Brocade Communication Systems expanded its family of Fibre Channel switches with a scalable 1U entry-level device that integrates support for nonvolatile memory express flash.
While all-flash data centers are becoming popular in the mainstream IT world, Brocade’s G610 switch will be ready when more large and midrange-size companies decide to make the move to all-flash arrays.
NVMe is a flash-optimizing protocol designed as an alternative to SCSI-based block storage. NVMe reduces latency by allowing a solid-state drive (SSD) to directly access a computer's PCIe bus. The Brocade G610 switch turns Fibre Channel (FC) into an NVMe fabric used to relay command sets from a host computer to high-performance NVMe all-flash storage. According to the company, its latest Fibre Channel implementation combined with NVMe reduces network latency by up to 55 percent.
The G610 switch runs on Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel connectivity and provides up to 32 gigabits per second performance while adding a monitoring feature designed to track and optimize the performance of individual virtual machines., Brocade said.
Another key feature was VM Insight to enable enterprises to obtain greater visibility into VM-level application performance. Using integrated sensors, this new capability allows administrators to monitor VM statistics and quickly identify abnormal VM behaviors. This facilitates troubleshooting and fault isolation while providing intelligence for early detection of application performance degradations to help support critical service level agreements.
The company is hoping that the new switch will help breathe new life into Fibre Channel and help give exisitng customers a pathway into new technologies like Flash based storage.