Brocade X6 Directors

Base price

Description

Digital transformation driven by storage innovation requires a modern storage network. Brocade X6 Director family and SX6 Extension Blade combined with Brocade Fabric Vision technology enables customers to drive always-on business operations, eliminate performance bottlenecks, and adapt to the requirements of the digital enterprise.

Always-on business: Hitting your service level agreement (SLA) targets requires network-wide operational stability, maintained through greater control and insight. Brocade X6 Directors provide both, with extensive automation that includes performance monitoring, diagnostics, and error recovery.

Breakthrough application performance: Breakthrough 32G performance accelerates application response time by up to 71 percent, eliminating IO bottlenecks, and unleashes the full performance of flash and next-generation Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe)-based storage.

Increase productivity with automation: Automate and orchestrate repetitive tasks, enable IT organizations to significantly improve their efficiency, and decrease the risk of operational mistakes to simplify end-to-end management and accelerate operations of large-scale environments.

Future-ready today: Adapt to evolving requirements requires business agility. Brocade X6 Directors adapt and optimize businesses with seamless integration into next-generation NVMe over fabrics and future-ready support for Gen 7 Fibre Channel without a disruptive rip and replace.

Features

Extraordinary Operational Stability

The industry’s first integrated network sensors, IO Insight, provides device latency and IOPS metrics to automatically detect degraded application or device performance
VM Insight enables Virtual Machine (VM) visibility in a storage fabric to monitor and optimize VM performance and identify VM anomalies
Automated monitoring and diagnostics to simplify end-to-end management of large-scale environments

Accelerated Data Access

32G links increase performance for demanding workloads
128Gb/s UltraScale ICL connectivity supports infrastructure consolidation
Line-rate performance on every port improves application response

Increased Business Agility

Highly scalable, Fibre Channel, IP, and FICON extension solution extends replication over distance
Seamlessly integrates next-generation NVMe over fabrics without a disruptive rip and replace
Seamless FICON connectivity for mainframe storage environments

System Architecture
Chassis	Single chassis: The Brocade X6-8 provides up to 512 32 Gb/s ports or a 640-port equivalent with 128 Gb/s (4×32 Gb/s) UltraScale ICL ports (32 QSFP ports). The Brocade X6-4 provides up to 256 32 Gb/s ports or a 320-port equivalent with 16 UltraScale ICL ports (16 QSFP ports).
Chassis	Each provides support for (E, F, D, M, SIM, AE, and EX) Fibre Channel ports using 48- and 64-port 32 Gb/s Fibre Channel blades.
Control processor	Redundant (active/standby) control processor modules.
Scalability	Full-fabric architecture of 239 switches.
Certified maximum	6000 active devices per switch; 56 switches, 19 hops in Brocade Fabric OS® (FOS) fabrics; larger fabrics certified as required.
Fibre Channel blades	Brocade FC32-48 Port Blade provides 48 ports of 32 Gb/s Gen 6 Fibre Channel Brocade FC32-64 Port Blade provides 64 ports of 32 Gb/s Gen 6 Fibre Channel
Extension blades	Brocade SX6 Extension Blade provides Fibre Channel extension (16×32 Gb/s Fibre Channel ports) and IP extension over IP networks (16×1GbE/10GbE and 2×40GbE ports).
Performance	Fibre Channel: 4.25 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; 8.5 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; 10.53 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; 14.025 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; 28.05 Gb/s, full duplex.
	Autosensing of 4, 8, 16, and 32 Gb/s port speeds depending on SFPs used. Speed matching between 4, 8, 16, and 32 Gb/s port speeds. 10 Gb/s port speeds with dedicated SFPs.
	FCoE: 10GbE, 25GbE, or 40GbE FCoE speeds. Support for 10GbE, 25GbE, and 40GbE speeds requires the use of the appropriate QSFP transceiver.
ISL trunking	Frame-based trunking with up to eight 32 Gb/s ports per ISL trunk; up to 256 Gb/s per ISL trunk Exchange-based load balancing across ISLs with DPS included in Brocade FOS.
UltraScale ICL trunking	Chassis-to-chassis linkage through connectors on the Core Routing (CR) blade.
	Can configure the following maximum QSFPs per trunk depending on blade type, connecting:
	• Up to four 4×32 Gb/s QSFP ports in a trunk group to form a 512 Gb/s trunk between two Brocade CR32-4 blades. For trunks containing four or fewer QSFP ports, ports in a trunk must be located in the same port group on each blade.
	• Up to four 4×32 Gb/s QSFP ports in a trunk group to form a 512 Gb/s trunk between a Brocade CR32- 4 and CR32-8 blade. For trunks containing four or fewer QSFP ports, ports in a trunk must be located in the same port group on each blade.
	A minimum of two QSFP connections are required for a trunk, and up to four 4×16 Gb/s QSFP trunks between pairs of Brocade CR32-8 (CR32-4) and CR16-8 (CR16-4).
Multichassis with UltraScale ICL ports	Up to 6144 non-blocking 32 Gb/s Fibre Channel ports; UltraScale ICL ports (32 for 8-slot or 16 per 4-slot chassis, optical QSFP) connect up to nine chassis in a full mesh topology or up to 12 chassis in a core- edge topology.
UltraScale ICL bandwidth	Brocade X6-8: 4.096 Tb/s; 32 UltraScale ICL ports provide the equivalent of 128 32 Gb/s ports. Each UltraScale ICL port provides 128 Gb/s bandwidth over a QSFP (32 Gb/s×4) link.
	Brocade X6-4: 2.048 Tb/s; 16 UltraScale ICL ports provide the equivalent of 64 32 Gb/s ports. Each UltraScale ICL port provides 128 Gb/s bandwidth over a QSFP (32 Gb/s×4) link.
	Both models: Frame-based trunking is enabled between four UltraScale ICLs. DPS distributes exchanges across all frame trunks.
Chassis bandwidth	Brocade X6-8: 20.5 Tb/s per chassis: 16.384 Tb/s port bandwidth (512 ports×32 Gb/s) data rate +
	4.096 Tb/s UltraScale ICL bandwidth (32×128 Gb/s)
	Brocade X6-4: 10.2 Tb/s per chassis: 8.192 Tb/s port bandwidth (192 ports×32 Gb/s) data rate +
	2.048 Tb/s UltraScale ICL bandwidth (16×128 Gb/s)
Slot bandwidth	1536 Gb/s (line rate) providing line-rate performance for the Brocade FC32-48 blade and 1.33:1 over- subscription performance for the Brocade FC32-64 blade
Switch latency	Brocade FC32-48 and FC32-64 blades at Gen 6 32 Gb/s speeds: <780 ns (including FEC); any-port-to- any-port local switching and 2.6 μs blade to blade at 32 Gb/s, cut-through routing
Switch latency	Brocade SX6 blade, Fibre Channel to Fibre Channel: <780 ns (including FEC) and 2.6 μs any-port-to- any-port at 32 Gb/s, cut-through routing
Maximum frame size	2112-byte payload
Frame buffers	15,360 per switching ASIC
Classes of service	Class 2, Class 3, Class F (inter-switch frames)
Fibre Channel port types	Brocade FC32-48 and FC32-64 Port Blades: F_Port, E_Port, EX_Port, M_Port, SIM, and D_Port Brocade SX6 Extension Blade: F_Port, E_Port, and EX_Port on FC, and VE_Port on GbE
Fibre Channel port types	Note: Self-discovery is based on switch type (U_Port) with an optional port-type control.
Data traffic types	Fabric switches supporting unicast, multicast (255 groups), and broadcast
Media types	Brocade FC32-48 Port Blade: Supports hot-pluggable Brocade Fibre Channel SFP+ at 32 Gb/s SWL/ LWL and SFP+ at 16 Gb/s SWL/LWL/ELWL, 10 Gb/s SWL/LWL SFP.

