technology allows organizations to atten
network designs, provide Virtual Machine
(VM) mobility without network
reconguration, and more efciently
manage the entire fabric. Learn more
about Brocade VCS Fabric technology
at www.brocade.com/vcs.
UNMATCHED SIMPLICITY AND
AUTOMATION
Brocade VCS Fabric technology helps
streamline network operations and speed
deployment with embedded features that
enable automatic conguration and
management. These features include:
• Brocade VCS Logical Chassis: The
VCS Logical Chassis feature allows
organizations to manage an entire VCS
fabric as a single switch. This single point
of management eliminates the need to
manually congure and manage each
switch, simplifying management and
reducing operational costs. As additional
switches are added, they inherit the
conguration of the fabric, allowing the
network to scale out with ease. For more
information about VCS Logical Chassis,
read the white paper An Overview of
Brocade VCS Logical Chassis.
• Self-forming and self-healing fabric:
Conguration is simplied with self-
forming fabrics. Conguration and device
WHAT IS AN ETHERNET FABRIC?
Compared to classic hierarchical Ethernet
architectures, Ethernet fabrics provide
higher levels of performance, utilization,
availability, and simplicity. They are
designed to be:
• Flatter: Eliminates the need for
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), while
being completely interoperable with
existing Ethernet networks
• Flexible: Can be architected in any
topology to best meet the needs of
any variety of workloads
• Resilient: Uses multiple “least cost”
paths for high performance and high
reliability
• Elastic: Scales easily up and down
as needed
More advanced Ethernet fabrics
borrow further from Fibre Channel fabric
constructs:
• They are self-forming and function
as a single logical entity, in which all
switches automatically know about
each other and all connected physical
and logical devices.
• Management can then be domain-
based rather than device-based,
and dened by policy rather than
repetitive procedures.
• These features, along with
virtualization-specic enhancements,
make it easier to explicitly address the
challenges of VM automation within the
network, thereby facilitating better
IT automation.
Protocol convergence, such as Fibre
Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), may also
be a feature, intended as a means of
better bridging LAN and Storage Area
Network (SAN) trafc.
Learn more about Ethernet fabrics at
www.brocade.com/ethernet-fabric.
Figure 1.
Compared to classic Ethernet architectures, Ethernet fabrics—such as Brocade VCS
fabrics—allow all paths to be active and provide greater scalability while reducing
management complexity.
Servers with 10 Gbps Connections
Classic Hierarchical Ethernet Architecture
Servers with 10 Gbps Connections
Ethernet Fabric Architecture
Scalability
CoreEdge
CoreAggregationAccess
Figure 2.
Brocade VCS Fabric technology simplies the network architecture, enables unied storage
connectivity, improves VM mobility, and allows the seamless insertion of services.
Dedicated Fibre
Channel SAN for
Tier 1 applications
VCS fabric
extension
Blade
servers Rack-mount
servers
REMOTE
DATA CENTER
PRIMARY
DATA CENTER
VM
VMVM
Core
routers
FCoE/iSCSI/NAS
storage
VM
VM
VM
VM
VM
VM
SAN
Public
Network
VM
VCS fabric
extension
Native
Fibre Channel
Security services
(firewall, encryption)
Layer 4–7
application delivery
(42 pages)
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