Brocade: Simplifying SAN Management for 45th Wing

Computerworld -

Brocade Communications Systems Inc.

Category: Networking equipment

Location: San Jose

Technology: Brocade Fabric Manager

How it works: Simplifies management of storage-area networks by helping storage managers configure and monitor Brocade switches and Brocade SANs from a single console. These tasks include security management in SANs and management and aggregation of host bus adapters and downloads of firmware.

Partners: Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, EMC Corp., Hitachi Data Systems Corp.

Tip: Planning is "absolutely key" to deploying a SAN, says Glenn Exline, manager of advanced technology at the 45th Space Wing of the U.S. Air Force. "If possible, implement the SAN [and the Brocade gear] in parallel to your infrastructure, at first in a testbed and then across the real fiber," he says. Let users play with actual data off-line for storage or backup for a month or more.

What's in store: SAN management tools are becoming increasingly important as SANs get more complicated, says Eric Sheppard, an analyst at IDC. In the next year or two, expect to see SAN super-management tools that are more powerful and manage a group of SAN islands as one, he says.

User Profile

The threat of hurricanes helped motivate officials at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida to move to a faster way to store and back up flight information.

Before September 2002, the 45th Space Wing of the U.S. Air Force, the unit responsible for all launches at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, was using direct-attached storage and backing up data to tape. That took more than 14 hours—too long considering that a hurricane can make landfall within four hours of being spotted, says Glenn Exline, manager of advanced technology at the Space Wing.

Exline says that by installing 16 Brocade 3800 fabric switches with the Brocade Fabric Manager software tool, the backups can be completed in two hours, fast enough to avoid high winds. He says Fabric Manager simplifies SAN management by enabling him to upgrade all the firmware across all 16 switches at once. It also lets him manage reboots in a predetermined order.

The Space Wing is expected to recoup the cost of the upgrade, nearly $940,000, within two years because of the time saved applying server patches and refreshing data. One-third as many servers are now required, he says.

Brocade was picked by two integrators because it was the most innovative at the time, Exline says. "We've had zero major problems," he says. The move to the Brocade system took four weeks and affected 3,800 users, but resulted in only six trouble calls during that month of setup, says Exline.