Brocade Late to SAN Extension Ball

Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) -- trailing its two primary rivals on the SAN extension front -- is announcing plans to deliver multiprotocol storage routing support via the platform developed by Rhapsody Networks, the startup it acquired last year.

The company plans to provide Fibre-Channel-to-Fibre-Channel routing, iSCSI-to-FC bridging, and Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) support for the 16-port SilkWorm Fabric AP7420, the so-called intelligent switch designed to host storage management applications in the SAN fabric. Brocade expects to make the option available in the first half of 2004; it hasn't yet set pricing for the multiprotocol option.

"You can configure any of the ports on the Fabric Application Platform to run any of these protocols," says Jay Kidd, VP of product management at Brocade.

However, the routing services at first will work only with Brocade's FC switches. "At initial release, it will be Brocade-to-Brocade, but it is our intent to interconnect to McData and Cisco [switches]," Kidd says.

Brocade is clearly coming late to this fiesta. Its move to support SAN extension technologies by mid-2004 comes as its primary competitors in the FC switch space -- Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA) -- have already introduced products in the category. McData recently acquired Nishan Systems, which had developed a line of IP-based storage switches (see McData Speeds Out IP Switch and McData Sweeps Up Nishan, Sanera).To help round out its offerings, Brocade has also cut a deal with CNT (Nasdaq: CMNT) to recommend CNT's UltraNet Edge router as the "preferred" way to extend Brocade SANs over IP.

But wait -- why would a customer use Brocade's own FCIP option, then?

"Our implementation of FCIP will be used in campus environments, but we anticipate that if someone is building a high-end disaster recovery solution -- with very high bandwidth -- they'll opt for the 'Cadillac' CNT model," says Kidd.

CNT and Brocade say more than 300 mutual customers of CNT and Brocade are already using the two companies' products together. Earlier this week, CNT launched the UltraNet Edge 3000 storage router, which it says boosts performance and adds support for 2-Gbit/s FC, Ficon, and multipoint FC routing (see CNT Charges Back to the Edge).

Ed Walsh, VP of marketing and business development at CNT, notes that the reseller arrangement with Brocade is an exclusive, three-year deal. "They can't do this with any of our competitors," he says. In return, CNT will offer Brocade's fabric switches to its customers, and CNT will phase out its reseller agreement with QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC), Walsh says.The Brocade FC-to-FC routing support is designed to interconnect SAN "islands" while segmenting devices connected to them into what it's calling Logical Private SANs (LSANs). LSANs can span fabrics, sharing devices by defining "LSAN zones" that include devices on multiple fabrics. Brocade says devices can exist in multiple LSANs simultaneously.

Kidd says a single Brocade FC router can connect up to 16 independent fabrics and 1,000 devices. "We've designed it so that a network of FC routers can work together so they can connect more than 10,000 devices," he claims.

The iSCSI option allows customers to attach Ethernet-connected servers that use the iSCSI protocol to connect to storage attached to a Brocade SAN. Kidd says that the "primary point of compatibility will be the Microsoft Windows driver," but that the company will also test it with other iSCSI adapter vendors.

Finally, FCIP support enables Brocade SAN customers to reliably extend SANs over long-distance IP networks. If used in conjunction with FC routing, local and remote fabrics can be separate fabrics with LSANs to enable device connection, or they can be merged into a single fabric.

In addition to its SAN extension news, Brocade is announcing the general availability of the AP7420 to OEM and software developer partners. EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) have indicated that they plan to deliver fabric-based storage management applications on the Rhapsody box, and more than a dozen software vendors are also porting their applications to run on it (see V-Switch Alliances Take Shape, Brocade Loads Code, Signs EMC, Brocade Reupholsters Rhapsody, and HP Picks Rhapsody).Kidd notes that Brocade plans to spin the same technology in the Rhapsody platform and into a blade for the SilkWorm 12000, its 64-port Fibre Channel switch.

Cisco and McData, meanwhile, are also promoting their own "intelligent" storage switches. Last week, Cisco and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) announced that they will offer IBM's SAN Volume Controller in a module for the Cisco MDS 9000 series of switches (see Cisco & IBM Serve Virtual Combo). McData is demonstrating apps running on its own intelligent switch module, which is based on technology developed by Aarohi Inc. (see McData Demos BC Apps on Switches).

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch