ACADEMIA

Finisar Corporation announced its NetWisdom/Xgig SAN Monitoring & Analysis solution has been verified by Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. as interoperable with Brocade-based Storage Area Networking (SAN) infrastructure, according to the testing requirements of the Brocade Fabric Aware Program, an end-to-end interoperability initiative for SANs. The program is a comprehensive testing and configuration initiative designed to foster SAN interoperability in multi-vendor Brocade-based SAN environments. Testing was conducted at the Brocade interoperability labs, which are state-of-the-art facilities supporting end-to-end interoperability and performance testing of SAN products in multi-vendor and large fabric SAN environments. The Brocade Fabric Aware Program has added more than forty members since its launch in 2000. In addition, as part of its investment in SAN interoperability, Brocade actively supports its members' interoperability initiatives. "The Brocade Fabric Aware program and its extensive testing criteria enables Finisar to offer well tested solutions across the widest range of operating environments. It is an important step in ensuring end users are offered highly interoperable solutions for their high availability, multi-vendor storage networking environments," said Kevin Cornell, Sr. Vice President, General Manager Network Tools Division. "This achievement validates Finisar's commitment to providing interoperable products for present and future SAN deployments." Finisar's NetWisdom/Xgig monitoring and analysis solution provides real-time, end-to-end monitoring and analysis of all the switches and devices in a SAN fabric. The solution is vendor independent and it monitors the SAN 24X7X365. The SAN Manager/Administrator is alerted via triggers and alarms (phone, pager or email) if the SAN performance is below a certain established level. If performance is below the established level, Finisar's Xgig analyzer with "expert" capabilities is deployed to drill down and pin point the root cause of the degradation in the SAN and provide detailed explanations of the problem -- and how to fix it. "We are pleased that Finisar has successfully completed the Fabric Aware testing with Brocade fabric switches in multi-vendor SAN environments," said Jay Kidd, Brocade CTO, Infrastructure Systems Group. "Storage area networks are being deployed worldwide at a rapid rate as a scalable, high performance networking foundation for storage environments. The Fabric Aware program is an example of our continued commitment to delivering end-to-end interoperability to SAN customers."