Brocade launches 'industry-first' Gen 6 Fibre family for all-flash data centers

Brocade has launched the industry's first Gen 6 Fibre Channel directors that will complement its storage network solutions. The Brocade X6 director family and SX6 extension blade will support a modern storage network for mission-critical connectivity for the all-flash data center, the company says.

The company says Fibre Channel fabrics are what links organizations to critical data, and 96% of banks, industries and retailers rely on it. Therefore, it is important that data centers choose high performance Channels.

"Legacy networks will bottleneck flash storage minimizing the performance and economic benefits of this game-changing technology," says Jack Rondoni, vice president of storage networking at Brocade.

He explains that its Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions work with Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe), which will be the next disruptive technology data centers and their customers will face. Alongside the SX6 Extension Blade, Brocade's new products include Fabric Vision Technology with IO or VM Insight.

In addition, customers and partners have been quick to endorse Brocade's Gen 6 Fibre Channel directors, with support from the likes of NetApp, Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei and Pure Storage.

"An all-flash data center is a must for any business that is transforming digitally. With flash eliminating storage performance as a bottleneck, customers now want network upgrades that rebalance performance across the data center.  Brocade's Gen 6 Fibre Channel directors deliver performance improvements for NetApp's fast-growing SAN customer base," says Maria Olson, vice president, Global and Strategic Alliances at NetApp.

Brocade has also adopted network automation solutions to capitalise on statistics by a global CIO survey that shows 75% of respondents lack network automation. As a result, Brocade developed its Network Advisor platform, which provides a web interface for command-and-control programming.

Brocade also continues to support the OpenStack community by providing Fibre Channel zone management to the OpenStack Cinder project.

Brocades's Gen 6 Fibre Channel family is being distributed by Hitachi Data Systems, which the company says combines well with the Hitachi flash portfolio.

"Digital transformation enables businesses to deliver superior customer experiences. That cannot be accomplished without a modern and agile IT infrastructure that delivers information to customers faster than ever before. The combination of the Hitachi flash portfolio with Brocade's Gen 6 directors, blades and switch enables businesses to transform operations and serve data to customers radically faster so they get what they want, when they want it," concludes Bob Madaio, vice president of infrastructure solutions marketing, Hitachi Data Systems.