ADVA Optical Networking announced that it has demonstrated transmission of 32 Gbit/s Fibre Channel over 100 km, which is claimed as an industry first, during a joint field trial that utilised Brocade X6 directors and the ADVA FSP 3000 CloudConnect platform.
The trial was designed to illustrate the ability of ADVA's data centre interconnect (DCI) technology to interoperate seamlessly with Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel products. The joint solution will enable enterprise customers to address the demand for higher speed transmission in the data centre, as well as support the transition to flash-based storage solutions.
The combination of Brocade's newly introduced Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology and the ADVA FSP 3000 CloudConnect platform is designed to offer customers increased performance, availability and scalability.
ADVA noted that transmission of 32 Gbit/s Fibre Channel over 100 km represents a key capability for business continuity and disaster recovery planning. As companies move towards a low-cost, high-performance storage model, they require networks that can deliver low-latency and high-capacity bandwidth together with high reliability. This demonstration of 32Gbit/s Fibre Channel connectivity shows that networks can now maximize the performance of flash array technology.
Brocade announced in March the launch of its G610 storage switch as part of the Gen 6 Fibre Channel portfolio that support 32 Gbit/s performance and designed to provide always-on connectivity to the all-flash data centre. The company noted that the transition to flash storage and the emergence of non-volatile memory express (NVMe) requires infrastructure that can optimise application performance and adapt to evolving data centre needs.
The Brocade G610 is an entry-level switch designed for applications ranging from small shared storage fabrics to network edge deployments in data centres. The switch is scalable, offering support for from eight ports up to 24 ports, and features Fabric Vision technology with newly introduced VM Insight functionality providing visibility into VM-level application performance.Regarding the joint demonstration, Scott Shimomura, senior director, product marketing, Storage Networking at Brocade, said, "A seismic shift is taking place as organisations move from legacy storage to all-flash arrays… but a lack of fast, responsive and reliable connectivity can be a roadblock… the Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel portfolio and ADVA FSP 3000 CloudConnect enable the reliable, low-latency Fibre Channel storage networks that data centres need to (support) flash storage".
