Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced an addition to the Brocade DCX Backbone family in the form of a new 64-port, 8Gbps Fibre Channel blade with wire-speed performance that brings the port count up to 512 per chassis.
The Brocade FC8-64 blade increases the port density of the DCX Backbone platform by more than 33%, up from 384 ports on an eight-slot DCX to 512 ports per chassis.
The FC8-64 can be used in Brocade’s existing enterprise DCX Backbone and midrange DCX-4S Backbone systems.
Bill Dunmire, Brocade’s director of product marketing, says the new blade yields a “significant increase in total system bandwidth and lowers the average port cost,” though Brocade does not disclose pricing for its storage networking gear, which is set by partners.
Brocade’s OEM partners are expected to make the FC8-64 SAN blades available within the next 90 days.
Brocade also packed more ports and performance into its Ethernet switches with the debut of the Brocade 8×10G-M Series Blade for Carrier Ethernet networks and 8×10G-D Series Blade for the data center. The two new blades double the wire-speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) density for the NetIron MLX to 256 ports per chassis.
The 8×10G-M Series blade for the NetIron MLX doubles the performance and capacity of the system, while providing IPv4/IPv6 functionality, MPLS, VPLS and 512K forwarding information base (FIB) capacity.
The Brocade 8×10G-D Series blade for the NetIron MLX also delivers up to 256 ports of wire-speed 10GbE switching and routing performance, and supports IPv4/IPv6 functionality with a FIB capacity of up to 256K IPv4 routes.
The Brocade NetIron 8×10G-M Series for Carrier Ethernet customers is available today starting at $39,995. The 8×10G-D Series for data center customers is available this summer and will start at $27,995.
Brocade claims the new Ethernet blades reduce power and cooling requirements by as much as 45% compared to its previous blade switches.
