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BROCADE UNLOCKS INTELLIGENCE IN THE STORAGE NETWORK

Brocade Communications Systems Inc, a world leading provider of infrastructure for Storage Area Networks (SANs), announced the general availability of the Brocade SilkWorm 3800 Enterprise Fabric Switch, the first in a family of 2 Gigabit per second (Gbit/sec) products designed for the unique requirements of enterprise storage environments. Using Brocade SilkWorm fabric switches, companies can connect servers with storage devices through a SAN, creating a highly reliable, scalable, secure, and manageable environment for storage applications.

Based on the company's Intelligent Fabric Services Architecture, the 16-port SilkWorm 3800 increases SAN scalability and reliability, enhances the security of the SAN fabric, and simplifies storage network management. The SilkWorm 3800 is the industry's first fabric switch to deliver the advanced fabric services needed for enterprise storage applications, such as business continuance, storage and server consolidation, and centralized data management, allowing companies to optimize IT assets and increase operational efficiency. More than forty-five industry leaders support Brocade in driving market adoption of 2 Gbit/sec SAN infrastructure. Refer to attached quote sheet.

"Enterprises are looking for ways to maximize the return on their IT investment by extracting greater efficiencies. The storage environment is now a leverage point for more efficient management of information resources," said John Webster, Senior Analyst at Illuminata, a leading IT research firm. "Today's announcement by Brocade and further announcements by its OEM partners should be viewed by enterprise users as evidence that SAN fabrics can be the nexus of a centralized, efficient information management strategy."

Next-Generation Architecture Enables Advanced Fabric Services

The Brocade Intelligent Fabric Services Architecture defines a networking foundation to support the unique requirements of enterprise storage applications. The advanced capabilities of the underlying architecture, available today with the SilkWorm 3800, deliver unique new features such as 2 Gbit/sec data rates, aggregated trunking to deliver 8 Gbit/sec speeds between switches in a fabric, and content-based analysis based on the new Brocade Frame Filtering capability. These advanced fabric services automate configuration and operation of the SAN fabric, optimize performance, and increase application availability.

With the SilkWorm 3800, Brocade is delivering a new level of unique advanced services:

• Brocade Advanced Zoning allows hardware-enforced, logical partitioning of storage and servers in a SAN. This delivers the highest level of security and prevents unauthorized access to switches. With the SilkWorm 3800, Brocade SANs now support hardware enforcement of zoning by World Wide Name.
• Brocade Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Trunking aggregates bandwidth between switches in a fabric, quadrupling the speed of the links from 2 Gbit/sec to 8 Gbit/sec. ISL Trunking increases fabric performance and fault tolerance, and simplifies administration.
• Brocade Advanced Performance Monitoring enables administrators to track SAN resource usage, proactively plan network capacity, and maximize performance.
• Brocade Fabric Watch proactively monitors Brocade SAN fabric health and passes threshold alerts and notification information to Brocade or third-party management applications. Both the Brocade SilkWorm 3800 16-port Enterprise Fabric Switch and the SilkWorm 12000 Core Fabric Switch, announced earlier this year, are based on the same next-generation architecture. The SilkWorm 12000 is scheduled for shipments to OEM partners before the end of 2001.

"As a global leader in telecommunications, Deutsche Telekom recognizes the value of the Brocade Intelligent Fabric Services Architecture as a safe, secure, and easy-to-manage platform. Because of the flexible and reliable Brocade approach to networking storage, we have selected the Brocade SilkWorm 3800 as the foundation of our strategic SAN infrastructure to enable mission critical applications," Guenter Linsner, Executive vice president, Systemline Storage at T-Systems, a division of Deutsche Telekom AG.

"Brocade is pleased to lead the industry in bringing 2 Gbit/sec storage networking infrastructure to market for our partners and customers," said Jay Kidd, Brocade vice president of Product Marketing. "As end customers deploy and grow SANs to increase operational efficiencies in the datacenter, they look to Brocade to provide the intelligence required by today's storage enterprise."

Seamlessly Compatible with World's Largest Installed Base of Storage Area Networks

The Brocade SilkWorm 3800 is forward and backward compatible with the entire installed base of Brocade fabric switches -- more than 1,000,000 Fibre Channel ports -- allowing existing Brocade customers to seamlessly migrate from 1 to 2 Gbit/sec SAN environments and deploy a highly scalable and reliable core-to-edge storage networking infrastructure.

A Highly Available Platform for Business Continuance

True business continuance relies on creating a highly available, redundant network architecture that enables continuous availability of data. Storage environments based on a single, monolithic switching device are at risk of a single point of failure, whether it be a device failure, site failure, or human error. Unlike legacy, monolithic approaches, the Brocade networking model, combined with Advanced Fabric Services, enables 99.999 percent ("five nines") availability within the storage network.

With the Brocade networking model and Advanced Fabric Services, companies can easily implement highly available storage network architectures and manage them as a single entity. Availability is enabled on multiple levels in a Brocade-based SAN -- from "hot-swappable" hardware components to completely redundant SAN fabrics. In addition, by internetworking Brocade SANs across metropolitan area networks (MANs) over distance, companies can implement cost effective business continuance solutions such as data mirroring, data replication, electronic tape vaulting, and remote server clustering. Brocade supports a wide array of solutions for internetworking SANs and has defined solutions with leading vendors such as Cisco Systems, LuxN, Nortel Networks, and ONI Systems.

Simplifying the Management of Brocade Fabrics

Brocade is also announcing today the availability of Brocade Fabric Manager 3.0, a software application that configures, monitors, dynamically provisions, and manages multiple Brocade switches and Brocade SAN fabrics from a single console. Fabric Manager extends the suite of management tools for managing Brocade-based SANs and complements enterprise storage and host management applications from Brocade application partners. Using Fabric Manager, administrators can automate common switch and fabric management tasks thereby simplifying the maintenance of the storage area network. Fabric Manager is available today across the entire Brocade SilkWorm product family. Functionality provided in Fabric Manager is also available to Brocade partners through the Brocade Fabric Access API, which allows easy integration of full Brocade SAN management into third-party SAN applications.

Pricing and Availability

The Brocade SilkWorm 3800 Enterprise Fabric Switch is generally available today through select Brocade OEM partners. Pricing varies by OEM partner and SAN solution configuration.

About Brocade Communications Systems Inc

Brocade offers a industry leading intelligent platform for networking storage. A leading systems, applications, and storage vendors have selected Brocade to provide a networking foundation for their SAN solutions. The Brocade SilkWorm family of fabric switches and software is designed to optimize data availability and storage and server resources in the enterprise. Using Brocade solutions, companies can simplify the implementation of storage area networks, reduce the total cost of ownership of data storage environments, and improve network and application efficiency. For more information, visit the Brocade Website at www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com.