Brocade Communications Systems

Brocade's first Fibre Channel switch SilkWorm 1000 (SW1000) (released in 1997) was based on the "Stitch" ASIC and their own VxWorks-based firmware (Fabric OS or FOS). SilkWorm eventually came to be a long-lived marketing designation for an entire line of products, with the first product being retro-named the SilkWorm 1000 (SW1000) to distinguish it from subsequent platforms. Bruce Bergman was the CEO during most of this period. Product names were generally puns on various kinds of woven fabric, since a switched Fibre Channel network is also called a "fabric".

In 1998, Gregory Reyes joined the company as CEO. In 2001, Brocade released the SilkWorm 6400, which was designated a "director" similarly[5] to IBM ESCON directors already well-established[6] in the mainframe computer market. The term "director" became universally used for more expensive FC switches.[7]

From 2001 to 2003, Brocade released switches based on its third generation ASIC, "BLOOM" (Big LOOM). BLOOM introduced increased throughput of 2 Gbit/s instead of 1 Gbit/s. Brocade integrated BLOOM into its first "pure" director, the SilkWorm 12000, in April 2002. The director offered up to 128 ports in two 64-port pseudo-switches (domains). The 12000 represented several internal architecture and technical changes besides the new ASIC: it had an upgraded control processor architecture (Intel i960 moved to PowerPC 405GP), changed the embedded operating system (FOS v4.0 migrated from Wind River Systems VxWorks to MontaVista Linux), and introduced the backplane architecture (hierarchical PCI buses with replaceable blades attached to a backplane). The Bloom ASIC also introduced a notable capability of frame-level Fibre Channel trunking, which provided high throughput with load balancing across multiple cables. It needed to be implemented in the ASIC hardware to ensure in-order delivery of frames. Also hot firmware upgrade was introduced with FOS v4.1 in October 2003.

At the time, Brocade's main rival, McDATA, held over 90% market share in director segment, owing to a strong position first in the ESCON market, and then in the FICON market. The SilkWorm 12000 director gained over one-third of the market share after its release in 2002. Brocade added mainframe customers with FICON and FICON CUP support on the SilkWorm 12000.

In 2004, the BLOOM II improved on the previous ASIC design by reducing its power consumption and die size, while maintaining 2 Gbit/s technology. It powered Brocade's second generation director, the SilkWorm 24000. Still a 128 port design, it was the first one which could operate as a single 128-port switch (a single domain). The new director also used approximately two thirds less power than its predecessor. Brocade introduced also its first multiprotocol Fibre Channel router, the SilkWorm 7420. Brocade also acquired Rhapsody Networks (a SAN virtualization startup company). This was also the time frame in which Brocade first entered into the embedded switch market, delivering multiple switches physically integrated into other vendors' hardware, such as storage controllers and blade server chassis.

In January 2008 Brocade launched the 384-port 8 Gbit/s DCX Backbone. [8]

In May 2008, Brocade unveiled 3 new 8 Gbit/s switches: 24-port 300 switch, 40-port 5100 switch and the 80-port 5300 switch. [9]

In January 2009, Brocade launched the 192-port 8 Gbit/s DCX-4S Backbone. [10]

In late 2010 Brocade introduced Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS) on the VDX[11] ultra-low-latency data center switch product line. These are DCB/CEE- and TRILL-based switches, eliminating the need for Spanning Tree Protocol, and supporting multi-hop Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and self-trunking.[12]

In May 2011,[13] Brocade launched the industry's first "Gen 5 Fibre Channel" (16 Gbit/s) SAN platform family including the Brocade DCX 8510 Backbone, 6510 switch and 1860 Fabric Adapter. The Brocade DCX 8510 is available in 8-slot or 4-slot chassis models supporting up to 384 16 Gbit/s ports at line-rate speeds and 8.2 terabits per second (Tbit/s) of chassis bandwidth. It includes optical UltraScale inter-chassis links (ICLs) which simplify scale-out design for multi-chassis architectures. The Brocade 6510 switch is a 48-port 16 Gbit/s switch designed for virtualized applications and high-performance storage including SSD arrays. Brocade also introduced the 1860 Fabric Adapter, the industry's first adapter which includes AnyIO 16 Gbit/s FC HBA, 10GbE CNA, and 10GbE NIC functionality on the same card.

