SAN Switches

Shikhar Bhargava
IBM SAN Team – HESS
 Introductionto switches
 Brocade Family
 Models & Features
 FOS
Brocade
CISCO
McData
 Brocade product name

Brocade 200E switch Brocade 5000

Brocade 4100 switch Brocade DCX Backbone

Brocade 4900 switch Brocade DCX-4S

Brocade 4/256 SAN Director FC10-6 Blade

Brocade FC4-16 Blade FC8-16 Blade

Brocade FC4-32 Blade FC8-32 Blade

FR4-18i blade FC8-48 Blade

FC4-48 Blade Brocade 300

FC4-16IP Blade Brocade 5100

Brocade 7500 Brocade 5300

Brocade 4012 Brocade 5410

Brocade 4024 Brocade Brocade 5480

Brocade entry-level switches are designed for
environments with smaller storage growth
requirements where cost considerations outweigh the
need for high availability.
Hardware Redundancy
Port Count
Functions
Cost
The low-cost SilkWorm 2000/2200 entry level
models have a single fixed power supply and
cooling mechanism.
The enterprise-class SilkWorm 2400/2800
products have dual hot-swappable power supplies
and hot-swappable cooling fans. All except the
lowest-end SilkWorm 2000 series of switches offer
pluggable Gigabit Interface Converters (GBICs) to
enable fast replacement of optical transceivers.
Brocade offers 8- and 16-port switches, a 64-
port integrated fabric and a dual 64-port core
fabric switch (in the future). You can use these
switches alone or together to form fabrics
consisting of hundreds of ports.
The Brocade Fabric OS software installed on all Brocade switches is
inherently capable of supporting all key features. However,
software license keys might be required to activate some of these
features. Each switch comes bundled with certain software keys,
and if you need features that are not bundled with the product, you
will need to budget for the additional licenses.
Brocade has a wide range of switch
models, from low-cost entrylevel
departmental switches all the way up to
robust, enterprise-class fabric switches,
integrated fabrics, and core fabric
switches.
Automatic discovery of devices
Fabric devices log in to the Simple Name Server (SNS).Translative mode is
automatically set to allow fabric initiators to communicate with private
loop targets.

Universal port support

Fabric OS identifies port types and automatically initializes each
connection specific to the attached Fibre Channel system, whether it is
another switch, host, private loop, or fabric-aware target system.

Continuous monitoring of ports for exception conditions

Fabric OS disables data transfer to ports when they fail. Ports are
automatically enabled after the exception condition is corrected.
Management Server
Supports in-band discovery of fabric elements and topology.

Simple Name Server (SNS)

Incorporates the latest Fibre Channel standards and registers
information about SAN hosts and storage devices. It also provides a
Registered State Change Notification (RSCN) when a device state
changes or a new device is introduced

Alias Server
Supports the multicast service that broadcasts data to all
members of a group.
Dynamic path selection via link-state protocols

Load sharing to maximize throughput through Inter-Switch

Links (ISLs)

Automatic path failover

In-order frame delivery

Automatic rerouting of frames when a fault occurs

Routing support for link costs

Support for high-priority protocol frames (useful for clustering

applications)

Static routing support

Automatic reconfiguration
Management Server based on FC-GS-3 Permits in-band access to
fabric discovery.

An SNMP agent and a series of comprehensive Management

Information Bases (MIBs)

In-band (through IP or over a Fibre Channel link) or external

Ethernet interface

Syslog daemon interface

Switch beaconing