The 4th Generation Brocade Fibre Channel switches (8 Gbps) were a game-changer in the late 2000s, bringing faster speeds, better scalability, and advanced fabric intelligence. Let’s dive into the switches and their ASIC models:
- Brocade 300 (2008)
- Speed: 8 Gbps FC
- Ports: 8 to 24 ports (scalable)
- ASIC: Brocade Condor2 ASIC — improved bandwidth allocation, frame prioritization, and dynamic provisioning.
- Brocade 5100 (2008)
- Speed: 8 Gbps FC
Ports: 24 to 40 ports - ASIC: Brocade Condor2 ASIC — added support for ISL trunking and adaptive networking features like Quality of Service (QoS).
- Speed: 8 Gbps FC
- Brocade 5300 (2008)
- Speed: 8 Gbps FC
- Ports: 48 to 80 ports (high-density)
- ASIC: Brocade Condor2 ASIC — enabled high-performance SAN fabrics with ultra-low latency and congestion management.
- Brocade DCX Backbone (2008)
- Speed: 8 Gbps FC
- Ports: Up to 384 ports (modular chassis)
- ASIC: Brocade Condor2 ASIC — designed for core SAN environments, offering advanced monitoring, Virtual Fabrics (VF), and NPIV.
- Brocade DCX-4S Backbone (2008)
- Speed: 8 Gbps FC
- Ports: Up to 192 ports (smaller modular chassis)
- ASIC: Brocade Condor2 ASIC — suitable for mid-sized data centers requiring flexible growth options.
- 8 Gbps Speeds: Double the bandwidth of 3rd-gen switches, supporting faster storage access for virtualized environments.
- Condor2 ASIC: Introduced hardware-based QoS, traffic isolation, and congestion control for better performance.
- Virtual Fabrics (VF): Enabled partitioning of a physical SAN into logical fabrics — improving multi-tenancy and security.
- ISL Trunking: Aggregate up to 8 ISLs into a single 64 Gbps logical link, balancing loads more efficiently.
- NPIV Support: Allowed multiple virtual servers to share a single physical HBA, essential for virtualized storage.
- Fabric Watch & Advanced Monitoring: Real-time monitoring for latency, IOPS, and port utilization.