BROCADE FX 8-24 EXTENSION BLADE
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DATA SHEET Brocade FX8-24 Extension Blade HIGHLIGHTS • Enables fast, reliable, and cost-effective remote data replication and backup • Offers best-in-class Fibre Channel and FCIP port density, bandwidth, and throughput with twelve 8 Gbps Fibre Channel ports, ten 1 GbE ports, and up to two optional 10 GbE ports • Maximizes flexibility and scalability with a modular blade platform and simple software licensing to support a broad range of SAN extension requirements • Maximizes throughput over distance using advanced FCIP technology • Offers FCIP Trunking and Adaptive Rate Limiting to maximize WAN link utilization and resiliency • Simplifies management through Brocade Fabric Vision technology, reducing operational costs, maximizing uptime, and optimizing application performance Industry-Leading SAN Extension for Remote Data Replication and Backup IT organizations continue to face unprecedented data growth as more platforms, applications, and users connect to the data center network. In turn, the storage network infrastructure must continue evolving to enable fast, continuous, and cost-effective access to mission-critical data from anywhere in the world. To address this challenge, the Brocade® FX8-24 Extension Blade, designed specifically for Brocade DCX® 8510 Backbones and Brocade DCX Backbones, helps provide the fastest, most reliable, and most cost-effective network infrastructure for remote data replication and backup. Leveraging advanced 8 Gbps Fibre Channel, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), and Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) technology, the Brocade FX8-24 provides a flexible and extensible platform to move more data faster and farther than ever before. Whether configured for synchronous or asynchronous replication between data centers or centralized backup across multiple sites, the Brocade FX8-24 addresses the most demanding business continuity, compliance, and global data access requirements. Twelve 8 Gbps Fibre Channel ports, ten 1 GbE ports, and up to two optional 10 GbE ports provide unmatched Fibre Channel and FCIP bandwidth, port density, and throughput for maximum application performance over WAN links. A Scalable, Flexible SAN Extension Platform The Brocade FX8-24 is an ideal foundation for building or expanding a high-performance SAN extension infrastructure for disaster recovery and data protection solutions (see Figure 1). It leverages cost-effective IP WAN transport to extend open systems and mainframe disk and tape storage applications over distances that would otherwise be impossible, impractical, or too expensive with standard Fibre Channel connections.

Synchronous and Asynchronous Replication Centralized SAN Backup and Archiving Secondary Site Primary Site Central Backup Site Figure 1: The Brocade FX8-24 is a scalable SAN extension platform that extends disaster recovery and data protection storage solutions across any distance. Organizations can install up to four Brocade FX8-24 blades in a Brocade DCX 8510-8, Brocade DCX 8510-4, Brocade DCX, or Brocade DCX-4S, providing scalable Fibre Channel and FCIP bandwidth for larger enterprise data centers and multisite environments. Activating the optional 10 GbE ports doubles the aggregate...

Channel frame compression, disk and tape protocol acceleration, and FCIP networking technology. Unique features and technologies include the following: • FCIP Trunking combines multiple IP source and destination address pairs into a single logical high-bandwidth FCIP trunk spanning multiple physical ports—including 10 GbE ports—to provide load balancing and network failure resiliency. • Adaptive Rate Limiting dynamically adjusts bandwidth between minimum and maximum rate limits to optimize bandwidth utilization and sharing. • FCIP Quality of Service (QoS) provides high-, medium-, and...

Additionally, they can perform LUN-level monitoring of specific frame types to identify resource contention or congestion that is impacting application performance. Brocade Network Advisor Brocade Network Advisor simplifies Gen 5 Fibre Channel management and helps users proactively diagnose and resolve issues to maximize uptime, increase operational efficiency, and reduce costs. The wizard-driven interface dramatically reduces deployment and configuration times by allowing fabrics, switches, and ports to be managed as groups. Customizable dashboards graphically display performance...

Fibre Channel ports 12 ports; E, F, M, EX, and FL ports Fabric latency 700 ns with no contention, cut-through routing - at 8 Gbps FCIP ports 12 ports (VE, VEX): 10 1 GbE ports and two - optional 10 GbE ports Maximum frame size 2,112-byte payload - Data traffic types Fabric switches supporting unicast, Certified maximum Single fabric: 56 domains, 7 hops multicast (255 groups), and broadcast Standard FCIP port 10 1 GbE ports configuration Optional FCIP 10 GbE 10 1 GbE ports and one 10 GbE port; two port configurations 10 GbE ports Scalability Full fabric architecture...

Licensing options The following optional extension features can be enabled via license keys: • 10 GbE License: Enables the two 10 GbE ports and optional 10 GbE port configurations • Advanced Extension: Enables FCIP Trunking and Adaptive Rate Limiting • FICON Management Server: Control Unit Port (CUP) enables host control of switches in mainframe environments • Advanced Accelerator for FICON: Accelerates IBM zGM, mainframe tapes, and z/OS connection to Teradata systems over distance Management Supported SSH v2. HTTP/HTTPS, SNMP v1/v3. Telnet; management software SNMP (FE MIB. FC...