Features - Storage Innovations:

BROCADE INTRODUCES NEXT-GEN FABRIC OPERATING ENVIRON FOR SAN

Brocade Communications Systems Inc (Brocade), a leading provider of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), has announced OEM availability of the Brocade Fabric Operating Environment, an array of significant new features and capabilities for the Brocade Fabric Operating System (Fabric OS) and fabric management tools. With this software release, Brocade now offers the industry's first fabric-based SAN security, enhanced SAN-management tools, and new high-availability and connectivity features. Leading Brocade partners, including Dell, EMC Corporation, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, Network Appliance, StorageTek, and Sun Microsystems, will offer the Brocade Fabric Operating Environment to their customers worldwide.

"Lufthansa Systems selected Brocade as our storage networking partner because they understand the complexities of managing a heterogeneous, business-critical storage environment and deliver the advanced ultra high availability, security, and manageability capabilities that we require. We have been using the new Brocade Fabric Operating Environment in our labs and have been very impressed with the enhanced high availability features," said Bill Brest, Technical Manager, Lufthansa Systems Infratec GmbH.

"In our mission-critical storage environment, high availability and security are critical. We are pleased to see Brocade expand the manageability and security of the storage environment through their new Fabric Operating Environment," said Mark Calkins, Senior Manager, Infrastructure Services, Valero Energy Corporation.

"SANs are becoming a critical IT infrastructure element for delivering improved security, manageability, and enhanced data availability," said John McArthur, group vice president, Worldwide Storage Research, IDC. "Brocade's announcement is in line with the importance that customers place on these capabilities for their mission-critical and business critical applications. IDC expects continued market demand for these types of enhancements."

Fabric-Based Security Designed for Storage Area Networks

Among the highlights of the new Fabric Operating Environment is the addition of Secure Fabric OS, now available for 2 Gigabit per second (Gbit/sec) SilkWorm fabric switches. The industry's first fabric-based security for storage area networks, Secure Fabric OS combines the proven security features of IP networking with the unique security requirements of SANs. Secure Fabric OS is the only security product that offers centralized management of SAN security policies for management and device access, helping to ensure more predictable change management, assured configuration integrity, and reduced risk of downtime due to intentional intrusion or simple human error.

A Brocade SAN fabric with Secure Fabric OS assures that only authorized users can take management actions on the fabric, and that only authorized servers, storage or switches can be added to the fabric. Secure Fabric OS protects the network by using the strongest, enterprise-class security methods available, including digital certificates and digital signatures, multiple levels of password protection, encryption of management information such as passwords, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)-based authentication, and 1024-bit encryption of the switch's private key used for digital signatures. Secure Fabric OS conforms to a wide array of standards-based security mechanisms, including Secure Shell (SSH) and Fibre Channel Authentication Protocol (FCAP). Support for RADIUS and DH-CHAP is planned in a future release of the product.

"Security is very important to Usi. We applaud Brocade's initiative to provide additional security features in their products, complementing the LUN-level masking on the storage implementation and Brocade hardware port-level zoning that we already have in place," said Wes Garner, Principal Engineer, USi.

Enhanced SAN Management

With this software release, Brocade is delivering a wide range of management enhancements, including the ability for SilkWorm fabric switches to proactively discover Host Bus Adaptor (HBA) asset information without use of agents, deliver "single-keystroke" firmware download to Emulex HBAs through the fabric, and extend Brocade fabric security to the HBA. This industry-first capability, based on the Fabric Device Management Interface (FDMI) standard, simplifies SAN fabric administration by reducing the number of management touch points within the SAN.

Additionally, the user interface to WEBTOOLS, Brocade's Web-based management tool, has been greatly enhanced and now offers new features such high availability management, congestion detection, and security metric reporting.

Brocade is also further expanding the development environment for Brocade SAN fabrics. Today, more than fifty Brocade partners access Brocade fabric services and features through the Brocade Fabric Access API. Brocade is expanding that development environment to include the industry's first API Scripting Developer's Kit, which will allow end user customers to customize SAN management scripts and create applications using the Brocade API, using industry standard scripting languages such as PERL. This enables end-users to integrate fabric management tasks into their existing operational scripts, bridging gaps in management automation offered by today's tools.

"The Brocade API scripting tools allow us to create our own SAN management applications and customize our SAN management solution to our environment," said Michelle Butler, Technical Program Manager, Storage Enabling Technologies, National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA). "In addition, at NCSA data security is a key issue. The advanced security features we get from Brocade are extremely important, especially the ability to lock down ports and implement security authentication levels."

New High Availability and Connectivity Features

To improve application uptime and simplify change management, this software release includes expanded Reliability/Availability/Serviceability (RAS) features, such as the ability to download and activate new switch firmware with zero disruption to applications, enhanced diagnostics, and health monitoring. In addition, Secure Fabric OS enforces configuration integrity by preventing accidental device connection or configuration errors.

To extend connectivity options, the Fabric Operating Environment includes support for FICON with the SilkWorm 12000 Core Fabric Switch. Support for FICON will enable Brocade end-users to connect IBM mainframes to Brocade-based SAN environments. Brocade's FICON implementation also supports new capabilities such as FICON cascading, mainframe and open systems intermix mode, and 2 Gbit/sec speeds.

"We chose Brocade because of its industry leading availability and manageability. Our data has doubled in the last year and we don't see the growth slowing so we needed a flexible storage architecture that scales with us and interoperates with future advanced technologies," said Gary Pilafas, Senior Systems Analyst for United Loyalty Services. "With the release of this new Fabric Operating Environment, Brocade is arming us with the manageability tools we need to continue to scale our environment."

"This is the most comprehensive software release in Brocade's history," said Greg Reyes, Brocade Chairman and CEO during his keynote at Brocade Conference 2003. "We have boosted the intelligence of the Fabric Operating Environment to empower customers to protect their SAN from intruders, keep the system running when they are making upgrades, and enable proactive fabric management. Brocade is focused on delivering significant new capabilities that will boost operational efficiency today and serve as a platform for future competitive advantage."

About Brocade Communications Systems Inc

Brocade offers an industry leading intelligent platform for networking storage. The world's 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 Web site at http://www.brocade.com.