Exploding data growth is not only putting pressure on storage capacity — it’s increasing the demands on the storage-area network (SAN). SANs are designed to offload storage traffic from the user network and provide optimal performance for read/write functions. It also allows storage devices to be pooled and presented to multiple servers as a shared resource.
Despite these benefits, SANs are often considered to be complex, costly and hard to maintain. SANs traditionally have been based upon Fibre Channel technology, which was designed to deliver the reliability and performance needed for storage networking. However, Fibre Channel requires IT to learn another set of protocols and purchase and manage a separate set of switches. This has led some organizations to use Ethernet-based iSCI instead, enabling them to leverage the same expertise and infrastructure for both LANs and SANs.
Nevertheless, many storage administrators consider Fibre Channel to be the preferred solution for mission-critical applications. According to Brocade Networks, 96 percent of the world’s banks, airlines and retailers rely upon Fibre Channel to handle 30 billion transactions each day.
Fibre Channel remains a trusted and widely deployed storage network infrastructure due to its seamless scalability and Quality of Service capabilities. In addition, Fibre Channel is lossless — packets are never dropped, which ensures consistently high performance and low latency. With Ethernet, packets are sometimes lost and require retransmission, resulting in less predictable SAN performance.
However, many SANs were architected using older versions of Fibre Channel that cannot meet today’s performance demands. Fibre Channel products have been introduced in a series of “generations,” each of which delivers twice the performance of its predecessor. Gen 5 Fibre Channel provides just 16Gbps, which is slower than many Ethernet connections. Now, Gen 6 Fibre Channel has been introduced, doubling SAN speeds to 32Gbps and providing an option for up to 128Gbps.
Gen 6 delivers the performance, reliability and scalability needed for increasing virtualization workloads, new data center architectures and next-generation storage technologies. It is especially well suited to the growing use of flash-based storage. As organizations deploy more flash storage to optimize application performance, they require networks that deliver low latency, high capacity and reliability.
Brocade Networks has just introduced the industry's first Gen 6 Fibre Channel switch for storage networking. The Brocade G620 is a purpose-built and high-density SAN switch that delivers breakthrough performance and scalability to support data growth and demanding workloads from mission-critical applications.
The Brocade G620 shatters application performance barriers with up to 100 million IOPS. It includes four Q-Flex ports that can support 128Gbps or be split out into four 32Gbps links. Delivering the industry's highest port density in a 1U chassis, the switch offers 24 to 64 ports for pay-as-you-grow flexibility and scalability.
By upgrading to Gen 6 Fibre Channel switches, organizations can meet growing performance demands with up to 128Gbps speeds. Let Technologent show you how a SAN upgrade with the latest Fibre Channel technology can ensure the highest levels of performance and reliability for your mission-critical applications.
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