Brocade debuts Fabric Vision SAN technology

Networking vendor Brocade has taken the wraps off its Fabric Vision technology, and claims its offers unprecedented levels of visibility and insight into storage networks.

The joint hardware and software offering, dubbed Fabric Vision technology, combines Brocade hardware, its embedded operating system (Fabric OS) and management software (Network Advisor) and will also offer 16 Gbps performance, the organisation said.

The product includes policy-based tools that simplify threshold configuration and monitoring, and management that allow administrators to identify, monitor and analyse application data workflows, monitoring tools to detect congestion and latency, and cable and optic diagnostics.

Brocade added that Fabric Vision technology is a sign of its commitment to developing new SAN offerings based on components that conform to the soon-to-be-ratified Gen 6 Fibre Channel industry standard.

Jason Nolet, vice president of the datacentre networking group at Brocade, said: "Our customers run their most critical applications and store their most important data on Brocade Fibre Channel infrastructure to support highly virtualised and emerging cloud-optimised datacentres.

"Today's announcement underscores our investment and laser-focus on leading the Fibre Channel industry with innovative technology and solutions built upon standards-based networking management."

Brocade also announced a new networking hardware product, the 6520 switch, which it claims will help enterprise IT address the unprecedented data and application growth, increased infrastructure complexity and datacentre space constraints it currently faces.

The switch features 96 Fibre Channel ports in a 2U form factor and Gen 5 Fibre Channel advanced functionality. This, the company claims, means fewer inter-switch links, fewer cables and fewer overall switches to manage, increasing reliability and reducing cost.

Both Fabric Vision technology and the 6520 Switch are available immediately.