In April 2012, Brocade launched the Gen 5 (16 Gbit/s) 6505 switch (24-port) entry-level switch.

In March 2013, Brocade launched the Gen 5 (16 Gbit/s) 6520 96-port Fibre Channel high-density switch and announced Brocade Fabric Vision technology. Brocade Fabric Vision technology introduces advanced diagnostics, monitoring, and management capabilities through a combination of ASIC, FOS, and Brocade Network Advisor. New features include Brocade Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS) for fabric-wide threshold configuration and monitoring and Brocade Flow Vision for data flow monitoring and analysis.

In October 2014, Brocade launched the Gen 5 (16 Gbit/s) 7840 extension switch and the FC16-64 64-port blade for the DCX 8510. [14]

In March 2016,[15] Brocade launched the G620 switch, their first Gen 6 (32 Gbit/s) Fibre Channel product.

In July 2016, Brocade launched the Gen 6 (32 Gbit/s) X6 Director with 4 slots (192 or 256-ports) or 8 slots (382 or 512-ports) and SX6 extension blade. [16]

In March 2017, Brocade launched the Gen 6 (32 Gbit/s) G610 entry switch (24-port). [17]

In April 2018, Brocade launched the Gen 6 (32 Gbit/s) G630 enterprise switch (128-port) and FC32-64 high density blade (64-port) for the X6 Director. [18]

In December 2018, Brocade launched the Gen 6 (32 Gbit/s) 7810 extension switch. [19]

In September 2020,[20] Brocade launched the X7 Director and G720 Switch, their first Gen 7 (64 Gbit/s) Fibre Channel products.

In February 2022, [21] Brocade launched the Gen 7 (64 Gbit/s) G730 128-port switch and the 64 Gbit/s double density optical transceiver.

Brocade designs its Fibre Channel ASICs for performing switching functions in its SAN switches.

The first family of SAN switches, the SilkWorm 1000, released in 1997, were based on the first generation of Brocade ASICs, called Stitch. The SilkWorm 6400 series of SAN Director class switches and SilkWorm 2400/2800 switches, released in 1999, were based on the second generation of Brocade ASICs, called LOOM. The SilkWorm 12000/24000 SAN Directors and SilkWorm 3200/3800/3850 SAN switches, released in 2001, were based on the third and fourth generation of Brocade ASICs called BLOOM and BLOOM-II.

The fifth generation of ASICs, called Condor and GoldenEye (scaled-down Condor), powered the SilkWorm 48000 series of Directors and port blades, FR4-18i Extension Blade, and SilkWorm 200E/4100/4900/7500 series of switches respectively. These products were released into the market in 2004.

The sixth generation of Brocade ASICs (designed in 2008) are called Condor2 and GoldenEye2. Condor2 supports 40 ports of 8 Gbit/s per ASIC and GoldenEye2 supports 32 ports of 8 Gbit/s. These ASICs are used in the DCX Backbone Family of chassis and port blades, FS8-18 Encryption Blade, FX8-24 Extension Blade, and 300/5100/5300/7800/Encryption switches.

The seventh generation of Brocade ASICs are Condor3. Condor3 supports 48 ports of 16 Gbit/s per ASIC. These ASICs are used in the DCX 8510 Backbone Family and port blades, and the 6505/6510/6520 switches. The initial 16 Gbit/s product line (DCX 8510-8, DCX 8510-4, 6510 48-port switch, and 1860 Fabric Adapter) was originally launched in 2011. The 6505 24-port switch was launched in May 2012. The 6520 96-port switch was launched in March 2013.

The eighth generation of Brocade ASICs are Condor4. Condor4 supports 32 Gbit/s. These ASICs are used in X6 Director chassis and port blades, and the G610/G620/G630 switches.

