News
Emulex and Brocade Advance End-to-End Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN Capabilities
October 2013 by Marc Jacob
Emulex Corporation announced that the company is working with Brocade availability, and manageability of Gen 5 Fibre Channel (FC) based storage area networks (SANs) in the enterprise data centre and the cloud. Specifically, Emulex and Brocade have worked together to integrate Brocade’s ClearLink diagnostics technology into Emulex LightPulse® Gen 5 FC Host Bus Adapters (HBAs).
ClearLink Diagnostics
Detecting faults in the physical infrastructure remains challenging and the ability to quickly identify and isolate optics and cable problems can make a significant difference in operational expenditures (OPEX) for both pre-production and production environments.
With ClearLink diagnostics, data centres can identify and isolate optics and cable problems much faster – in a matter of minutes instead of days. For new SAN installations, ClearLink allows administrators to validate that their SANs can operate under full data loads prior to deploying production applications.
ClearLink diagnostics deliver these capabilities by performing a series of tests on both Brocade Gen 5 FC switches and Emulex Gen 5 FC HBAs. This includes running a series of electrical and optical loopback tests that can detect problems with the physical cabling and optics that could result in increased error rates and intermittent problems.
ClearLink enables best practices for deploying or changing the physical ports and cabling within the SAN infrastructure by allowing administrators to verify end-to-end connectivity and performance prior to moving to production. These capabilities help IT administrators and architects maximise application uptime and performance while reducing overall OPEX by allowing them to distinguish between faults due to marginal cable, optics modules, as well as connector or optics seating.
ClearLink diagnostics will be supported on currently shipping Emulex Gen 5 FC HBAs and Converged Fabric Adapters (CFAs) in the first quarter of 2014.
