Today, Brocade Fibre Channel switches are the de facto storage networking standard for mission-critical workloads and highly virtualized environments. Based on years of successful deployment in enterprise data centers around the globe, Brocade Fibre Channel SANs provide highly resilient, scalable, and simplified network infrastructure for storage.
The Brocade 6520 Switch meets the demands of growing, dynamic workloads and private cloud storage environments by delivering market-leading Gen 5 Fibre Channel technology and capabilities. The Brocade 6520 is a high-density, purpose-built, foundational building Scalable Enterprise-Class SAN Switch for Highly Virtualized, Cloud Environments To meet dynamic and growing business demands, data centers are evolving into highly virtualized environments and cloud-based architectures. This approach enables organizations to consolidate and simplify their IT resources, resulting in increased business agility and lower capital and operating expenses. However, enterprise data centers must keep pace with the changes driven by increasingly virtualized workloads and storage resources. Selecting the right network is therefore key to realizing the full benefits of these cloud-based architectures. By treating the network as a strategic part of a highly virtualized environment, organizations can increase optimization and efficiency even as they rapidly scale their environments. block for large and growing Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructures. It provides industry-leading scalability, reliability, and 16 Gbps performance in a flexible, easy-to-deploy enterprise-class switch, enabling greater data center consolidation, operational efficiency, and business continuity. In addition to increased throughput, it helps improve bandwidth utilization, security, and network visibility and management through in-flight data compression and encryption and advanced diagnostics. It’s an ideal switch for bandwidth-intensive workloads, evolving virtualized data centers, and private cloud architectures.
Highlights
- Provides high scalability in an ultradense 96-port switch to support highly virtualized, private cloud storage and data center consolidation
- Enables “pay-as-you-grow” flexibility from 48 to 96 ports with speeds up to 16 Gbps
- Leverages Brocade Fabric Vision technology’s powerful monitoring, management, and diagnostic tools to simplify administration, increase uptime, and reduce costs
- Helps pinpoint problems faster and simplify SAN configuration and management with Brocade Network Advisor
- Simplifies deployment with the Brocade EZSwitchSetup wizard and supports high-performance fabrics by using Brocade ClearLink D_Ports to identify optic and cable issues
- Provides up to eight in-flight encryption and compression ports, delivering data center-to-data center security and bandwidth savings
Expand Easily With Options
- "Pay as you grow" from 48 to 96 ports with Ports on Demand
- Create ultra-dense port configurations and reduce costs through consolidation with legacy SANs
- Meet growth needs with 16 Gbps bandwidth and Gen 5 Fibre Channel technology
Meet Reliability and Availability Needs
- Maintain consistent access to critical data with enterprise-class RAS functionality
- Avoid problems before they impact operations with Brocade Fabric Vision technology
- Streamline deployment and troubleshooting with inline port diagnostics and Brocade Flow Vision
Features
Exceptional Scalability for Demanding Workloads and Data Center Consolidation
The Brocade 6520 features 96 Fibre Channel ports in a 2U form factor, delivering industry-leading port density and space utilization for data center consolidation. Designed for maximum flexibility, this enterprise-class switch offers “pay-as-you-grow” scalability with Ports on Demand (PoD). Organizations can quickly, easily, and cost-effectively scale from 48 to 96 ports in 24-port increments, each supporting 2, 4, 8, 10, or 16 Gbps. In addition, flexible, highspeed 16 Gbps and 8 Gbps optics allow organizations to deploy bandwidth on demand to meet growing data center needs. For maximum flexibility, the switch also features dual-direction airflow options to support the latest hot aisle/cold aisle configurations.
Industry-Leading Performance for Growing Workloads
The Brocade 6520 delivers exceptional performance for growing and dynamic workloads through a combination of market-leading throughput and bandwidth utilization. With the unpredictability of virtualized workloads and cloud services, throughput becomes critical to ensuring that the network does not become the bottleneck. With 96 ports, the Brocade 6,520 provides an aggregate 1536 Gbps full-duplex throughput. Up to eight ISLs can be combined together in a 128 Gbps framed-based trunk. In addition, exchange-based Dynamic Path Selection (DPS) optimizes fabric-wide performance and load balancing by automatically routing data to the most efficient, available path in the fabric (see Figure 1). This augments Brocade ISL Trunking to provide more effective load balancing in certain configurations. Moreover, the enterprise-class capabilities of this switch yield 40 percent higher performance compared to 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) alternatives at a similar cost.
