Brocade Details Data Center Convergence Strategy

Brocade today outlined a vision for network, server and storage convergence in the data center that provides the benefits of convergence without requiring customers to standardize on a specific set of servers from one vendor.

Brocade CTO Dave Stevens today described a unified Brocade One network architecture that leverages new Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS) technologies that allow virtual machines to be logically organized and deployed on the network in addition to being dynamically moved around the network. In its first iteration, VCS can unify 10,000 virtual machines.

Scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2011, the Brocade One architecture leverages new ASIC processors that Brocade intends to deploy in the next generation of its switching products, which the company claims will create the first truly converged data center fabric.

Those products, said Stevens, will essentially allow IT organizations to manage virtual machines from any vendor as one virtual set of compute resources, also known as virtual compute blocks or pods of virtual machines, regardless of where they are on the network. Stevens added that many of these innovations will leverage emerging Edge Virtual Bridge standards that are in the process of being ratified by the IEEE. Brocade's implementation of those technolgies is called the Brocade Virtual Access Layer, which creates a layer of abstraction that makes it easier to manage disparate virtual machines platforms.

Stevens added that the Virtual Access Layer allows Brocade to create a distributed control plane for managing the network that is not dependent on spannning tree protocols that add too much overhead to managing environments with thousands of virtual resources. The distributed control plane revolutionizes Layer 2 connectivity by essentially allowing customers to dynamically reconfigure the network in software, versus physically having to configure each device on the network, he said.

In addition, Stevens said that Brocade will be providing "northbound APIs" that integrate VCS technologies with a variety of third-party management tools and will also make available tools that allow IT organizations to guarantee quality of service levels across a VCS network.