Brocade Communications Systems SilkWorm 24000 User Manual
The Brocade SilkWorm 24000 Director provides
a highly reliable and intelligent solution for
enterprise-class Storage Area Networks (SANs)
in mission-critical environments.
With state-of-the-art performance
and enhanced scalability for both
open system and IBM zSeries server
enterprise SAN environments, the
Brocade®SilkWorm®24000 Director
provides unique capabilities to meet
demanding mission-critical requirements. It scales non-disruptively
from 32 to as many as 128 concurrently active 2 Gbit/sec full-duplex
ports in a single domain or two
domains of up to 64 ports each. In
addition, it offers improved performance and the potential to upgrade to
higher-speed connectivity in the
future.The SilkWorm 24000 also
leads the industry in power and
cooling efficiency, helping to reduce
total cost of ownership.
With its intelligent fourth-generation
ASIC, the SilkWorm 24000 provides
a reliable foundation for core-to-edge
SANs, enabling fabrics capable of
supporting thousands of hosts and
storage devices (see Figure 1).Whether
used as a core building block for an
enterprise fabric or as a standalone
director, the SilkWorm 24000 is a
reliable, high-availability solution.These
capabilities make it ideal for enterprise
management and high-volume transaction processing applications such as
ERP and data warehousing, as well
as data backup, remote mirroring,
and high-availability clustering.
The SilkWorm 24000 is designed to
integrate with heterogeneous environments that include IBM zSeries
server and open platforms with
multiple operating systems such as
Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris,
HP-UX, AIX, and i5/OS. As a result,
Brocade-based SANs can help serve
as the foundation for implementing
utility computing and Information
Lifecycle Management (ILM).
A High-Port-Density, Multiprotocol
Director for Enterprise SANs
Highlights
• Delivers up to 128 ports in a single
domain and a 14U enclosure with up
to 384 ports in a single rack, facilitating more easily managed SAN fabrics with thousands of ports
• Meets ultra-high-availability requirements with redundant, hot-pluggable
components, no single points of
failure, non-disruptive software
upgrades, and hot code activation
• Provides FICON
®
support for IBM
zSeries server environments, including intermix mode on a port-by-port
basis, cascaded FICON fabrics,
1 and 2 Gbit/sec FICON speeds,
and CUP support
• Increases performance through reduced
latency and Brocade Inter-Switch Link
(ISL) Trunking
• Leverages intelligent Brocade SAN
management and security tools to
increase operational efficiency and
maximize SAN investments
• Protects investments by enabling
upgrade paths to future technologies,
increased port speeds, IP connectivity,
and more
SILKWORM 24000 DIRECTOR
SILKWORM SWITCH FAMILY
ULTRA-HIGH AVAILABILITY THROUGHOUT
THE FABRIC
The core-to-edge SAN model features
redundancy within the director as well as
a high-availability network approach for
the entire fabric.The ultra-high-availability
features of Brocade Fabric OS®help provide
a SAN infrastructure capable of delivering
continuous overall system availability with
features that include:
• Non-disruptive software upgrades and
hot code activation
• Dual-redundant control processors with
stateful failover
• Redundant, hot-swappable components and
redundant power and cooling subsystems
• Continuous monitoring of environmental
components
• Power-On Self-Test (POST), online/offline
diagnostics, and per-port statistics
• Error detection and fault isolation facilities
• Call-home capabilities to provide remote
notification of system events
A NEW LEVEL OF SAN SECURITY
To help protect valuable information, the
SilkWorm 24000 supports Brocade Secure
Fabric OS®, the most comprehensive fabricbased security platform available. Based on
the latest networking security technology,
Secure Fabric OS addresses a wide variety
of vulnerabilities within the SAN fabric and
helps prevent downtime due to human error.
INDUSTRY-LEADING PERFORMANCE
With a fully non-blocked architecture
supporting 128 ports concurrently active
at 2 Gbit/sec full-duplex, the SilkWorm
24000 supports the most demanding SAN
applications at the core of large SANs. It
employs a multistage shared memory
architecture that reduces latency in port-toport transfers to 2.1 microseconds or less.
To provide even higher performance,
Brocade ISL Trunking with 2 Gbit/sec
blades combines up to four ISLs between
a pair of switches into a single, logical
high-speed trunk running at up to
8 Gbit/sec.With 4 Gbit/sec blades, an
ISL trunk can include up to eight ports for
as much as 32 Gbit/sec of data throughput.
SILKWORM 24000 DIRECTOR
OS/400
i5/OS
Data
Storage
Entry-level
Storage
Data
Storage
Midrange
Storage
Data
Storage
SilkWorm 24000
Directors
SilkWorm Edge
Fabric Switches
High-end
Storage
HP-UX
AIX
Linux
Windows
Server
Solaris
High-end
Storage
z/OS
Four 2 Gbit/sec links form a
single 8 Gbit/sec trunk group
Figure 1. A SilkWorm 24000
core fabric surrounded by
SilkWorm edge switches enables
cost-effective, highly scalable
enterprise SANs.
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