Simplified Management and Robust Network Analytics
Brocade Fabric Vision technology provides a breakthrough hardware and software solution that helps simplify monitoring, maximize network availability, and dramatically reduce costs. Featuring innovative monitoring, management, and diagnostic capabilities, Fabric Vision technology enables administrators to avoid problems before they impact operations, helping their organizations meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Fabric Vision technology includes:
- Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS): Provides an easy-to-use solution for pre-built, policy-based threshold monitoring and alerting. MAPS proactively monitors the health and performance of the SAN infrastructure to ensure application uptime and availability. By leveraging pre-built, rule-/policy-based templates, MAPS simplifies fabric-wide threshold configuration, monitoring, and alerting. Administrators can configure the entire fabric (or multiple fabrics) at one time using common rules and policies, or customize policies for specific ports or switch elements.
- Fabric Performance Impact (FPI) Monitoring: Leverages pre-defined MAPS policies to automatically detect and alert administrators to different latency severity levels, and identifies slow drain devices that could impact network performance. This feature uses advanced monitoring capabilities and intuitive MAPS dashboard reporting to indicate various latency severity levels, pinpointing exactly which devices are causing or are impacted by a bottlenecked port.
- Dashboards: Provides integrated dashboards that display an overall SAN health view, along with details on out-ofrange conditions, to help administrators easily identify trends and quickly pinpoint issues occurring on a switch or in a fabric.
- Configuration and Operational Monitoring Policy Automation Services Suite (COMPASS): Simplifies deployment, safeguards consistency, and increases operational efficiencies of larger environments with automated switch and fabric configuration services. Administrators can configure a template or adopt an existing configuration as a template and seamlessly deploy the configuration across the fabric. In addition, they can ensure that settings do not drift over time with COMPASS configuration and policy violation monitoring within Brocade Network Advisor dashboards.
- Brocade ClearLink Diagnostics: Ensures optical and signal integrity for Gen 5 Fibre Channel optics and cables, simplifying deployment and support of high-performance fabrics. ClearLink Diagnostic Port (D_Port) is an advanced capability of Gen 5 Fibre Channel platforms.
- Flow Vision: Enables administrators to identify, monitor, and analyze specific application flows in order to simplify troubleshooting, maximize performance, avoid congestion, and optimize resources. Flow Vision includes:
- Flow Monitor: Provides comprehensive visibility into flows within the fabric, including the ability to automatically learn flows and nondisruptively monitor flow performance. Administrators can monitor all flows from a specific host to multiple targets/LUNs, from multiple hosts to a specific target/LUN, or across a specific ISL. Additionally, they can perform LUN-level monitoring of specific frame types to identify resource contention or congestion that is impacting application performance.
- Flow Generator: Provides a builtin traffic generator for pre-testing and validating the data center infrastructure—including route verification and integrity of optics, cables, ports, back-end connections, and ISLs—for robustness before deploying applications.
- Forward Error Correction (FEC): Enables recovery from bit errors in ISLs, enhancing transmission reliability and performance.
- Credit Loss Recovery: Helps overcome performance degradation and congestion due to buffer credit loss.
6520 Switch Specifications
System Architecture
- Fibre Channel ports: Switch mode (default): 48-, 72-, and 96-port configurations (24-port increments through Ports on Demand [PoD] licenses); E, F, M, D, EX ports
- Scalability: Full fabric architecture with a maximum of 239 switches
- Certified maximum: 6,000 active nodes; 56 switches, 19 hops in Brocade Fabric OS fabrics; larger fabrics certified as required
- Performance: Fibre Channel: 2.125 Gbps line speed, full duplex; 4.25 Gbps line speed, full duplex; 8.5 Gbps line speed, full duplex; 10.53 Gbps line speed, full duplex; 14.025 Gbps line speed, full duplex; auto-sensing of 2, 4, 8, and 16 Gbps port speeds; 10 Gbps optionally programmable to fixed port speed
- ISL trunking: Frame-based Trunking with up to eight 16 Gbps ports per ISL trunk; up to 128 Gbps per ISL trunk. Exchange-based load balancing across ISLs with DPS included in Brocade Fabric OS.
- Aggregate bandwidth: 1,536 Gbps: 96 ports × 16 Gbps data rate
- Maximum fabric latency: Latency for locally switched ports is 700 ns; latency between port groups is 2.1 μsec, cut-through routing at 16 Gbps between locally switched groups.
- Encryption/compression is 5.5 μsec per node; Forward Error Correction (FEC) adds 400 ns between E_Ports (enabled by default).
