achieving enterprise san performance with the brocade dcx backbone
TRANSCRIPT
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
1/16
www.brocade.com
DATA CENTER Achieving Enterprise
SAN Performance with the
Brocade DCX Backbone
WHITE PAPER
A best-in-class architecture enables optimum
performance, exibility, and reliability for enterprise
data center networks.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
2/16
The BrocadeDCXBackbone is the industrys highest-performing
enterprise-class platform for Storage Area Networks (SANs). With its
intelligent sixth-generation ASICs and new hardware and software
capabilities, the Brocade DCX provides a reliable foundation for fully
connected, multiprotocol SAN fabrics, FICON solutions, and MetaSANs
capable of supporting thousands of servers and storage devices.
The Brocade DCX Backbone also provides industry-leading power and
cooling efciency, helping to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO),
as well as helping to reduce overall OpEx.
This paper details the architecture advantages of the Brocade DCX
Backbone and describes how IT organizations can leverage the
performance capabilities, modular exibility, and ve-nines
(99.999 percent) reliability of this SAN platform to achieve specic
business requirements.
OVERVIEW
In January 2008, Brocade introduced the Brocade DCX Backbone (see Figure 1), the
rst platform in the industry to provide 8 Gigabits per second (Gbps) Fibre Channel (FC)
capabilities. With the release of Fabric OS (FOS) 6.0 at the same time, the Brocade DCX
Backbone added 8 Gbps Fibre Channel and FICON performance for data-intensive storage
applications.
In January 2009, the Brocade DCX-4S (see Figure 2) was added to the backbone family,and the Brocade DCX has become a key component in thousands of data centers around the
world. New Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and SAN extension blades were introduced in
September 2009. In June 2010, Brocade launched the industrys rst and only 8 Gbps
64-port blade.
Although this paper focuses on the Brocade DCX, some information is provided for the
Brocade DCX-4X Backbone, notably in the section on Inter-Chassis Link (ICL) conguration.
For more details on these two backbone platforms, see the Brocade DCX Backbone Family
Data Sheet on www.brocade.com.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
3/16
Compared to competitive offerings, the Brocade DCX Backbone is the industrys fastest and
most advanced SAN backbone, providing numerous advantages:
Scales non-disruptively from 16 to as many as 512 concurrently active 4 or 8 Gbps full-
duplex ports in a single domain (open systems)
Scales non-disruptively from 16 to as many as 256 concurrently active 4 or 8 Gbps full-
duplex ports in a single domain (FICON)
Enables simultaneous uncongested switching on all ports as long as simple best practices
are followed
Can provide 4.6 Terabits per second (Tbps) (Brocade DCX) or 2.3 Tbps (Brocade DCX-4S)
utilizing 8 Gbps blades, Inter-Chassis Links (ICLs), and Local Switching.
In addition to providing the highest levels of performance, the Brocade DCX Backbone
features a modular, high-availability architecture that supports mission-critical environments.
Moreover, the platforms industry-leading power and cooling efciency helps reduce
ownership costs while maximizing rack density.
The Brocade DCX Backbone uses just 6 watts AC per port and 0.7 watts per Gbps at its
maximum 8 Gbps 512-port conguration. The Brocade DCX-4S uses just 6.7 watts AC per
port and 0.8 watts per Gbps at its maximum 8 Gbps 256-port conguration. Both are twice
as efcient as its their predecessors and up to six times more efcient than competitive
products. This efciency not only reduces data center power billsit reduces cooling
requirements and minimizes or eliminates the need for data center infrastructure upgrades,
such as new Power Distribution Units (PDUs), power circuits, and larger Heating, Ventilation,
and Air Conditioning (HVAC) units. In addition, the highly integrated architecture uses fewer
active electric components boarding the chassis, which improves key reliability metrics such
as Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF).
