Brocade Debuts New Switch For Enterprise SANs

Brocade Communications on Monday rolled out a new switch targeting enterprise storage area networks (SANs).

The SilkWorm 24000 Director takes aim at the top end of the SAN switch market by delivering up to 128, non-blocking 2 Gbit/sec ports with high-availability features that include hot code activation and fully redundant power supplies, fans, and control processors that can be upgraded without bringing down the storage center.

SilkWorm 24000 supports Fibre Channel and FICON protocols, and is designed to support other fabric applications and protocols such as FCIP and iSCSI by adding expansion blades. Support for faster speeds, including 4 Gbit/sec and 10 Gbit/sec, will be available via new port cards, said Brocade.

The new switch is Brocade's latest edition to its line-up, and complements the existing SilkWorm 12000 Director, a dual 64-port device. Several Brocade OEM partners, including EMC, HP, IBM, and Sun, have already announced that they'll sell the new SilkWorm under their own brand names.

Late last month, Brocade debuted new 8- and 16-port Fibre Channel switches it pointed at the small business market.