Brocade Announces Highly Scalable Gigabit Ethernet Switch

Brocade announced its newest Ethernet fabric switch, the VDX 8770, a massively scalable modular chassis switch that scales to over 8,000 ports, at its Analyst And Technology Day briefings Wednesday in San Jose, Calif.

Flat fabric topology, rather than inflexible legacy hierarchical topologies, maximizes network utilization and provides multi-pathing between Layers 1-3. The result is an efficient fabric, which is simple to deploy and is designed for enterprises and service providers that want to both simplify and scale out their data center infrastructure to accelerate new service introduction and lower installation and maintenance costs.

Available in either a four- or eight-slot chassis, the VDX 8770 can handle four TBs per second per slot with only 3.5 microseconds of latency between any two devices in the network. The modular switch supports from 12 to over 8,000 ports in a single fabric and provides hardware-enhanced network virtualization. It will also support 100-GbE devices when the port hardware is available. Network utilization is enhanced through automatic load balancing all the way through the Layer 3 gateways directly in the fabric. The first modules available will be 48 x 1 Gbps, 48 x 10 Gbps, and 12 x 40 Gbps in a single slot.

The VCS architecture, which was introduced in 2010, is designed specifically for highly virtualized data centers. Ethernet fabrics built on VCS technology accelerate application deployment and enable faster virtual machine (VM) migrations through automated features including VM discovery, VM mobility, and VM port configuration migration. Using VCS fabrics, networks can be managed over dozens of switches as a single logical device, reducing operational costs. Installation time is reduced as new switches self-provision when they are connected to the fabric.

Brocade has developed new silicon for the VDX 8770, which can support 384,000 individual VMs within a single fabric, allowing an entire data center to be managed as a single entity. Further, the level-spanning capabilities of the VxLAN tunneling protocol are supported with direct visibility to the VxLAN 24-bit network ID contained in the Ethernet header. This makes the VDX 8770 ready to participate in the new generation of software defined networks.

The Brocade VDX 8770 can be ordered now. The U.S. MSRP starts at $65,000, or $833 per 10-Gbps port. The Brocade VDX 8770 and other Brocade networking solutions are available directly from Brocade, through Brocade channel partners, or through the Brocade Subscription Service.

In other news, Brocade announced the new 24-port 10 Gbps Ethernet module for the Brocade MLXe Series routers, delivering higher density and performance for software-defined networking, with the ability to scale up to 768 ports of 10 GbE in a single chassis. Based on Brocade MaxScale-160 Packet Processor technology with fourth-generation silicon innovation, the new module triples existing 10 GbE density and is purpose-built for high-capacity, high-performance data center core and service provider networks.

Brocade also introduced the 12.5 software release for Brocade ADX Application Delivery Switches, delivering a new multi-tenancy capability.

Deni Connor is founding analyst for Storage Strategies NOW, an industry analyst firm that focuses on storage, virtualization, and servers.