Fibre Channel
Why storage area networks?
SANs grew out of enterprises' need to alleviate the storage access bottleneck by separating LAN/server traffic from storage traffic. By consolidating storage-related devices in a dedicated environment, enterprises and managed service providers increased the efficiency of their data processing and transport, as well as the manageability of their networks. Importantly, they also reduced network downtime. SANs enable redundant infrastructures, with two or more paths between servers and storage devices and automatic fail-over functionality in case of malfunctions.
Survivability increases with distance
Companies have grown increasingly interested in taking security to a new level by geographically separating so-called SAN islands. This is particularly the case when dispersed data-center facilities already exist. Fibre Channel is the dominant protocol in the open-systems world, and it supports the new distance requirements that interconnect today's sites.
Fibre Channel is the dominant protocol in the open-systems world ...
Speed and scalability
Fibre Channel products are available at 1, 2, 4, 8, 10 and 16Gbit/s, with 32Gbit/s on the horizon. The 16G FC data center market is dominated by Brocade's Gen5 series. Our FSP 3000 is fully qualified with Brocade's portfolio, supports all Fibre Channel standards and provides lowest-latency transport for any distance. In fact, it is now the underlying connectivity solution for many of the world's leading disaster recovery and business continuity implementations. What's more, the platform has been qualified to interoperate with all major SAN solution providers.
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