Brocade X7 Directors & G720 Switch Released

Today Broadcom Inc. announced the release of the Brocade X7 Directors and G720 Switch, what they are calling the industry’s first Gen 7 64Gb/s Fibre Channel switching platforms. These platforms are said to be foundational infrastructure for the on-demand data center that can enable an autonomous SAN. The company also announced the first 64Gb/s Fibre Channel optical transceiver, that is being qualified for use in Brocade switches and Emulex adapters, for end-to-end Gen 7 performance.

Today Broadcom Inc. announced the release of the Brocade X7 Directors and G720 Switch, what they are calling the industry’s first Gen 7 64Gb/s Fibre Channel switching platforms. These platforms are said to be foundational infrastructure for the on-demand data center that can enable an autonomous SAN. The company also announced the first 64Gb/s Fibre Channel optical transceiver, that is being qualified for use in Brocade switches and Emulex adapters, for end-to-end Gen 7 performance.

NVMe-based storage is taking over as the preferred form of storage as it offers much better speeds and much lower latency. This means organizations are running more data through their SAN devices at faster speeds than in the past. While this sounds great, it moves the bottleneck around and lets it fall on the network. To avoid this, networks need to be capable of handling and maximizing the new speeds. This is where Brocade Gen 7 comes in with its 64Gb/s line-rate speed along with a 50% reduction in latency.

As stated, the new Brocade Gen 7 Fibre Channel brings high-performance and low latency. Along with that, it is said to combine it with powerful analytics and advanced automation capabilities to enable an autonomous SAN. The quoted speeds would work well with something like an all-NVMe flash array. The update also adds new self-learning, self-optimizing and self-healing capabilities all with the aim of creating an autonomous SAN.

On the autonomous side of things, new technologies rolling out in Brocade Gen 7 are set to simplify and automate management. Through new analytics the SAN will become self-learning understanding the impact of trends and to see trending issues. The SAN will be self-optimizing where it automates network management and maximizes its own performance by looking at traffic behavior easing congestion and prioritizing important tasks. Another step for automation is a self-healing SAN. If there is disruption or outage, the network will mitigate and resolve the issue with IT intervention.

In order to achieve the autonomous SAN, Brocade released two 64Gb/s Fibre Channel switching platforms. The foundation is the company’s new X7 Director. This director is said to be a highly-scalable modular building block, purpose-built to power large-scale storage environments. Brocade X7 directors come with the claim of maximizing the performance of NVMe storage and high-transaction workloads, eliminating IO bottlenecks and unleashing the full performance of next-generation storage. For organizations that have lots of devices, applications, and workloads the Brocade X7 Directors provide up to 384 64Gb/s line rate ports or up to 512 32Gb/s line rate ports.

The other platform is the Brocade G720 Switch. This switch comes with 56 64Gb/s line rate ports in a 1U design and 50% lower switching latency compared to previous generations to maximize performance of NVMe storage. Brocade says the switch can simplify deployment, configuration, and management of SAN devices.

Availability

Brocade X7 Directors and Brocade G720 Switches are now available.

Brocade Fibre Channel

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