Product Brief Brocade® X7 Director A Faster, More Intelligent, More Resilient Foundation for the On-Demand Data Center Overview Technology is evolving at an incredible pace, and businesses are demanding more from their IT resources and infrastructure. Rapid adoption of flash storage and the ramp-up of NVMe-based storage unleash advancements in application design that drive new levels of performance and capacity requirements, such as advanced analytics, business intelligence, and data-intensive workloads. With the integration of new technologies that are accelerating the delivery of data and services, the network will need to evolve to keep pace with innovations in storage and demands of modern applications to maximize the full value of investments in next-generation data center infrastructure. To meet ever-increasing demands for faster, more reliable data access, it is essential for organizations to deploy a modernized infrastructure that Highlights reduces latency, increases bandwidth, and ensures continuous availability. Unprecedented performance is not enough on its own. Powerful analytics • Scale more devices, applications, and advanced automation capabilities are required to transform current and workloads with 64Gb/s links storage networks into an autonomous SAN. This requires a network that is • Maximize NVMe and high- capable of delivering these capabilities to maximize performance, simplify transaction workloads with 50% management, and reduce operational costs. Legacy infrastructure was not lower network latency designed to support the performance requirements of evolving workloads • Transform telemetry data into and NVMe-based storage. In fact, an aging network will impede the actionable insights to optimize performance of the on-demand data center. By modernizing the storage performance and ensure reliability network with Brocade® Gen 7, organizations will enable a faster, more intelligent, and more resilient network. This will maximize the performance, • Automate actions to simplify productivity, and efficiency of their storage investments and resources, management and resolve issues even as they rapidly scale their environments. without intervention • Increase visibility and simplify The Brocade X7 Director provides to optimize performance, operations with a modern SAN a modular building block, ensure reliability, and simplify management tool purpose-built for scalability to management. Leveraging these • Seamlessly integrate next- accommodate growth and power capabilities enables organizations generation NVMe into the storage large-scale storage environments. to realize a self-learning, self- fabric without a disruptive rip-and- With a 50% latency reduction optimizing, and self-healing SAN. replace compared to the previous generation, Brocade X7 Directors Brocade X7 Directors provide • Design flexible architectures to maximize the performance up to 384 64Gb/s line rate ports increase agility with concurrent of NVMe storage and high- or up to 512 32Gb/s line rate Fibre Channel, NVMe, FICON, FCIP, ports, enabling organizations to or FCoE connectivity transaction workloads, eliminating I/O bottlenecks and unleashing scale more devices, applications, • Extend replication over distance the full performance of next- and workloads. With diverse with a highly scalable extension generation storage. In addition, deployment options, multiprotocol solution for Fibre Channel, IP, and the Brocade X7 Director lays the flexibility, and mixed blade FICON foundation for the autonomous capability, organizations can adapt SAN. With autonomous SAN and optimize their businesses to technology, the director harnesses meet next-generation storage the power of analytics and and server requirements. The the simplicity of automation Brocade X7 Director supports the Brocade® X7 Director Product Brief concurrent use of both traditional An additional 16 UltraScale ICL Fibre Channel and NVMe storage connections provide 64 ports for traffic, allowing organizations to chassis-to-chassis interconnect. Gen 7 Fibre Channel seamlessly integrate Brocade Gen 7 Each blade slot within the Brocade Gen 7 Fibre Channel Fibre Channel networks with next- Brocade X7 chassis can be is the modern storage network generation NVMe-based storage, populated with optional port infrastructure for mission-critical without a disruptive rip-and-replace. storage, enabling organizations or extension blades. For device connectivity, the following blades to realize a self-learning, self- Modern Modular Building optimizing, and self-healing are available: autonomous SAN. It combines Block Designed for • Brocade FC64-48 Fibre Channel powerful analytics and advanced Enterprise Deployments port blade provides 48 x 64Gb/s automation capabilities to Designed to meet