Brocade communications systems

Acquisition of McDATA

On January 29, 2007, Brocade completed the acquisition of McDATA , one of the market leaders for FC switches and directors.

Foundry Networks Acquisition

In December 2008, Brocade completed the acquisition of Foundry Networks for $ 2.6 billion. Following the acquisition, the former Foundry Networks product lines were added to the Brocade product portfolio: BigIron, FastIron, IronPoint, IronShield, IronView, IronWare, NetIron, SecureIron, ServerIron, and TurboIron.

1997 - The First Generation

• ASIC: Stitch
  • Ports on ASIC: 2
• Switches: SilkWorm 1000

1999 - Second Generation

• ASIC: LOOM
  • Speed: 1 Gbit / s
  • Ports on ASIC: 4
• Directors: SilkWorm 6400
• Switches: SilkWorm 2400, 2800, etc.

2001 - Third Generation

• ASIC: BLOOM and BLOOM II
  • Speed: 2 Gbit / s
  • Ports on ASIC: 8
  • ISL trunking developed (four port groups are called quads) and packet filtering
• Directors: SilkWorm 12000, SilkWorm 24000
• Switches: SilkWorm 3200, 3800, 3850, etc.

2004 - Fourth Generation

• ASIC: Condor
  • Speed: 4 Gbit / s
  • Ports on ASIC: 32
  • Expanded trunking developed (eight-port groups)
  • Directors: SilkWorm 48000
  • Switches: SilkWorm 4100, 4900, etc.
  • Router: 7500, FR4-18i (Director blade)
• ASIC: GoldenEye (Simplified Condor)
  • Speed: 4 Gbit / s
  • Ports on ASIC: 24
  • Switches: SilkWorm 200E

2008 - Fifth Generation

• ASIC: Condor 2
  • Speed: 8 Gbit / s
  • Ports on ASIC: 40
  • Directors: DCX Backbone
  • Switch: 5100 (1 ASIC, 40 ports)
• ASIC: GoldenEye 2
  • Speed: 8 Gbit / s
  • Ports on ASIC: 32
  • Switches: 300 (1 ASIC, 24 ports), 5300 (9 ASICS, 80 ports)

Storage Network Equipment Brocade SAN

Brocade Storage Network Switches provide the foundation for combining servers and storage systems, enabling organizations to efficiently access and share data. The core of SANs for mission-critical tasks is Brocade’s directors, which enable organizations to provide consolidated and controlled data access. Brocade switches are shipped to Russia through Brocade OEM partners.

Brocade SAN Hardware

SAN Software

Brocade IP Data Network Equipment

Brocade IP data network equipment is designed for customers who require high performance, scalability, interoperability and compliance, as well as high reliability of data networks. Brocade offers equipment for three key market segments: service providers , data centers, and corporate or campus networks.

Equipment for enterprise networks and data centers includes devices designed for the core of the network and the level of aggregation. BigIron, TurboIrion and FastIron Super X switches. And FastIron access switches of various series, with support for routing, PoE, stacking and various interfaces including 10 Gb Ethernet ports.

Brocade backbone routers for service provider networks include the NetIron MLX and XMR ranges with support for IPv4 and IPv6 routing, Metro Ethernet, MPLS, and MPLS VPN technologies. The NetIron CES 2000 series is designed to be used as a CPE at the edge of the network and supports the features needed for the backbone network, including Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB).

The Brocade ServerIron series is designed to increase the availability, security and scalability of mission-critical business applications in data centers of enterprises and service providers. ServerIron appliances provide server load balancing, application-level switching, SSL acceleration, and fault tolerance for distributed data centers.

The Brocade IronView Network Manager (INM) management system supports all Brocade network devices and provides centralized management capabilities for equipment including switches, routers, wireless products, and traffic control devices.

Load balancing, application optimization and delivery

ServerIron ADX Switch Series

ServerIron ADX allows you to solve the following tasks:

• load balancing (SLB) at all levels, including the application level (L7), that is, the distribution of client requests to servers taking into account the specifics of applications, server load, type of traffic and other criteria. It is also possible global load balancing (GSLB), that is, the distribution of traffic between geographically diverse sites (DPC), including taking into account their status and congestion channels.
• Relieving server load associated with TCP and SSL. It is also possible to compress traffic for mobile applications.
• application-level traffic processing (L7), for example, rewriting HTTP headers, replacing URL links, etc.

