System Storage SAN768B and SAN384B

Highlights

• Drive new levels of performance with 8 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and 10 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) supporting a range of protocol and encryption options
• Secure and protect data against threats and disasters with plug-in blades for data encryption and SAN extension
• Manage your infrastructure with greater flexibility and scalability
• Unify management framework for consolidated and virtualised resources
• Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) through consolidation of network resources
• Protect existing infrastructure investment while positioning for future technologies
• Improve energy efficiency by combining higher bandwidth with reduced power consumption.

The IBM System Storage SAN768B and IBM System Storage SAN384B fabric backbones are highly robust network switching platforms designed for evolving enterprise data centres. Each machine combines breakthrough performance, scalability and energy efficiency with long-term investment protection. Supporting open systems and System z environments, they address data growth and server virtualisation challenges; enable server, SAN and data centre consolidation; minimise disruption and risk; and reduce infrastructure and administrative costs.

Built for large enterprise networks, the SAN768B has eight vertical blade slots to provide up to 512 8-Gbps FC ports. The SAN384B is ideal for midsize core or edge deployments, providing four horizontal blade slots and up to 256 8-Gbps FC ports. The flexible blade architecture also supports FC over Ethernet (FCoE), fabric-based encryption for data-at-rest and SAN extension advanced functionality for high-performance server input/output (I/O) consolidation, data protection and disaster recovery (DR) solutions.

The SAN768B and SAN384B are extremely efficient at reducing power consumption, cooling and the carbon footprint in data centres. While providing exceptional performance and scale, these networking backbones use less than one watt per Gbps – significantly more efficient than alternate offerings.

The SAN768B and SAN384B build on years of innovation, using the core technology of systems designed to perform at greater than 99.999 percent uptime in the world’s most demanding data centres. With its intelligent sixth-generation application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and advanced hardware and software capabilities, the SAN768B and SAN384B provide a reliable foundation for fully connected multiprotocol SAN fabrics capable of supporting thousands of servers, storage and networking devices.

As members of the IBM System Storage family of b-type SAN products, the SAN768B and the SAN384B are designed to participate in fabrics containing other b-type and m-type devices manufactured by Brocade. This versatile hardware can serve as the backbone in a complex fabric and provide connections to other b-type and m-type directors, switches and routers.

Fabric optimisation services

The IBM System Storage SAN768B and IBM System Storage SAN384B can be expandable platforms for intelligent, policy-driven services that can help manage and protect your enterprise data in virtualised environments. The SAN768B and SAN384B backbones utilise Brocade Fabric Operating System (FOS), which provides several characteristic features, including Bottleneck Detection, Top Talkers (part of Advanced Performance Monitoring) and Adaptive Networking, a suite of tools that includes Ingress Rate Limiting, Traffic Isolation and quality of service (QoS). Managed through IBM System Storage Data Centre Fabric Manager (DCFM) or the command line interface (CLI), these advanced capabilities help optimise fabric behaviour and application performance.

QoS and traffic management applications help ensure that application workloads meet service levels if congestion occurs anywhere in the data path. Resource recovery applications can detect stranded resources or inefficiently used resources and reclaim or reallocate them to optimise data flow according to predefined policies. For example:

• Bottleneck Detection identifies and alerts administrators to Inter Switch Link (ISL) or device congestion as well as device latency conditions in the fabric. These conditions can cause latency and I/O timeouts if left undetected and unresolved, particularly in highly virtualised server environments
• Top Talkers measures the top bandwidth-consuming traffic (including by individual virtual machine) in real time over a physical device connection or throughout a network switch
• Ingress Rate Limiting restricts data flow from less-critical hosts at preset bandwidths
• Traffic Isolation dedicates paths in the fabric to specific data flows, enabling predictability and avoiding network congestion
• QoS expedites critical traffic in the event of congestion while keeping all traffic flowing.

Virtual Fabrics (VF)

The IBM System Storage SAN768B and the IBM System Storage SAN384B support the ANSI standard-based implementation of VF. VF adds the capability for physical switches to be partitioned into independently managed logical switches, each with its own data, control and management paths. Logical switches can be used to allocate fabric resources on a per-port basis rather than on a per-switch basis. Additionally, logical switches can simplify resource allocation by customer, department, application or storage tier and consolidate resources across multiple fabrics.

Each logical switch belongs to one logical fabric. A logical fabric can include both logical and physical switches. Physical switches joining a logical fabric are not required to support the VF feature, making it compatible with existing fabrics. All fabric services, such as Zoning, QoS and Access Control List (ACL) policies are managed separately in each logical fabric. VFs enable improved ISL bandwidth utilisation, per-port resource allocation and flexible management partitioning, which can result in reduced power and cooling costs, more ports for connectivity to end devices and a simplified management scheme.