	Brocade FC32-64 Port Blade: Supports hot-pluggable QSFP connector; 4×32 Gb/s SWL (supports 16/32 Gb/s) and 4×16 Gb/s SWL (supports 4/8/16 Gb/s), MPO 1×12 ribbon cable connector (66 m OM3, 100m OM4); 4×32 Gb/s 2 km QSFP (fixed 4×32 Gb/s speed and SMF LC); Brocade FC32-64 QSFPs support only 4/8/16/32 Gb/s (no 10 Gb/s Fibre Channel); 10GbE, 25GbE, or 40GbE FCoE QSFP.

	Brocade SX6 Extension Blade: Supports hot-pluggable Brocade Fibre Channel SFP28 at 32 Gb/s SWL/ LWL; SFP+ at 16 Gb/s SWL/LWL/ELWL; SFP at 10 Gb/s FC SWL/LWL and Ethernet SFP+ at 1 GbE copper, 1GbE 1000BASE-SX/LX/CWDM, SFP+ at 10GbE SR/LR; SFP+ at 10GbE tunable DWDM 80 km, and QSFP at 40GbE SR4/LR4/ER4.

	Core Routing (CR) blades, Brocade CR32-4 and CR32-8: Support hot-pluggable Brocade Fibre Channel QSFPs at 4×32 Gb/s SWL, 4x32 Gb/s 2 km, 4×16 Gb/s SWL, and 4×16 Gb/s 2 km for ICL connections.
USB	One USB port per control processor for firmware download, support save, and configuration upload or download.
Fabric services	Adaptive Networking (Traffic Isolation, QoS); BB credit recovery; Brocade Advanced Zoning (default zoning, port/WWN zoning, peer zoning, target-driven zoning, broadcast zoning); Dynamic Path Selection (DPS); Extended Fabrics; FDMI; FICON CUP; Flow Vision; Frame Redirection; FSPF; Integrated Routing; IPoFC; ISL Trunking; Management Server; Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS); Configuration and Operational Monitoring Policy Automation Services Suite (COMPASS); N_Port Trunking; NPIV; NTP v3; Port Fencing; Registered State Change Notification (RSCN); Reliable Commit Service (RCS); Simple Name Server; Virtual Fabrics (Logical Switch, Logical Fabric).
Extension	Supports DWDM, CWDM, and FC-SONET devices; Fibre Channel, in-flight compression (Brocade LZO) and encryption (AES-GCM-256); BB credit recovery; FCIP, IP Extension, Adaptive Rate Limiting (ARL), data compression, Fast Write, read/write Tape Pipelining, QoS.
FICON	FICON cascading; support for lossless DLS; FICON CUP; Advanced Accelerator for FICON (IBM z/OS Global Mirror and read/write Tape Pipelining).

Brocade X6 Directors

Features

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