Brocade introduces its Fabric Vision Technology

By Edwin Yapp March 29, 2013

Network gear maker launches new solution; claims to give better visibility into SANs
Also launches new switch that utilizes 16Gbps technology

BROCADE Communications Systems has launched its Fabric Vision Technology, a solution which combines hardware and software that the company claims would help enterprises gain better visibility into their Storage Area Networks (SANs) and simplify deployment and management.

According to Sean Ong (pic), Brocade Malaysia’s country manager, the new technology seeks to maximize infrastructure uptime and optimize application performance while reducing the cost of operations for companies using this infrastructure.

“With Fabric Vision, administrators will be able to conduct pre-validated configuration automatically and make sure that it’s done properly instead of having to manually configure settings,” he said in an interview.

“The technology also allows pre-configured settings that automatically detect traffic and the health of the network, network congestion and application data flow, all of which can be carried out without the need of third-party tools.”

Asked what were the challenges facing the industry that spurred the San Jose, California-based network gear maker to come up with this technology, Ong said the demand placed by users of today’s networks is the main reason why such innovation is necessary.

He noted that networks run by service providers and enterprises are facing an unprecedented rise in traffic brought about by the different devices, such as laptops, smartphones and tablets, that are being used to access the Internet.

Devices aside, Ong also pointed out that the applications and services that users want today, such as video-on-demand, have also forced the hand of service providers to keep their customers happy.

“When such demands are made of the network, the data center will also need to change,” he said. “The challenge is that most of today’s data centers are not equipped to handle such demands, and that is why we’ve introduced our Fabric Vision Technology.”

Using Brocade’s Fabric Vision Technology, Ong claimed that administrators could easily customize health and performance dashboard views so that they can monitor and check all critical information on one screen. They can also conduct trend analysis instead of manually monitoring alerts, which are time consuming and prone to human errors, he added.

They can even conduct flow and latency monitoring on-the-fly without requiring downtime and external analyzers and expensive solutions to do so, he claimed.

In tandem with the introduction of its Fabric Vision Technology, Ong said Brocade has also announced the availability of its latest SAN switch along with enhancements to its fabric management software.

The new Brocade 6520 Switch is based on the 16Gbps (Giga bits per second) Fiber Channel standard. The company claims that the density of the 6520 switch will allow for fewer inter-switch links, and fewer cables to manage, thereby lowering the total overall cost of ownership.

On how much savings can be derived from the implementation of the 6520, Ong claimed that generally speaking, the TCO saved could range anywhere between 25% and 30%.

The new Brocade 6520 Switch and new Brocade Network Advisor 12.0 are available now through Brocade OEM partners Fujitsu, HP and NetApp, as well as through Brocade channel partners.

These new products will be offered later this year by other OEM partners, including Dell, EMC and HDS.

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