EMC Corp. has made several additions to its Connectrixfamily of switches and directors. The first is the ED-DCX-4S-B, a newmidsize backbone director, based on OEM technology from Brocade. It’s amultipurpose core and edge network switching platform designed to helpfacilitate server, storage area network (SAN), and data centreconsolidation while helping to reduce IT infrastructure andadministrative costs.
The director scales to 192 ports at up to full 8 Gbit/sec speed throughits four modular blade slots and leverages the same architecture anddelivers the same high levels of performance, scalability, and energyefficiency as its larger predecessor, the Connectrix DCX director. Itcan be deployed as a lower-cost backbone for midsize enterprise networkenvironments that do not require the throughput and port density oflarger models. For larger networks, it can be deployed at the networkedge to provide complete backbone-class capabilities throughout thedata centre fabric. The DCX-4S is also compatible with other FOS-basedConnectrix products, providing investment protection and seamlessintegration into existing environments.
EMC also said the DCX family is about to add security and encryptioncapabilities from its RSA security division. The new encryptiontechnologies, to be introduced this quarter, come in two form factors:a 32-port standalone encryption switch and a 16-port encryption blade.Both options provide up to
96 Gbit/sec of encryption processing power and scale quickly to meetrising customer data security demands. Both products can be implementedin existing fabrics without disruption and can be applied to specifieddata flows, preserving investments in heterogeneous storage networks.
Finally, EMC said there’ s new version out of Connectrix ManagerData Center Edition, a SAN management software tool for managing,monitoring, configuring and reporting of Connectrix switches anddirectors. This latest version is a key component of Brocade’s DataCenter Fabric
(DCF) architecture vision and incorporates features of existing Brocademanagement products. It can configure and manage up to 24multi-protocol fabrics at a time, supporting up to 9,000 fabric portsand 20,000 devices ports. It can also perform real-time and historicalperformance monitoring to enable proactive problem diagnosis, maximizeresource utilization, facilitate capacity planning, and centrallymanage encryption services.