The Brocade DCX Backbone leverages a highly exible multiprotocol architecture, supporting
Fibre Channel, Fibre Connectivity (FICON), Fibre Channel over Ethernet, Fibre Channel over
IP (FCIP), IP over Fibre Channel (IPFC), and Data Center Bridging (DCB) IT organizations
can also easily mix FC port blades with advanced functionality blades for FCoE server I/O
convergence, SAN encryption, and SAN extension to build an infrastructure that optimizes
functionality, price, and performance. And ease of setup enables data center administrators
to quickly maximize its performance and availability.
This paper describes the internal architecture of Brocade DCX Backbones and how best
to leverage their industry-leading performance and blade exibility to meet business
requirements.
How Is Fibre Channel
Bandwidth Measured?
Fibre Channel is a lossless, low- latency,
full-duplex network protocol, meaning thatdata can be transmitted and received
simultaneously. The name of a specic Fibre
Channel standard, for example 8 Gbps FC,
refers to how fast an application payload
can move in one direction. This is called
data rate. Vendors sometimes state data
rates followed by the words full duplex, for
example 8 Gbps full duplex, although it is
not necessary when referring to Fibre
Channel speeds. The term aggregate data
rate is the sum of the application payloads
moving in each direction (full duplex) and is
equal to twice the data rate.
Figure 1.
Brocade DCX (left)
and Brocade DCX-4S (right).
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
4/16
BROCADE DCX ASIC FEATURES
The Brocade DCX Backbone Control Routers (CR8s) feature Brocade Condor 2 ASICs, each
capable of switching at 640 Gbps. Each Brocade Condor 2 ASIC has 40 x 8 Gbps ports, which
can be combined into trunk groups of multiple sizes. The Brocade DCX architecture leverages
the same Fibre Channel protocols as the front-end ports, enabling back-end ports to avoid
latency due to protocol conversion overhead.
When a frame enters the ASIC, the destination address is read from the header, which
enables routing decisions to be made before the entire frame has been received. This is
known within the industry as Cut-Through Routing, which means that a frame can begin
transmission out of the correct destination port on the ASIC even before the frame has
nished entering the ingress port. Local latency on the same ASIC is 0.7 s and blade-to-
blade latency is 2.1 s. As a result, the Brocade DCX has the lowest switching latency and
highest throughput of any Fibre Channel backbone platform in the industry.
Each Condor 2 (8 Gbps) ASICs on a port blade can act as an independent switching engine
to provide Local Switching between port groups in addition to switching across the backplane
Local Switching trafc does not cross the backplane, nor consume any slot bandwidth.
This enables every port on high-density blades to communicate at full 8 Gbps. That is just
700 nsat least 25 times faster than the next-fastest SAN enterprise platform on the market
On the 16-, 32-, and 64-port blades, Local Switching is performed within 16-port groups. On
48-port blades, Local Switching is performed within 24-port groups. Only Brocade offers an
enterprise architecture that can make these types
of switching decisions at the port level, enabling
Local Switching and the ability to deliver up to 4.6
Tbps (Brocade DCX) and 2.0 Tbps (Brocade DCX-
4S) of aggregate bandwidth per backbone.
To support long-distance congurations, 8 Gbps
blades have Condor 2 ASICs that provide 2,048
buffer-to-buffer credits per 16-port group on
16-, 32-, and 64-port blades, and per 24-port
group on 48-port blades.
Condor 2 ASICs also enable Brocade Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Trunking with up to 64 Gbps
full-duplex, frame-level trunks (up to 8 x 8 Gbps links in a trunk) and Dynamic Path Selection
(DPS) for exchange-level routing between individual ISLs or ISL Trunking groups. Exchange-
based DPS automatically optimizes fabric-wide performance by automatically routing data
to the most efcient available path in the fabric. DPS augments ISL Trunking to provide more
effective load balancing in certain congurations, such as routing data between multiple
trunk groups. Up to 8 trunks can be balanced to achieve a total throughput of 512 Gbps.
