Let’s face it: running a storage area network isn’t the glory side of IT. But with a few tools it can be easier.
Brocade Communications Systems Inc. hopes it has done that with the latest release of Brocade Network Advisor and its Fabric OS operating system for Fibre Channel switches.
The company said Monday that Network Advisor 12.0 now has new monitoring and visualization capabilities to make Brocade fabrics more reliable and solving problems quicker.
At the same time the company also released a new 96-port 2U-sized switch.
(Dasboard lets administrators see at a glace what’s going on)
Together Brocade dubs these capabilities FabricVision.
“What used to be a very labor-intensive process of setting up thresholds and monitors in a fabric is very now easy,” Scott Shimomura, Brocade’s director of product marketing, said in an interview.
Brocade also said that it is giving its FC line a new name: Gen 5 Fibre Channel encompasses the current four and eight slot directors, fixed prot switches from 24 to 96 ports, embedded switches for IBM and Dell blade servers, and a line of adapter cards for rack servers and mezzanine cards for IBM chassis switches
Until now the products have been known by their network speeds (ie: the 16 GBps line)
Shimomura said the name change was made because customers chose Fibre Channel for its characteristics, not speeds.
The new switch is available now through Brocade channel partners as well as through Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard and NetApp. Later this year it will be carried by other OEM partners including Dell, EMC and HDS.
