Brocade partners EMC with new "end-to-end" IP Storage solution
Brocade has expanded it OEM relationship with EMC by adding its VCS ethernet fabric solutions to EMC's Connectrix network switches.
According to the company, this will create the industry's first network switch designed for IP storage.
Brocade senior director for A/NZ, Gary Denman, told ARN, the partnership was "incredibly important" as it validated the significance of the company's ethernet fabric solution among customers.
"The number one storage vendor absolutely validates that by making this part of their product portfolio," he said.
"It was a natural progression for EMC to work with us to take our fabric technology and bring that under the OEM agreement."
He said legacy IP network designs were never intended for today's New IP applications, such as Cloud, mobile, social and big data.
"Through our extended partnership with EMC, customers can now realise the improved performance, resiliency and agility of a dedicated IP storage network for the growing mission critical nature of their IP storage-based applications."
EMC customers will deploy the new switch to separate IP storage traffic from other data traffic, a more reliable and efficient approach compared to legacy deployments where storage traffic and all other network traffic share the same network infrastructure.
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Denman said the initial feedback from channel partners had been very positive.
"The key areas are around VDI, hybrid Cloud and large data analytics," he said.
"It's important for partners to understand which of these areas that they want to work in, and then work with us inside EMC to build customer propositions and understand the capabilities that will enable them to deliver.
"This product grouping has been a very high growth group, and I think this will further enhance that."
EMC vice president, marketing, core technologies division, Jonathan Siegal, said today's IP storage workloads could benefit from a dedicated IP storage network which established the same performance, predictability, availability and operational simplicity that the company has been delivering to fibre channel customers for the past 15 years.
IDC analyst, Ashish Nadkarni, said IP storage capacity was doubling nearly every two years, and transitioning to higher-performance, more mission-critical applications.
"To meet these new requirements, organisations should consider dedicated networks for IP-based storage as a better approach to align their networking infrastructures with business needs."
The Connectrix VDX-6740B is a high performance, low latency IP storage switch that provides connectivity for a broad array of EMC high-end and mid-range NAS and iSCSI storage platforms.
According to a company statement, the new switch redefines agility with superior automation and simplicity, achieved through zero-touch, self-forming fabrics. Connectrix VDX solutions are integrated with Connectrix Manager Converged Network Edition (CMCNE), which provides unified management, monitoring and diagnostics for both IP and fibre channel storage networks.
Integration with EMC Storage Analytics software delivers actionable performance analysis and enables customers to quickly identify and resolve performance and capacity issues.
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