Furthermore, Brocade has signicantly improved frame-level Trunking through a masterless
link in a trunk group. If an ISL trunk link ever fails, the ISL trunk seamlessly reforms with the
remaining links, enabling higher overall data availability.
Preventing frame loss during an event such as the addition or removal of an ISL while thefabric is active is a critical customer requirement. Lossless Dynamic Load Sharing and DPS
enable optimal utilization of ISLs by performing trafc rebalancing operations during fabric
events such as E_Port up/down, F_Port down, and so on. Typically, when a port goes down or
comes back up, frames may be dropped or arrive out of order or trafc imbalance may occur.
Brocades Lossless DLS/DPS architecture rebalances trafc at the frame and exchange level
delivering in-order trafc without dropping frames, thus preventing application timeouts or
SCSI retries.
Unlike competitive
offerings, frames that
are switched within
port groups are always
capable of full port
speed.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
5/16
BROCADE DCX PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE
In the Brocade DCX, each port blade has Condor 2 ASICs that expose some ports for
user connectivity and some ports to the control processors core switching ASICs via the
backplane. The backbone uses a multi-stage ASIC layout analogous to a fat-tree core/
edge topology. The fat-tree layout is symmetrical, that is, all ports have equal access to all
other ports. The platform can switch frames locally if the destination port is on the sameASIC as the source. This is an important feature for high-density environments, because it
allows blades that are oversubscribed when switching between blade ASICs to achieve full,
uncongested performance when switching on the same ASIC. No other backbone offers
Local Switchingwith competing offerings, trafc must traverse the crossbar ASIC and
backplane even when traveling to a neighboring porta function that signicantly degrades
performance.
The exible Brocade DCX architecture uses a wide variety of blades for increasing port
density, multiprotocol capabilities, and fabric-based applications. Data center administrators
can easily mix the blades in the Brocade DCX to address specic business requirements
and optimize cost/performance ratios. The following blades are currently available (as of
mid-2010).
Blade Name Description Introduced with
CP8 - Control Processor Provides service activities and
manageability of the backbone
FOS 6.0
CR8 - Core Switching 1,024 Gbps per CR8
ICL ports on every CR8 blade
turned on via an optional license
FOS 6.0
FC8-16 16 ports, 8 Gbps FC blade FOS 6.0
FC8-32 32 ports, 8 Gbps FC blade FOS 6.1
FC8-48 48 ports, 8 Gbps FC blade FOS 6.1
FC8-64 64 ports, 8 Gbps FC blade FOS 6.4
FCOE10-24 24 ports, 10 Gbps FCoE/DCB blade FOS 6.3
FS8-18 Encryption
Blade
16 ports, 8 Gbps, line-speed
encryption of data-at-rest
FOS 6.1.1_enc
FX8-24 Extension
Blade
24 ports, 12 x 8 Gbps FC ports,
10 x 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports, and
two optional 10 GbE ports for long-distance
extension of FCIP blade
FOS 6.3
FC10-6 6 ports, 10 Gbps FC blade FOS 5.3
FA4-18 Fabric
Application Blade
18 ports, 4 Gbps FC application blade FOS 5.3
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
6/16
CORE BLADES AND INTER-CHASSIS LINK (ICL) PORTS
Control Processors
The Brocade DCX has two Control Processor (CP8) blades. The control processor functions
are redundant active-passive (hot-standby). The blade with the active control processor
is known as the active control processor blade, but either could be active or standby.
Additionally on the each processor are a USB port and two network ports. The USB is only
for use with a Brocade-branded USB storage device. The dual IP ports allow a customer to
potentially fail over internally on the same CP without the loss of an IP connection rather than
fail over to the standby CP blade.
Control Routing Blades
The Brocade DCX includes two Control Routing (CR8) blades. This blade provides core routingof the frames either from blade to blade or from DCX to DCX/DCX-4S through the ICL ports.
