Sadly, Spirent wouldn't tell us which vendors was able to scale "beyond 200" and which stopped "at lower numbers."
In any event, Spirent's comments reveal that some of the industry's players may be stretching the truth a bit. Three Fibre Channel switch vendors -- Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), and QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC) -- claim their equipment is able to handle the theoretical maximum of the FC spec.
Brocade says its SilkWorm 12000 can handle up to 239 switches in one fabric, and Cisco and QLogic make the same assertions for their switches, according to the July Byte and Switch Insider (see FC Market Gets Rattled).
Meanwhile, McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA) and CNT (Nasdaq: CMNT) appear to be a little more reticent. McData says its switches can scale to a maximum of 24 devices in a single fabric, while CNT says its FC/9000 supports up to 56 in one SAN.
Mason says the only way to feasibly test these kinds of scaleability claims is to use Spirent's Storage Routing Tester. "Instead of having to set up 20 or 30 switches and up to 200 end devices, you just have one device with one GUI [graphical user interface] to control everything," he says.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
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