing ESCON technology, the ED-5000 Director offers the 99.999% availability crucial for mission-critical applications. Technology savvy companies have embraced it for server and storage consolidation, and the backbone for their enterprise SANs.
Ficon
With release 3.0, McDATA director products support FICON attachments to IBM System 390 (S/390), Z Series 900 hosts and devices with native FICON. A new feature, the FICON Management Server, enables customers to manage the McDATA director products with the same Systems Administration 390, SA 390 software that they currently use to manage ESCON Directors. McDATA is the first Fibre Channel product to provide this management capability.
McDATA`s director products are also the only switching products offered by IBM that supports both mainframe FICON devices and open systems Fibre Channel devices. Users can combine Mainframe, UNIX and NT storage needs into one infrastructure, allowing open systems and mainframes to coexist. McDATA director products are the logical choice for customers who have S/390 and open systems storage area networks in their computing environment, including IBM and non-IBM servers and devices.