The CR8 blades are Active-Active in each Brocade DCX chassis. Each CR8 blade has four
Condor 2 ASICs, and each ASIC has dual connection to each ASIC group on each line card.
There are 2 x ICL connections on each CR8 blade. These can be connected to another DCX
or DCX-4S chassis as shown in Figures 3, 4, and 5.
Figure 1.
CP8 blade design.
Optical Power Slider
Allows graceful CP
failover with no
dropped frames
Control Path to Blades
CP Power
Control Processor Block
USB Management Port
Serial Management Port
Ethernet Management Ports
CP Power
Control Path to BladesCPU
Optical Power Slider
Allows graceful CR
failover with no
dropped frames
CR Power
1 Tbps to Blades
over Backplane
CR Power
ASIC
ASIC
ASIC
ASIC
128 Gbps
ICL Connection
(ICL1)
128 Gbps
ICL Connection
(ICL0)
Switching Block
Figure 2.
CR8 blade design.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
7/16
Multi-Chassis Confguration
The dual-and triple-chassis congurations for the Brocade DCX and DCX-4S provide ultra-high-
speed Inter-Chassis Link (ICL) ports to connect two or three backbones, providing extensive
scalability (up to 1536 x 8 Gbps universal FC ports) and exibility at the network core. Special
ICL copper-based cables are used, which connect directly and require no SFPs. Connections
are made between 8 ICL ports (4 per chassis), located on the CR8 blades. The supportedcable congurations for connecting two Brocade DCX Backbones are shown in Figure 3. The
supported congurations for a three-chassis conguration are shown in Figure 4. This is a
good option for customers who want to build a powerful core without wasting the ports for ISL
connectivity between chassis.
NOTE: In a single rack, you can connect three Brocade DCX-4S chassis in addition to the
options shown in Figure 4. A three-chassis topology is supported for chassis in two racks as
long as the third chassis is in the middle of the second rack.
Brocade DCX supports 16 or 8 links per ICL cable, which means 16 or 8 Gbps E_Ports per ICL
cable. The Brocade DCX-4S supports 8 links per ICL.
Brocade DCX
Brocade DCX-4S
ICL cables
Figure 3.
Examples of
Brocade DCX/DCX-4S
dual-chassis conguration.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
8/16
Brocade DCX
Brocade DCX-4S
Figure 4.
Examples of
Brocade DCX/DCX-4S
three-chassis conguration.
Figure 5.
Photograph of a Brocade DCX
three-chassis conguration
across two racks.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
9/16
8 GBPS FIBRE CHANNEL BLADES
Brocade offers 16-, 32-, 48-, and 64-port 8 Gbps blades to connect to servers, storage,
or switches. All of the port blades can leverage Local Switching to ensure full 8 Gbps
performance on all ports. Each CR8 blade contains four ASICs that switch data over the
backplane between port blade ASICs. A total 256 Gbps of aggregate bandwidth per blade is
available for switching through the backplane. Mixing switching over the backplane with LocalSwitching delivers performance of up to 512 Gbps per blade using 64-port blades.
For distance over dark ber using Brocade-branded Small Form Factor Pluggables (SFPs),
the Condor 2 ASIC has approximately twice the buffer credits as the Condor ASICenabling
1, 2, 4, or 8 Gbps ISLs and more long-wave connections over greater distances.
When connecting a large number of devices that need sustained 8 Gbps transmission line
rates, IT organizations can leverage Local Switching to avoid congestion. Local Switching on
FC port blades reduces port-to-port latencyframes cross the backplane in 2.1 s, locally
switched frames cross the blade in only 700 nsthe latency from crossing the backplane is
still more than 50 times faster than disk access times and is much faster than any competing
product.
All 8 Gbps ports on the FC8-16 blade operate at full line rate through the backplane or with
Local Switching.
Figure 6 shows a photo and functional diagram of the 8 Gbps 16-port blade.
