The Brocade FCoE Proposition

I recently realized that I, like a lot of the data center industry, have completely forgotten about Brocade recently.  There has been little talked about on their FCoE front, Fibre Channel Front, or CNAs.  Cisco and HP have been dominating social media with blade and FCoE battles, but I haven’t seen much coming from Brocade.  I thought it was time to take a good look.

The Brocade Portfolio:

Source: http://www.brocade.com/products-solutions/products/index.page?dropType=Connectivity&name=FCOE

The breadth of Brocade’s FCoE portfolio is impressive when compared to the other major players: Emulex and Qlogic with CNAs, HP with FlexFabric for C-Class and H3C S5820X-28C Series ToR, and only Cisco providing a wider portfolio with an FCoE and virtualization aware I/O card (VIC/Palo), blade switches (Nexus 4000), ToR/MoR switches (Nexus 5000), and an FCoE Blade for the Nexus 7000.  This shows a strong commitment to the FCoE protocol on Brocade’s part, as does there participation on the standards body.

Brocade also provides a unique ability to standardize on one vendor from the server I/O card, through the FCoE network to the Fibre Channel (FC) core switching.  Additionally using the 10-24 blade customers can collapse the FCoE edge into their FC core providing a single hop collapsed core mixed FCoE/FC SAN.  That’s a solid proposition for a data center with a heavy investment in FC and a port count low enough to stay within a single chassis per fabric.

But What Does the Future Hold?

Before we take a look at where Brocade’s product line is headed, let’s look at the purpose of FCoE.  FCoE is designed as another tool in the data center arsenal for network consolidation.  We’re moving away from the cost, complexity and waste of separate networks and placing our storage and traditional LAN data on the same infrastructure.  This is similar to what we’ve done in the past in several areas, on mainframes we went from ESCON to FICON to leverage FC, our telephones went from separate infrastructures to IP based, we’re just repeating the same success story with storage.  The end goal is everything on Ethernet.  That end goal may be sooner for some than others, it all depends on comfort level, refresh cycle, and individual environment.

If FCoE is a tool for I/O consolidation and Ethernet is the end-goal of that, then where is Brocade heading?

This has been my question since I started researching and working with FCoE about three years ago.  As FCoE began hitting the mainstream media Cisco was out front pushing the benefits and announcing products, they were the first on the market with an FCoE switch, the Nexus 5000.  Meanwhile Brocade and others were releasing statements attempting to put the brakes on.  They were not saying FCoE was bad, just working to hold it off.

This makes a lot of sense from both perspectives, the core of Cisco’s business is routing and switching therefore FCoE is a great business proposition.  They’re also one of the only two options for FC switching in the enterprise (Brocade and Cisco) so they have the FC knowledge.  Lastly they had a series of products already in development. 

From Brocade’s and others perspectives they didn’t have products ready to ship, and they didn’t have the breath and depth in Ethernet so they needed time.  The marketing releases tended to become more and more positive towards FCoE as their products launched.

This also shows in Brocade’s product offering, two of the three products listed above are designed to maintain the tie to FC.

Brocade 8000:

This switch has 24x 10GE ports and 8x 8Gbps FC ports.  These ports are static onboard which means that this switch is not for you if:

• You just need 10GE (iSCSI, NFS, RDMA, TCP, UDP, etc.)
• You plan to fully migrate to FCoE (The FC ports then go unused.)
• You only need FCoE, small deployment using FCoE based storage which is available today.

In comparison the competing product is the Nexus 5000 which has a modular design allowing customers to use all Ethernet/DCB or several combinations of Ethernet and FC at 1/2/4/8 Gbps.

Brocade FCoE 10/24 Blade:

This is an Ethernet blade for the DCX Fibre Channel director.  This ties Brocade’s FCoE director capabilities to an FC switch rather than Ethernet switch.  Additionally this switch only supports directly connected FCoE devices which will limit overall scalability.

In comparison the Cisco FCoE blade for the nexus 7000 is a DCB capable line card with FCoE capability by years end.  This merges FCoE onto the network backbone where it’s intended to go.

Summary:

If your purpose in assessing FCoE is to provide a consolidated edge topology for server connectivity tying it back to a traditional FC SAN then Brocade has a strong product suite for you.  If you’re end goal is consolidating the network as a whole then it’s important to seriously consider the purchase of FC based FCoE products.  That’s not to say don’t buy them, just understand what you’re getting, and why you’re getting it.  For instance if you need to tie to a Fibre Channel core now and don’t intend to replace that for 3-5 years then the Brocade 8000 may work for you because it can be refreshed at the same time.

Several options exist for FCoE today and most if not all of them have a good fit.  Assess first what your trying to accomplish and when, then look at the available products and decide what fits best.