- Maximum frame size: 2112 byte payload
- Frame buffers: 8,192 dynamically allocated
- Classes of service: Class 2, Class 3, Class F (inter-switch frames)
- Port types: D_Port (ClearLink Diagnostic Port), E_Port, EX_Port, F_Port, M_Port (Mirror Port); optional port type control
- Data traffic types: Fabric switches supporting unicast
- Media types:
- 16 Gbps: Brocade 6520 requires Brocade hot-pluggable SFP+, LC connector; 16 Gbps SWL, LWL, ELWL
- 10 Gbps: Brocade 6520 requires Brocade hot-pluggable SFP+, LC connector; 10 Gbps SWL, LWL
- 8 Gbps: Brocade 6520 requires Brocade hot-pluggable SFP+, LC connector; 8 Gbps SWL, LWL, ELWL
- Fibre Channel distance subject to fiber-optic cable and port speed.
- USB: One USB port for system log file downloads or firmware upgrades
- Fabric services: Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS); Flow Vision; Top Talkers for E_Ports, F_Ports, and Fabric mode; Brocade Adaptive Networking (Ingress Rate Limiting, Traffic Isolation, QoS); Bottleneck Detection; Brocade Advanced Zoning (default zoning, port/WWN zoning, broadcast zoning); Dynamic Fabric Provisioning (DFP); Dynamic Path Selection (DPS); Brocade Extended Fabrics; Enhanced BB credit recovery; Enhanced Group Management (EGM); FDMI; Frame Redirection; Frame-based Trunking; FSPF; Integrated Routing; IPoFC; Brocade ISL Trunking; Management Server; NPIV; NTP v3; Port Fencing; Registered State Change Notification (RSCN); Reliable Commit Service (RCS); Server Application Optimization (SAO); Simple Name Server (SNS); Virtual Fabrics (Logical Switch, Logical Fabric)
- Extension: Fibre Channel, in-flight compression (Brocade LZO) and encryption (AESGCM-256); integrated optional 10 Gbps Fibre Channel for DWDM MAN connectivity
Management
- Supported management software: HTTP, SNMP v1/v3 (FE MIB, FC Management MIB), SSH v2; Auditing, Syslog; Brocade Advanced Web Tools; Brocade Network Advisor SAN Enterprise or Brocade Network Advisor SAN Professional/Professional Plus; Command Line Interface (CLI); SMI-S compliant; Administrative Domains; trial licenses for add-on capabilities
- Security: AES-GCM-256 encryption on ISLs; DHCHAP (between switches and end devices), FCAP switch authentication; FIPS 140-2 L2-compliant, HTTPS, IPsec, IP filtering, LDAP with IPv6, OpenLDAP, Port Binding, RADIUS, TACACS+, User-defined RoleBased Access Control (RBAC), Secure Copy (SCP), Secure RPC, SFTP, SSH v2, SSL, Switch Binding, Trusted Switch
- Management access: 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet (RJ-45), in-band over Fibre Channel, serial port (RJ- 45), and one USB port
- Diagnostics: ClearLink optics and cable diagnostics, including electrical/optical loopback, link traffic/latency/distance; flow mirroring; builtin flow generator; POST and embedded online/offline diagnostics, including environmental monitoring, FCping and Pathinfo (FC traceroute), frame viewer, nondisruptive daemon restart, port mirroring, optics health monitoring, power monitoring, RAStrace logging, and Rolling Reboot Detection (RRD)
Mechanical
- Enclosure: Back-to-front airflow; power from back, 2U
- Size:
- Width: 429.25 mm (16.90 in.)
- Height: 86.74 mm (3.42 in.)
- Depth: 609.75 mm (24.01 in.)
- System weight: 16.92 kg (37.3 lb) with two power supply FRUs, without transceivers
Environmental
- Operating environment:
- Temperature: 0° to 40°C/32°F to 104°F
- Humidity: 10% to 85% (non-condensing)
- Non-operating environment:
- Temperature: −25° to 70°C/−13°F to 158°F
- Humidity: 10% to 90% (non-condensing
- Operating altitude: Up to 3000 m (9843 ft)
- Storage altitude: Up to 12 km (39,370 ft)
- Shock:
- Operating: Up to 20 G, 6 ms half-sine
- Non-operating: Half sine, 33 G 11 ms, 3/eg axis
- Vibration
- Operating: 0.5 g sine, 0.4 grms random, 5 Hz to 500 Hz
- Non-operating: 2.0 g sine, 1.1 grms random, 5 Hz to 500 Hz
- Heat dissipation: 96 ports at 1,582 BTU/hr
- Airflow: Three hot-swappable, redundant fans; reversible airflow options (front-to-back and back-to-front); maximum 109 CFM (cu. ft./ min); nominal 33CFM
Power
- Power supply: Dual, hot-swappable redundant power supplies with integrated system cooling fans
- AC input: 85 V to 264 V ~5 A to 2.5 A
- AC Input line frequency: 47 Hz to 63 Hz
- AC Power consumption: 464 W with all 96 ports populated with 16 Gbps SWL optics; 183 W for empty chassis with no optics