Switching Speed Defned
When describing SAN switching speed,vendors typically use the following
measurements:
Milliseconds (ms):
One thousandth of a second
Microseconds (s):
One millionth of a second
Nanoseconds (ns):
One billionth of a second
Figure 6.
FC8-16 blade design.
ASIC256 Gbps to
Core Switching
No Oversubscription
at 8 Gbps
16 8 Gbps ports
Power and
Control Path
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
10/16
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
11/16
The FC8-64 blade has a 2:1 oversubscription ratio at 8 Gbps switching through the
backplane and no oversubscription with Local Switching. At 4 Gbps speeds, all 64 ports
can switch over the backplane with no oversubscription. The FC8-64 blade exposes 16
user-facing ports per ASIC, and up to eight 8-port trunk groups can be created with the
64-port blade.
Figure 9 shows a photograph and functional diagram of the FC8-64 blade.
SPECIALTY BLADES
DCB/FCoE Blade
The Brocade FCOE10-24 blade is designed as an end-of-row chassis solution for server I/O
consolidation (see Figure 15). Its a resilient, hot-pluggable blade that features 24 x 10 Gbps
Data Center Bridging (DCB) ports with a Layer 2 cut-through and non-blocking architecture,
which provides wire-speed performance for traditional Ethernet, DCB, and FCoE trafc.
The FCOE10-24 features a high-performance FCoE hardware engine (Encap/Decap) and can
use 8 Gbps Fibre Channel ports on 16-, 32-, and 48-port blades to integrate seamlessly into
existing Fibre Channel SANs and management infrastructures. The blade supports industry-
standard Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) and Brocade enhanced, frame-based port
Trunking that delivers 40 Gbps of aggregate bandwidth.
ASIC
ASIC
Relative 2:1
Oversubscription
at 8 Gbps
16 8 Gbps
Port Groups
Power and
Control Path
256 Gbps toBackplane
512 Gbps Available
for Local Switching
Fibre Channel
Switching
ASIC
ASIC
Figure 9.
FC8-64 blade design.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
12/16
Figure 10 shows a photograph and functional diagram of the FCOE10-24.
SAN Encryption Blade
The Brocade FS8-18 Encryption Blade provides of 16 x 8 Gbps Fibre Channel ports and
2 x RJ-45 GbE ports, and a Smart Card reader. The Brocade FS8-18 is a high-speed, highly
reliable FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validated blade, which provides fabric-based encryption and
compression services to secure data assets either selectively or on a comprehensive basis.
The blade scales non-disruptively from 48 up to 96 Gbps of disk encryption processing power
It also provides encryption and compression services at speeds up to 48 Gbps for data on
tape storage media. Moreover, the Brocade FS8-18 is tightly integrated with four industry-
leading, enterprise-class key management systems that can scale to support key lifecycle
services across distributed environments.
Figure 11 shows a photograph and functional diagram of the FS8-18.
Figure 10.
Brocade FCOE10-24
Blade design.
ASIC
ASICs
Power and
Control Path
256 Gbps to
Backplane
24 x 10 GbE
Ports
Fibre Channel
Switching
ASICs
FCoE
Bridging
DCB
Switching
8 x 8 Gbps
Fibre Channel ports
8 x 8 Gbps
Fibre Channel ports
Power and
Control PathSmart Card reader
2 x RJ-45 GbE
reduncant
cluster ports
FIPS 140-2 Level 3
Cryptographic Cover
Figure 11.
Brocade FS8-18
Encryption Blade design.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
13/16
SAN Extension Blade
Brocade FX8-24 Extension Blades accelerate and optimize replication, backup, and
migration over any distance with the fastest, most reliable, and most cost-effective network
infrastructure. Twelve 8 Gbps Fibre Channel ports, ten 1 GbE ports, and up to two optional
10 GbE ports provide unmatched Fibre Channel and FCIP bandwidth, port density, and
throughput for maximum application performance over IP WAN links. Whether deployed inlarge data centers or multisite environments, the Brocade FX8-24 enables replication and
backup applications to move more data faster and fur ther than ever before to address the
most demanding disaster recovery, compliance, and data mobility requirements.
