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  5. Brocade, Cisco, End-to-End FCoE And Who's On First: Page 2 of 2
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Brocade, Cisco, End-to-End FCoE And Who's On First: Page 2 of 2

I took some heat, in a good natured way, about my article Brocade First To Market With Native End-to-End FCoE . Brad Hedlund, Brian Gracely, and Stu Miniman contend that Cisco is first with end-to-end FCoE. In my original story, the headline "Brocade First To Market With Native End-to-End FCoE" was inaccurate. After talking to Brocade and Cisco in depth, the more accurate title is "Brocade First To Market With End-to-End Ethernet FCoE." I was sort of right and sort of wrong. Let me explain.
Mike Fratto
November 17, 2010

Brocade's VDX 6720-based VCS only works within its own set of products. Cisco's Nexus 5000 is in the same boat. Does it matter? It matters when you want to add other products into your FCoE fabric. What it sounds like to me is that Brocade and Cisco have different interpretations of FC-BB-5. I think standards should be adopted in good faith and that vendors come to a common interpretation of the standard and should prove meaningful inter-operation amongst themselves or to quote the IETF credo, "rough consensus and running code". Regardless, standards compliance opens the market place and gives customers choice. But standards purists don't carry a lot of weight with companies that are #1 and #2 in the SAN space. Storage vendors and customers have lived with qualified equipment lists for years. FCoE isn't going to be the leveler.

One of the main problems Brocade has with the VDX 6720 is that it loses visibility into the FC network, which SAN administrators rely on for management and troubleshooting. Brocade admits this is a big miss, and says it will address it in upcoming versions of either SAN Health or LAN Health products which report on traffic statistics and provide troubleshooting tools. Also, the VDX doesn't have any FC ports, nor does the VDX integrate with Brocade's other FCoE switch, the 8000.

If you want to do FCoE the Brocade way, it's all or nothing. Cisco is happy to point this out, although they are in a similar position. With all the finger pointing, someone is going to lose an eye.

Just to put a bow on this monster: two nodes using FCoE connected to a Nexus 2000 Fabric Extender, which is connected to a Nexus 5000, does not constitute end-to-end Ethernet FCoE because the Nexus 2000 Fabric Extender is just a bump in the wire and switching occurs on the Nexus 5000. If you want to call the Nexus 2000 a hop (and you know who you are, Brad), you might as well call the CAT6 cable between them a hop as well. So there. LOL

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