SINGAPORE: Brocade announced that it has strengthened its Brocade DCX Backbone family with the introduction of two new modular solutions: the Brocade FX8-24 extension blade designed to connect two or more data centres to enhance business continuity and disaster recovery, and Brocade FCoE10-24 blade, which provides fibre channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capabilities for server I/O consolidation in data centre.

Brocade server I/O consolidation solutions based on FCoE and converged enhanced Ethernet (CEE) are designed to provide the scalability needed in highly demanding, virtualised server environments to meet the dynamic needs of evolving enterprise data centres. These networking solutions will help companies build their next-generation data center networks and better support emerging technologies such as server virtualization and cloud computing.

The extension blade offers twelve eight-gigabit per second (Gbps) fibre channel ports, ten 1-gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports, and up to two optional 10 GbE ports. Organisations can install up to two Brocade FX8-24 blades in a Brocade DCX or DCX-4S Backbone and can double the aggregate bandwidth to 40 Gbps by activating the optional 10 GbE ports.

The platform also introduces FCIP Trunking, the industry's only solution enabling FCIP tunnels with up to 10 Gbps bandwidth using 10 GbE ports and 4 Gbps using 1 GbE ports, with full failover and load balancing capabilities for resiliency and performance. Additional new features and enhancements include Adaptive Rate Limiting, FCIP Quality of Service (QoS), and more effective compression.

In addition, Brocade continues to offer more flexible deployment options with these solutions also available as dedicated, standalone network devices. Brocade is also announcing the availability of the Brocade 7800 Extension Switch, which offers the same functionality as the Brocade FX8-24 Extension Blade but as a fixed-configuration switch. The Brocade 7800 provides a cost- effective choice for smaller data centres and remote offices implementing point-to-point disk replication in open systems environments.

The Brocade FCoE 10-24 Blade for the Brocade DCX Backbone will be available through EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, and NetApp (supported by NetApp FAS and V-Series unified storage systems).

Brocade also debuted Brocade Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM) Professional Plus, created specifically for midsized organizations and departments. DCFM Professional Plus leverages the same architecture and supports most of the features of Brocade DCFM Enterprise edition to provide a seamless upgrade path for growing environments.

In addition, Brocade has released DCFM version 10.3, delivering new FCIP management capabilities that help simplify configuration and administration of fibre channel and FCIP network infrastructures. It also enables broader management of CEE/FCoE environments along with enhancements to simplify end- to-end administration of large virtualized server environments.