Brocade Communications Systems has announced a bevy of
product updates slated for availability in June, including a
newWAFS product and performance
enhancements to its blockstorage virtualisationplatforms.WAFS/StorageX updates
Branch File Manager (BFM) 2.0 combines Brocade's Tapestry WAFS
product, which is based on Packeteer Inc. subsidiary Tacit Networks
Inc.'s WAFS, and some capabilities of the StorageX file
virtualisation product Brocade acquired with NuView Inc. last
year.
The new product will automatically consolidate CIFS traffic back
to the data center when setting up WAFS at branch offices. The
Windows Distributed File System (DFS) can be used to create a
global namespace among multiple remote offices with "daisy-chain"
failover if there's a WAN outage. It will also allow write access
to cached files in the event of a WAN outage where the previous
version was restricted to read-only.
Brocade has also added a "replication-based option" for branch file
consolidation. StorageX 6.0 can be used to replicate files to the
data center for backup. Users with NFS systems will have to stick
to this option, as BFM supports only Windows file traffic.
"They're providing advanced file serving capabilities for the
Windows OS, but they need to add better NFS support," said Tony
Asaro, analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). "Maybe 80%
of the world uses Windows for file serving, but that 20%on Unix is
important, too."
Tom Becchetti, senior infrastructure engineer for a national
financial firm, said this update has him considering a switch to
the Brocade-branded product for the write access and failover
options during WAN outages.
"There are ways to work around WAN outages with [Tacit WAFS],"
he said. "But those were both limiting factors."
Becchetti said he's still apprehensive about support from
partnered vendors. "What happens if that partner relationship is
broken at some point? How much code does Brocade own? I'm wondering
why they didn't buy the Tacit product outright."
According to a Brocade email to SearchStorage.com, "We
strategically decided not to purchase [Tacit] … because we felt
that Packeteer brings added value to the legacy Tacit technology."
There are no plans to support NFS with BFM, officials added.
Block storage virtualisation updates
The 7600 block storage virtualisation appliance, an update of
the previous 7240, and a new FA 4-18 director blade for
virtualisation can now pool I/O across up to 16 ports, for
aggregate performance of up to 1 million IOPS and aggregate
throughput of up to 16 gigabytes per second (GBps). The previous
platform supported up to 640,000 IOPS.
By comparison, a similar box from Emulex Corp. claims up to 1.2
million IOPS and 14 GBps aggregate throughput in a 1U four-port
appliance. A typical midrange array usually offers about 200,000
IOPS. According to Doug Ingraham, Brocade's senior director of SAN
product management, "Basically it means you could put about 10
midrange arrays behind [our appliance]."
The higher number of ports to achieve performance similar to
Emulex's 1U box is not necessarily a drawback, according to Rick
Villars, senior analyst with IDC. "People are concerned with how
many devices they can hook in with the platform in addition to raw
performance."
EMC Corp.'s Invista storage virtualisation and RecoverPoint
replication software will be ported to the new appliances in
June.
Software updates
Fabric Manager 5.3 will combine performance monitoring and error
reporting to pinpoint where in the fabric errors are occurring.
McData Corp.'s Enterprise Fabric Connectivity Manager (EFCM) has
been updated to allow users with switches from more than one OEM to
direct call-home to the right support organisation. Both will be
free updates.
Brocade File Lifecycle Manager (FLM) version 4.0 will allow
users with Network Appliance Inc. (NetApp) systems to overwrite
policies and manually migrate files between devices. It will also
allow Active Directory groups, storage resource management (SRM)
and data classification tools to dictate file movement policies and
track performance through Windows Performance Monitor.
Speeds and feeds
Brocade has doubled, from six to 12, the number of directors
supported in a fabric, which translates roughly into support for up
to 4,000 physical ports, 12 layer-2 switches and 12 Fibre Channel
routers in the backbone fabric. An access gateway function
originally designed for blade servers will be available on
Brocade's 200E switches, which makes servers look as if they're
directly attached to the director in a core-edge design. The 7500
switch and 48000 router blade will now support "fast write," which
claims to speed up Fibre Channel disk mirroring over distance by
queuing traffic and sending it all at once rather than requiring
handshaking on DWDM links. Brocade has also added a 10 Gbps Fibre
Channel blade for its network backbone.
Pricing and availability
SAN products are currently available to Brocade's OEM partners
that will have products out this summer. File products will be
available in June. StorageX node pricing for the branch starts at
$2,000 per node. BFM starts at $7,000 to $8,000 per branch
location. StorageX pricing for the data center starts at $8,000 per
terabyte.