Figure 12 shows a photograph and functional diagram of the FX8-24.
6-port 10 Gbps Fibre Channel Blade
The Brocade FC10-6 blade consists of 6 x 10 Gbps Fibre Channel ports that use 10 Gigabit
Small Form Factor Pluggable (XFP) optical transceivers. The primary use for the FC10-6 blade
is for long-distance extension over dark ber. The ports on the FC10-6 blade operate only in
E_Port mode to create ISLs. The FC10-6 blade has buffering to drive 10 Gbps connectivity up
to 120 km per port and exceed the capabilities of 10 Gbps XFPs available in short-wave,
10, 40, and 80 km long-wave versions. While potential oversubscription of a fully populated
blade is small (1.125:1), Local Switching is supported in groups consisting of ports 0 to 2
and ports 3 to 5, enabling maximum port speeds ranging from 8.9 to 10 Gbps full duplex.
Storage Application BladeThe Brocade FA4-18 Application Blade has 16 x 4 Gbps Fibre Channel ports and 2 x
auto-sensing 10/100/1000 Megabits per second (Mbps) Ethernet ports for LAN-based
management. It is tightly integrated with several enterprise storage applications that leverage
the Brocade Storage Application Services (SAS) APIan implementation of the T11 FAIS
standardto provide wire-speed data movement and ofoad server resources. These fabric-
based applications provide online data migration, storage virtualization, and continuous data
replication and protection, and other partner applications.
ASIC
Power and
Control Path
64 Gbps to
Backplane
10 x GbE
Ports
Fibre Channel
Switching
FCIP,
Compression,
and Encryption
12 x 8 Gbps
Port Switching
Group
2 x Optional
10 GbE Ports
Figure 12.
FX8-24 blade design.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
14/16
THE BENEFITS OF CORE/EDGE NETWORK DESIGN
The core/edge network topology has emerged as the design of choice for large-scale, highly
available, high-performance SANs constructed with multiple switches of any size.
The Brocade DCX Backbone uses an internal architecture analogous to a core/edge fat-
tree topology, which is widely recognized as being the highest-performance arrangement of
switches. Note that the Brocade DCX Backbone is not literally a fat-tree network of discrete
switches, but thinking of it in this way provides a useful visualization.
While IT organizations could build a network of 40-port switches with similar performance
characteristics to the Brocade DCX Backbone, it would require more than a dozen 40-port
switches connected in a fat-tree fashion. This network would require complex cabling,
management of 12+ discrete switching elements, support for higher power and cooling,
and more SFPs to support ISLs. In contrast,
the Brocade DCX delivers the same high
level of performance without the associated
disadvantages of a large multi-switch network,
bringing fat-tree performance to IT organizations
that could previously not justify the investment or
overhead costs.
It is important to understand, however, that the
internal ASIC connections in a Brocade DCX
Backbone are not E_Ports connecting a network
of switches. They are considered C_Ports. Since
they are not E_Ports, typical E_Port overhead is
not present on the C_Port. The Fabric OS and ASIC architecture enables the entire backbone
to be a single domain and a single hop in a Fibre Channel network. Unlike a situation in which
a switch is removed from a fabric, a fabric reconguration is not sent across the network
when a port blade is removed, further simplifying operations.
In comparison to a multi-switch, fat-tree network, the Brocade DCX Backbone:
Is easier to deploy and manageSimplies the cable plant by eliminating ISLs and additional SFP media
Is far more scalable than a large network of independent domains
Is lower in both initial CapEx and ongoing OpEx
Has fewer active components and more component redundancy for higher reliability
Provides multiprotocol support and routing within a single chassis
The Brocade DCX
Backbone architecture
enables the entire
backbone to be a singledomain and a single
hop in a Fibre Channel
network.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
15/16
PERFORMANCE IMPACT OF CONTROL ROUTING FAILURE MODES
Any type of failure on the Brocade DCXwhether a control processor or core ASICis
extremely rare. However, in the unusual event of a failure, the Brocade DCX is designed for
fast and easy control processor replacement. This section describes potential (albeit unlikely)
failure scenarios and how the Brocade DCX is designed to minimize the impact
on performance and provide the highest level of system availability.