continuous data accelerate data access, adapt to Fibre Channel ports with growth and critical application evolving requirements, and drive backward-compatibility support always-on business operations. demands, the Brocade X7 Director for 8, 10, 16, and 32Gb/s Fibre The Brocade X7 Director with is purpose-built to power large- Channel connectivity. scale storage environments that Gen 7 Fibre Channel and Brocade • Brocade FC32-X7-48 Fibre require increased capacity, greater Fabric Vision® technology is the Channel port blade provides throughput, and higher levels of foundational building block to 48 x 32Gb/s Fibre Channel ports resiliency and operational efficiency. realize the autonomous SAN for the with backward-compatibility This modular building block enables on-demand data center. Ultra-low support for 4, 8, 10, and 16Gb/s organizations to build the highest latency and 64Gb/s links provide Fibre Channel connectivity. the highest level of performance performing data center SAN fabric for NVMe workloads. With data- that is required for all-flash and • Brocade FC32-64 Fibre Channel center-proven reliability, seamless NVMe storage environments. The port blade provides 64 x 32Gb/s scalability, integrated analytics, Brocade X7 Director modular Fibre Channel ports with and automation, the Brocade design provides flexibility with backward-compatibility support X7 maximizes the performance, two customizable chassis that can for 4, 8, and 16Gb/s Fibre Channel productivity, and efficiency of scale on-demand for more devices, connectivity as well as support storage investments and resources. applications, and workloads. Both for 10, 25, and 40GbE FCoE chassis utilize Brocade UltraScale connectivity. Unmatched Mainframe ICL technology to scale out modular To support disaster recovery and Technology Innovation SANs while preserving blade ports data protection storage solutions and Leadership for device connectivity and allowing over long distances, the Brocade flexible SAN design that supports SX6 Extension Blade provides The Brocade X7 Director delivers core-edge or mesh topologies. flexible Fibre Channel and IP seamless FICON connectivity for storage replication deployment mainframe storage environments. The 14U Brocade X7-8 Director is options with 16 32Gb/s Fibre The Brocade X7 complements built for large enterprise networks Channel ports, 16 1/10-GbE ports, System Z mainframes by offering the and has eight vertical blade slots and 2 40GbE ports. This blade industry’s fastest, most reliable, and to provide up to 384 64Gb/s line allows organizations to seamlessly scalable FICON infrastructure, along rate ports or up to 512 32Gb/s line integrate extension capabilities with unique, innovative features—all rate ports for device connectivity. within the Brocade X7 Director of which help deliver the greatest An additional 32 UltraScale Inter- to provide replication services for ROI. Brocade builds on more than 25 Chassis Link (ICL) connections years of mainframe leadership that large-scale, multisite data center provide 128 ports for chassis-to- includes contributing to the FICON environments that implement chassis interconnect. standard and authoring many FICON block, file, and tape data protection patents. The 8U Brocade X7-4 Director solutions. The Brocade SX6 in built for midsize networks and Extension Blade can be deployed has four horizontal blade slots to with the Brocade 7840 Extension provide up to 192 64Gb/s line rate Switch and the Brocade 7810 ports or up to 256 32Gb/s line Extension Switch in a data-center- rate ports for device connectivity. to-edge architecture as a cost- effective option for connecting primary data centers with remote data centers and offices. Brocade® X7 Director Product Brief test Brocade directors build upon years With Gen 7, Brocade enables a of innovation and leverage the core self-learning SAN that gathers technology of Brocade systems and transforms millions of data Autonomous SAN to consistently deliver five-nines points into actionable intelligence The combination of SAN analytics availability in the world’s most to make fast, informed decisions and automation technologies is demanding data centers. Delivering to optimize performance and unlocking the capabilities to deliver non-disruptive software upgrades, ensure reliability. Brocade a self-learning, self-optimizing, and hot-pluggable components, and a products proactively monitor I/O self-healing autonomous SAN. no-single-point-of-failure design, the performance and behavior data Brocade X7 offers a highly resilient points through integrated network Self-Learning: solution for today’s enterprise-class sensors to gain deep insight into • Gather and transform millions of data points into network storage environments. the environment.