Brocade SAN Fabric Technologies Provide Solid Foundation for New EMC VSPEX with VMAX3 100K Infrastructure Solution

• Brocade Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN switches and management software help ensure predictable performance, unmatched resiliency and ultra-fast access to data for EMC VMAX³ storage

• Brocade Fabric Vision technology helps prevent problems before they impact operations, accelerate application deployments and dramatically reduce operational costs

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced the company’s Gen 5 Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) technologies play an essential role in delivering reliability and predictable performance for the new EMC® VSPEX® with VMAX³™ 100K converged infrastructure solution that was unveiled today at EMC World. The new solution is based on the EMC VSPEX reference architecture and is designed for virtualized cloud-based delivery and management of IT resources.

VSPEX with VMAX³ 100K is purpose built to deliver and manage predictable service levels at scale for hybrid clouds. This is designed to provide customers with the ability to seamlessly bridge their VMware private cloud deployment with public clouds, paving the way forward to hyperconsolidate and connect on- and off-premise workloads into a hybrid cloud environment.

Brocade Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN switches and management software provide a solid .foundation between the VMAX³ 100K storage arrays and servers. All elements of this reference architecture have been tested and certified as a solution by EMC.

“Converged infrastructures for high-end, business-critical applications fill a huge void in the marketplace,” said Jack Rondoni, vice president, storage networking, at Brocade. “For these environments, Brocade Fibre Channel fabrics allow the server and storage to realize their full potential by maximizing network uptime, simplifying SAN management and providing unprecedented visibility and insight across the entire storage network.”

The SAN for VSPEX with VMAX³ 100K is built on Brocade Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN switching and Fabric Vision™ monitoring and network diagnostic technologies. Branded and sold through the EMC Connectrix® family, the Brocade SAN helps ensure predictable performance, unmatched resiliency and ultra-fast access to data stored on the EMC VMAX³ 100K arrays, each of which are necessary for ensuring predictable service levels, at scale, for hybrid clouds.

Brocade Fabric Vision technology is advanced hardware and software that combines capabilities from Brocade hardware, the embedded operating system (Brocade Fabric OS^®) and management software (Brocade Network Advisor). Leveraging innovative monitoring, diagnostics and management capabilities, Brocade Fabric Vision technology provides administrators with the ability to anticipate and preempt problems before they impact operations, accelerate application performance and dramatically reduce operational costs.

“Brocade Fibre Channel SANs are a trusted, best-of-breed solutions for more than 50,000 EMC high-end storage customers in many of the world’s most demanding environments,” said Gil Shneorson, Vice President, General Manager, VSPEX, EMC Corporation. “The Brocade SAN technologies were a logical choice for supporting the VSPEX VMAX³ 100K converged architecture to enable the same reliability, agility and simplicity for enterprises who want to deliver services via hybrid-cloud IT architectures.”

Product and Technology Details

EMC Connectrix DS-6510B 16 Gb SAN Switch

• 48-port, high-performance, enterprise-class switch that meets the demands of highly virtualized and private cloud storage environments

• Provides maximum flexibility, simplicity, and reliability in an efficiently designed 1U package.

• Maximizes availability with redundant, hot-pluggable components and non-disruptive software upgrades

Brocade Fabric Vision

• Policy-based tools that simplify fabric-wide threshold configuration and monitoring

• Management tools that allow administrators to identify, monitor and analyze specific application data flows, without the need for expensive, disruptive, third-party tools

• Monitoring tools that detect network congestion and latency in the fabric, providing visualization of bottlenecks and identifying exactly which devices and hosts are impacted

• Customizable health and performance dashboard views, providing all critical information in one screen

• Cable and optic diagnostic features that simplify the deployment and support of large fabrics

Pricing and Availability

Brocade SAN fabric technologies for EMC VSPEX with VMAX 100K³ are now available from EMC VSPEX-enabled business partners. Pricing information is also available from these partners.

About Brocade:

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)

© 2015 Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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