Brocade switch joins emerging storage, network standards

08.04.2009
has unveiled a switch and network adapters that join and Convergence Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) into one platform, but the company does not expect mass adoption of these emerging technology standards until 2011.

Moving to a Fibre Channel over Ethernet infrastructure will require a version of 10 Gigabit Ethernet that is lossless, and CEE is a for deploying that, IDC analyst Richard Villars explains.

While FCoE and CEE aren't standard in data centers today, companies such as Brocade, QLogic, Emulex and are preparing products so they will be ready if and when these technologies attract attention from enterprise IT buyers.

Brocade on Tuesday announced the 8000 Switch, a top-of-rack FCoE device with 24 ports for 10GbE CEE and eight ports for Fibre Channel at 8Gbps speed. Brocade also unveiled single and dual-port Converged Network Adapters. These "provide classic Ethernet and storage transport functionality over a single link and deliver 10Gbps FCoE connectivity from servers to SAN fabrics and to the local area network," Brocade said.

Within a rack, the new switch will connect to servers equipped with the Brocade 1010 (single-port) and 1020 (dual-port) adapters. Brocade says its new products offer more bandwidth and consume less power in a smaller form factor than competing products.

In a similar announcement, recently announced a converged network adapter that is optimized for virtualized and blade infrastructures, while supporting numerous IP and storage networking protocols within a single chip.