The ninth generation of Brocade ASICs are Condor5 and GoldenEye5. Condor5 and GoldenEye5 support 64 Gbit/s. Condor5 is used in X7 Director chassis and port blades, the G720 switches, and GoldenEye5 is used in the G730 switches.

Latest products (Gen 7 - 64G):

Recent products (Gen 6 - 32G):

End-of-sale products (Gen 5 - 16G):

Brocade entered into the Federal, ISP, carrier, enterprise and campus switch/router market through its acquisition of Foundry Networks in 2008.

In September 2010, Brocade entered the 100 Gigabit Ethernet market with the 32-port Brocade MLXe Core Router chassis and a two-port 100 Gigabit Ethernet module, targeted at service providers and data centers. Along with it, the company also released the Brocade Network Advisor[22] application for managing IP, storage, MPLS, application delivery, and wireless elements in converged service provider and data center networks. In November 2011, Brocade announced a large 100 Gigabit Ethernet deployment.[23]

In December 2010, Brocade began shipping the Brocade VDX 6720 Switch as part of its product family for Ethernet fabric environments based on Brocade VCS Fabric technology designed for highly scalable virtualized and cloud computing environments. In August 2011, Brocade introduced two additional products for this family. The Brocade VDX 6730 Switch is a 10 GbE switch which can also use FCoE to bridge VCS Fabrics with Fibre Channel SAN fabrics. The Brocade VDX 6710 Switch is an entry-level 1/10 GbE switch which enables legacy 1 GbE servers to connect to VCS Fabrics as well as traditional LANs. In September 2012, Brocade announced a modular switch as part of this portfolio. The Brocade VDX 8770 Switch supports single VCS Fabrics as large as 8000+ switch ports supporting up to 384,000 VMs attached to a single VCS Fabric. The VDX 8770 provides port-to-port latency at 3.5 μs across 1, 10, and 40 GbE ports.

In November 2011, Brocade introduced the Brocade ICX product family. It released the Brocade ICX 6610 Switch for the Federal, enterprise and campus networking segment, with a maximum switching capacity of 576 Gbit/s and forwarding capacity of 432 Mpps with PoE+.[24][25] In March 2012, Brocade released the Brocade ICX 6430 Switch and Brocade ICX 6450 Switch for the Federal, enterprise and campus networking segments, with full stacking capabilities as well as Layer 2 and Layer 3 functionality. The switches are available in 24- and 48-port 1 GbE models, with optional 1/10 GbE uplink/stacking ports. The company also announced its HyperEdge technology for automated single-point management and mix-and-max stacking for sharing advanced functionality among all the members of a switching stack. In September 2012, Brocade introduced the fixed form factor Brocade ICX 6650 switch. This Ethernet switch features 1/10 GbE ports for server connectivity and 10/40 GbE ports for uplink connectivity. It is designed for data center top-of-rack (ToR) environments and Federal, enterprise and campus LAN aggregation deployments.

In 2009, Brocade introduced the Brocade Mobility family of Wireless LAN (WLAN) for federal, enterprise and campus environments, including multiple models of access points and controllers.

The Brocade software product portfolio includes SAN management software networking. Legacy software includes network management applications, IP network management solutions and software networking solutions include:

• SAN Management Software
  • Brocade SANnav Management Portal and SANnav Global View(current)
  • SAN Health (Current)
  • Brocade Network Advisor (legacy)
  • Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM) (legacy)
  • Enterprise Fabric Connectivity Manager (EFCM) (from McDATA) (legacy)
  • Fabric Manager (legacy)
  • Host Connectivity Manager (HCM) (legacy)
• SAN Application Modules (legacy)
  • Data Migration Manager (DMM) (legacy)
• IP Network Management Software (legacy)
  • IronView Network Manager (INM) (legacy)
• Software networking solutions
  • Brocade Vyatta 5400 vRouter
  • Brocade vADX (a virtual version of Brocade's ADX application delivery platform).[26]