Flexibility and Performance
Have it your way
Maybe you run a high-performance storage network with huge data migration needs. This is your local SAN extension switch. Or multiple data centers with critical remote backup, business continuance, and disaster recovery requirements. It's also the perfect FCIP solution. What if you have just two SAN islands you want to consolidate or connect? One affordable, sleek 1U Brocade 7500 SAN extension switch is all you need. And no matter what, you can scale up fast, one at a time.
For local speed: SAN extension over native FC
Anywhere you have locally situated SANs, you can connect them at native Fibre Channel speeds. For local connections, the Brocade 7500 SAN extension switch applies its Brocade Extended Fabrics capabilities. It gives you a Fibre Channel SAN extension reach of 100 kilometers at 4 Gb/sec, all the way out to 500 kilometers at 1 Gb/sec. That lets you isolate a lot of local SANs from IP WANs—avoiding risk and disruptions—for faster data and resource sharing. But what about your remote SANs?
For long distance: Fibre Channel over IP
If you manage remote FC SANs, you have connectivity issues. For distant connections, FC isn't practical and dark fiber isn't always available. You want Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP). And the Brocade 7500 SAN extension switch takes FCIP to a new level. Its hardware-assisted remote traffic forwarding is fast and secure. This is where FICON SAN extension over FCIP meets scalable Fibre Channel routing. It's a great combination. Suddenly, your SANs and local data centers can share resources and data over MAN/WAN networks quicker and safer than ever. Users all across the enterprise benefit here.
Enhanced FICON/Fibre Channel protocols
Standard FICON/Fiber Channel protocols have been enhanced over antecedent parallel or ESCON implementations, eliminating end-to-end information exchanges whenever possible. They also allow multiple, full-duplex concurrent data transfers, neither of which could be supported by earlier channel-to-control unit protocols.
However, within this standard FICON/Fiber Channel protocol, increasing bandwidth and distance still subject certain applications to performance degradation. The Brocade Accelerator employs XRC emulation and tape pipelining to reduce or eliminate this degradation for certain defined applications.
The Brocade Accelerator is a licensed feature that supports FICON XRC emulation and FICON tape pipelining over FCIP on Brocade 7500 and FR4-18i. The user enables the Brocade Accelerator feature by adding the Brocade Accelerator for FICON license.
The new high mark in FCIP services
FCIP doesn't get any better than this: Eight virtual FCIP tunnels per Gigabit Ethernet port (x2) let you "fan in" 16 remote SANs per router. Hardware-based compression and encryption maximize your transmission throughput and security, without performance degradation. And Brocade's Fast Write (write acceleration) eliminates those infuriating delays in local acknowledgment of synchronous replication transactions. Plan to hit more of your backup windows, even as they shrink and your remote data grows. And if you get the news you've acquired another company, remember the Brocade 7500 SAN extension switch is all about "consolidation."