Control Processor Failure in a CP8 Blade
If the processor section of the active control processor blade fails, it affects only the
management plane and data trafc between end devices continues to ow uninterrupted.
With the addition of the second IP port, the risk of having to fail over to a standby CP is
potentially minimized. A control processor failure has no effect on the data plane: the standby
control processor automatically takes over and the backbone continues to operate without
dropping any data frames.
Data ows would not necessarily become congested in the Brocade DCX Backbone with one
CP8 failure. A worst- case scenario would require the backbone to be running at or near
50 percent of bandwidth capacity on a sustained basis. With typical I/O patterns and some
Local Switching, however, aggregate bandwidth demand is often below 50 percent maximum
capacity. In such environments there would be no impact, even if a failure persisted for
an extended period of time. For environments with higher bandwidth usage, performance
degradation would last only until the failed core blade is replaced, a simple 5-minute
procedure.
Core Routing Failure in a CR8 Blade
The potential impact of a core element failure to overall system performance is
straightforward. If half of the core elements were to go ofine due to a hardware failure, half
of the aggregate switching capacity over the backplane would be ofine until the condition
was corrected. A Brocade DCX Backbone with just one CR8 can still provide 1,024 Gbps
aggregate bandwidth, or 128 Gbps to every backbone slot.
SUMMARY
With an aggregate chassis bandwidth far greater than competitive offerings, Brocade DCX
Backbones are architected to deliver congestion-free performance, broad scalability, and
high reliability for real-world enterprise SANs. As demonstrated by Brocade testing, the
Brocade DCX:
Delivers 8 and 4 Gbps Fibre Channel and FICON line-rate connectivity on all ports
simultaneously
Provides Local Switching to maximize bandwidth for high-demand applications
Offers port blade exibility to meet specic connectivity, performance, and budget needs
Provides investment protection by supporting data security, inter-fabric routing, SAN
extension, and emerging protocols such as FCoE in the same chassis
Performs fabric-based data migration, protection, and storage virtualizationDelivers ve-nines availability
For further details on the capabilities of the Brocade DCX Backbone in the Brocade data
center fabric, visit:
http://www.brocade.com/products-solutions/products/dcx-backbone/index.page
There you will nd the Brocade DCX Backbone Family Data Sheet and relevant Technical
Briefs and White Papers.
-
7/25/2019 Achieving Enterprise SAN Performance With the Brocade DCX Backbone
16/16
www.brocade.com
2010 Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 06/10 GA-WP-1224-01
Brocade, the B-wing symbol, BigIron, DCX, Fabric OS, FastIron, IronView, NetIron, SAN Health, ServerIron, and TurboIron
are registered trademarks, and Brocade Assurance, DCFM, Extraordinary Networks, and Brocade NET Health are
trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. Other brands,
products, or service names mentioned are or may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
Notice: This document is for informational purposes only and does not set forth any warranty, expressed or implied,
concerning any equipment, equipment feature, or service offered or to be offered by Brocade. Brocade reserves the
right to make changes to this document at any time, without notice, and assumes no responsibility for its use. This
informational document describes features that may not be currently available. Contact a Brocade sales ofce for
information on feature and product availability. Export of technical data contained in this document may require an
export license from the United States government.
Corporate Headquarters
San Jose, CA USA
T: +1-408-333-8000
European Headquarters
Geneva, Switzerland
T: +41-22-799-56-40
Asia Pacifc Headquarters
Singapore
T: +65-6538-4700
WHITE PAPER