Back to: Brocade FC (Fibre Channel) Switches
The 5th Generation Brocade Fibre Channel switches (16 Gbps) brought a major leap in performance, reliability, and virtualization support, aligning with the growing demands of cloud environments and highly virtualized data centers. Let’s break down the switches and their ASIC models:
🚀 Brocade 5th Generation (16 Gbps) Switches
- Brocade 6505 (2012)
- Speed: 16 Gbps FC
- Ports: 12 to 24 ports (scalable)
- ASIC: Brocade Condor3 ASIC — introduced hardware-based analytics, improved latency monitoring, and dynamic path selection.
- Brocade 6510 (2012)
- Speed: 16 Gbps FC
- Ports: 24 to 48 ports
- ASIC: Brocade Condor3 ASIC — enabled high-density connectivity with ISL trunking (up to 128 Gbps combined).
- Brocade 6520 (2013)
- Speed: 16 Gbps FC
- Ports: 48 to 96 ports (ultra-dense design)
- ASIC: Brocade Condor3 ASIC — optimized for virtualized environments, offering advanced congestion management and QoS.
- Brocade DCX 8510-4 (2012)
- Speed: 16 Gbps FC
- Ports: Up to 192 ports (modular chassis)
- ASIC: Brocade Condor3 ASIC — enterprise-class director for core SAN deployments with Virtual Fabrics (VF) support.
- Brocade DCX 8510-8 (2012)
- Speed: 16 Gbps FC
- Ports: Up to 384 ports (scalable modular chassis)
- ASIC: Brocade Condor3 ASIC — built for large-scale SAN fabrics with high availability, congestion monitoring, and advanced telemetry.
🌟 Key Innovations of 5th Generation Brocade Switches:
- 16 Gbps Fibre Channel: Doubled the bandwidth compared to 8 Gbps, essential for cloud, virtualization, and flash storage systems.
- Condor3 ASIC:
- Improved hardware-based traffic analysis.
- Integrated Dynamic Path Selection (DPS) — automatically reroutes traffic based on congestion.
- Supports Forward Error Correction (FEC) — enhancing data integrity across ISLs.
- ISL Trunking: Combined up to 8 ISLs for an aggregate bandwidth of 128 Gbps.
- Fabric Vision Technology: Real-time monitoring with built-in analytics and diagnostics for proactive troubleshooting.
- Virtual Fabrics (VF): Partitioned SANs to isolate traffic and increase multi-tenant efficiency.
- NPIV (N-Port ID Virtualization): Seamless support for highly virtualized environments, ensuring efficient use of HBAs for VMs.