The functionality of the switch supports the necessary security functions, for example, the fight against DoS / DDoS attacks implemented in hardware, that is, without loss of performance.

It also supports routing protocols (RIPv2, OSPF , BGP ), and other functionality necessary to support user traffic in data center networks.

Where a fault-tolerant solution is needed, it is possible to organize access to servers by creating clusters of switches that will be visible as a single device for the user. Failover configuration options are available - Active / Stanby and Active / Active.

The maximum parameter values ​​for ServerIron ADX (shown for the oldest model ADX 10000):

• 70 GB bandwidth at L7 level
• 13 GB bandwidth for SSL traffic
• 128 million per second simultaneous connections
• 14 million DNS queries per second
• up to 16 10 GB ports per chassis
• up to 48 1 GB ports per chassis (copper and / or optics)

Equipment for Local Area Networks Data

In 2010, Brocade announced a fundamentally new Brocade One network building strategy that simplifies the design of local and data center networks while maximizing the throughput, resiliency, and scalability of such solutions. The key elements of the new architecture are Brocade Virtual Access Layer (VAL) and Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS) technologies forcing the Ethernet factory , which received this name by analogy to the FC factory from the SAN world. The virtual access level VAL determines how virtual machines access the network. Virtual Switching Cluster (VCS) allows you to circumvent all the limitations of traditional Ethernet associated with the use of STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) in the local network, and also adds a number of unique advantages:

• Unified management of all devices
• Increased Resiliency
• Guaranteed uniform loading on all channels
• Application traffic independence from network configuration changes
• Minimum and predictable traffic delay
• Simultaneous transmission of IP and FC (Fiber Channel) protocols on one channel

The first device under the new architecture is a 10-gigabit Brocade VDX 6720 switch with 24 or 60 ports, which already in the first release supports automatic VCS cluster formation and guaranteed FC transfer over Ethernet FCoE. At the second stage, VDX 6730 switches were released, which in addition to 10Gbe converged ports also have FC ports for connecting to storage networks. In the third generation of converged switches for the Ethernet factory, the VDX 8770 chassis device with 10 and 40Gbe boards became.

Equipment for operators and service providers

Following the acquisition, Foundry Networks Brocade continued to use Huawei’s SP products and market switches and routers for building carrier networks using MPLS or MetroEthernet technologies .

The flagship Brocade NetIron MLX / MLXe series is by far the most productive multifunctional device on the market for corporate and carrier networks. Thanks to the distributed, completely non-blocking architecture, NetIron MLX can aggregate up to 32 100 Gb ports, up to 256 10 Gb ports or up to 1,536 1 Gb ports with a total capacity of more than 15 Tb / s, while the router can transmit up to 7.6 billion packets per second. The functionality of the software allows you to combine up to 64 10 GB ports into one virtual channel with a throughput of 640 GB or up to 16 ports of 100 GB with a total throughput of 1.6 TB.

The Brocade Direct Routing (BDR) technology allows the routing of user traffic on line cards in hardware without the participation of a control module. NetIron MLX Series Routers have the following technical specifications that allow you to effectively use this equipment in networks of any scale:

• up to 16 thousand VPLS tunnels with a capacity of up to 1 million MAC addresses
• up to 32 thousand VLL (EoMPLS) tunnels
• 4094 VLANs supporting up to 1 million MAC addresses
• hardware support for up to 1 million IPv4 routes
• hardware support for up to 240 thousand IPv6 routes
• up to 10 million BGP routes
• up to 2000 BGP / MPLS VPN and 1 million VPN routes

• 2003 - Rhapsody Networks
• 2005 - Therion Software
• 2006 - NuView (development of enterprise-level data management software)
• 2007 - Silverback Systems (accelerating network applications)
• 2007 - McDATA (a key competitor in the market of FC switches and directors)
• 2008 - Strategic Business Systems (professional services for storage systems)
• 2008 - Foundry Networks (Manufacturer of Ethernet Routers and Switches)
• 2012 - Vyatta (Developer of Virtual Routers and SDN)

• Russian-language website Brocade
• Website and forum with materials on network equipment Brocade (Russian)
• Brocade Networking Blog