Brocade Unveils Cloudplex for Virtualized Cloud Networks

Brocade Communication Systems Inc. has introduced a the Brocade Cloudplex Architecture for Virtualization and Cloud-Optimized Networks. Cloudplex is comprised of three new data center fabric solutions: Brocade DCX 85 10 Backbone, Brocade 6510 Switch and Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter. The announcement was made this week at the Brocade Technology Day Summit in San Jose, California.

According to Brocade Chief Marketing Officer John McHugh, the goal is to create an “unbound” data center in a highly virtualized environment. “There are three characteristics a company needs to lead in this technology, ” said McHugh. “You need to focus on technology that brings the infrastructure together; you have to understand data centers; and you have to understand the big network perspective. Every data center is becoming a service provider, and every service provider is becoming a data center.”

Here’s a breakdown of Brocade’s three new products mentioned above:

Brocade’s new DCX 8510 Backbone is a SAN Backbone available in 8-slot and 4-slot chassis models and it supports up to 386 ports, each offering 16 gigabytes per second (Gbps) performance.

The second solution is the Brocade 6510 Switch. The key elements here are diagnostics, automation and monitoring. The new switch is intended to simplify fabric management, fabric provisioning and build an overall proactive system that includes alerting, network performance degradation detection, end-to-end optics and link validation.

Third, the company introduced the Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter — a universal adapter for all fibre channels at 2- 4- 8- and 16gigbytes per second (Gbps) and 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connectivity. The adapter can logically divide physical links into as many as eight virtual network interface cards (vNIC’s). Ultimately, the new adapter is intended to help customers using cloud-optimized data centers reduce operating costs.

“‘Cloud’ means a million different things to a million different people,” said McHugh. “There are two characteristics of the cloud. application and business ability, and financial efficiency.” Brocade is focused on a single strategy — called the Brocade One Strategy — that incorporates the enterprise, the data center and the service provider all in one. And even as the IT industry moves toward the cloud, Brocade maintains that the cloud will only mean something to customers when it’s efficient and cost effective.

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