Brocade today unveiled three new blades designed to seamlessly integrate into its two flagship platforms, the Brocade NetIron MLX Series and the Brocade DCX Backbone. These new blades offer industry-leading wire-speed performance and density to address increasing traffic in service provider networks and booming server virtualization adoption in data centers. The new blades reinforce Brocade’s commitment to continuous networking innovation while also preserving customers’ investments in their existing network infrastructures.

Brocade achieved this milestone in performance and density with the new Brocade 8×10G-M Series Blade for Carrier Ethernet networks and 8×10G-D Series Blade for the data center. These two new blades double the wire-speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) density for the NetIron MLX to 256 ports on a single chassis. Brocade also unveiled the new 64-port 8 Gigabits per second (Gbps) blade for the Brocade DCX. The Brocade FC8-64 Blade is the industry’s highest performance blade, delivering wire-speed density of up to 512 ports per chassis.

“Brocade continues to deliver unmatched performance and density across all networking environments. With our customer-driven focus, we are investing in existing flagship platforms, while accelerating development of advanced technologies such as 100 GbE,” said Ken Cheng, vice president of service provider products for Brocade. “In fact, Brocade recently hosted a summit with key customers to discuss the deployment of 100 GbE technology for high-performance networking applications. Based on the success of this summit, Brocade has begun taking early orders for our 100 GbE-based products.”

Unmatched Wire-Speed Routing Capacity for Service Providers and Data Centers

Wire-speed performance is becoming more critical as traffic growth drives higher-capacity demands on Carrier Ethernet and data center networks. Designed for service providers, the new Brocade 8×10G-M Series blade for the NetIron MLX doubles the performance and capacity while providing full IPv4/IPv6 functionality, MPLS, VPLS and 512K forwarding information base (FIB) capacity.

Ideal for large data centers and high-performance computing environments, the new Brocade 8×10G-D Series blade for the NetIron MLX also delivers up to 256 ports of wire-speed 10 GbE switching and routing performance and supports IPv4/IPv6 functionality with a FIB capacity of up to 256K IPv4 routes. The new blades also help deliver a 45 percent reduction in power and cooling over Brocade’s current offering.

"We're seeing demand for capacity from LINX members at least double every 24 months with massive growth in 10 GbE connectivity,” said John Souter, chief executive officer for London Internet Exchange (LINX), one of the world’s largest Internet Exchanges. "With events such as the 2010 World Cup driving consumer interest and expectations of Internet video, we needed to boost the capacity of our existing infrastructure while also reducing architectural complexity. Brocade was able to deliver the performance we required to remain ahead of the growth curve while also maintaining maximum service levels for our members.”

New Scale in SAN Capacity

Brocade continues to invest in its flagship Brocade DCX Backbone family, with the introduction of the Brocade FC8-64 blade, the industry’s densest and highest performance 8 Gbps Fibre Channel blade. The new blade increases port density by more than 33 percent to an industry-leading 512 ports per chassis. This increased performance and capacity will allow customers to build next-generation SANs and support the growing demands of server virtualization.

“Our virtualized data center is growing to support more servers and traffic,” said Jeff Wilson, service delivery director for Denovo. “At the same time, we need to reduce our network complexity and infrastructure cost by maximizing the capabilities we get from our current equipment. Brocade’s new FC8-64 blade for the Brocade DCX mirrors our need to reduce additional chassis within our storage area network, which can greatly reduce cost and management overhead.”

Pricing and Availability

The Brocade NetIron MLX 8×10G Series blades are available in two versions to target the specific needs of customers. The 8×10G-M Series for Carrier Ethernet customers is available today starting at $39,995 USD. The 8×10G-D Series for data center customers will be available in mid 2010 and will start at $27,995 USD. The Brocade FC8-64 blade for SAN customers will be available through Brocade OEM and channel partners.

Brocade Technology Day

Brocade is committed to delivering networking product and solutions innovation. Brocade will be demonstrating this commitment with unparalleled architectural advancements, which encompass all parts of the network, including data centers, enterprises and services providers at its annual Brocade Technology Day on June 8-9, in New York City.