networking cards

Single port, 1x 10 GbE SR SFP+ Fabric Adapter, no media included The Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter with Gen 5 Fibre Channel that meets all the connectivity needs of cloud-enabled data centers while providing unmatched 16 Gbps performance, application-aware services, unified management, and reduced cost and complexity. It is the simplest, most flexible, and most powerful server connectivity adapter designed to extend fabric services to Virtual Machines (VMs) and applications in highly demanding virtualized environments.

A SINGLE ADAPTER FOR ALL CONNECTIVITY NEEDS

Available in single- and dual-port models, the Brocade 1860 features Brocade AnyIO technology, making it the industry's first multiprotocol server connectivity product designed for highly virtualized, cloud-enabled data centers. The Brocade 1860 is a new class of adapters that combines a Gen 5 Fibre Channel Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) with a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) Converged Network Adapter (CNA) and a Network Interface Card (NIC) to support native Fibre Channel, TCP/IP, Data Center Bridging (DCB) Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) running simultaneously in a single product.

Organizations have the flexibility to choose, on a port-by-port basis, the adapter type and connectivity protocol that are most appropriate for their applications and their business requirements. This unmatched flexibility allows organizations to standardize on a single adapter for all of their connectivity needs. IT departments can realize capital and operational savings by consolidating multiple lower-speed Fibre Channel HBAs and 1 GbE NICs into a single adapter, acquiring space-efficient 1U rack-mount servers, connecting to existing Fibre Channel and Ethernet networks without requiring additional switch ports, and future-proofing their data centers for a seamless transition to multiprotocol networks.

Delivering full-duplex, line-rate 16 Gbps Fibre Channel and 10 GbE speeds, and over one million IOPS per dual-port adapter for storage applications—including Fibre Channel, FCoE, and iSCSI—the Brocade 1860 is the ideal platform to support the most demanding mission-critical workloads in the largest data centers. The Brocade 1860 supports full FCoE protocol offload as well as stateless networking offloads for 10 GbE, including TCP checksum and segmentation offloads for improved performance and more efficient CPU utilization.

DESIGNED FOR THE PRIVATE CLOUD

Virtualization is transforming the data center, essentially moving the access layer of the network into the server. In addition to virtualizing I/O devices to allow them to be shared by the VMs, hypervisors have become, by necessity, software-based Ethernet switches that provide networking services for VMs, using CPU cycles and hindering virtualization scalability and performance. Even with the most powerful processors, at 16 Gbps Fibre Channel and 10 GbE speeds, hypervisors simply cannot keep up with I/O and line-rate performance becomes impossible to achieve.

By implementing Virtual Machine Optimized Ports (VMOPs), the Brocade 1860 leverages hypervisor multi-queue technologies such as VMware NetQueue and Microsoft VMQ to offload the incoming network packet classification and sorting tasks from the hypervisor onto the adapter, freeing the CPU and enabling line-rate performance.

I/O Virtualization (IOV) and Virtual Switching
The Brocade 1860 supports Brocade virtual Fabric Link (vFLink) technology, which partitions a single adapter into as many as 8 virtual adapters that can be configured as virtual HBAs (vHBAs, for Fibre Channel or FCoE) or virtual NICs (vNICs, for Ethernet). This is done in hardware by using multiple Physical Functions (PFs) at the PCIe bus level, appearing as separate physical devices at the OS level. Bandwidth can be allocated to these virtual fabric links in 100 Mbps increments, up to the maximum of 16 Gbps for Fibre Channel or 10 Gbps for Ethernet. This helps overcome the proliferation of adapters in virtual environments while maintaining management isolation and fine-tuning for the different networks, including production, backup, management, or live migration .

To further improve performance in virtual environments, VMs can bypass the hypervisor and access I/O devices directly, leveraging server chipset technologies such as Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) or AMD I/O Virtualization (AMD-Vi). However, directly mapping physical adapters or PFs to VMs can impact important virtualization features such as live VM migrations.

The Brocade 1860 helps organizations overcome this limitation through its support of the PCI-SIG SR-IOV specification, which extends Brocade vFLink technology to support up to 255 virtual fabric links. SR-IOV utilizes PCIe Virtual Functions (VFs), which are lightweight PCI functions that are assigned to the VMs while the hypervisor retains control of the underlying PF. SR-IOV enables an efficient sharing of I/O devices for VMs as well as direct I/O for increased performance.

The Brocade 1860 also incorporates a built-in virtual Layer 2 Ethernet switch, or Virtual Ethernet Bridge (VEB), to offload the hypervisor from all of the inter-VM traffic switching tasks, delivering better network performance for VMs while freeing the CPU for additional application processing.

Extend Fabric Services to the Server and Applications

The Brocade 1860 supports Brocade Server Application Optimization (SAO) technology to extend the intelligence and advanced fabric services of Brocade industry-leading Fibre Channel fabrics into servers. N_Port Trunking extends the Brocade ISL Trunking capability from the switches into the server, combining two 16 Gbps links in a dual-port adapter into a single logical 32 Gbps connection with frame-level load balancing for unmatched levels of performance and fault tolerance.

Brocade SAO also extends Quality of Service (QoS) from the fabric to the VM and application level, enabling organizations to virtualize mission-critical applications and scale virtualization environments with confidence. Leveraging Virtual Channel technology in the Brocade switch and adapter ASICs, QoS ensures that mission-critical workloads will not be impacted by congestion or misbehaving devices, helping organizations more efficiently meet application Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Unprecedented Visibility and Insight across the Storage Network with Advanced Monitoring and Diagnostics

Brocade Fabric Vision technology, an extension of Brocade Gen 5 Fibre Channel, introduces a breakthrough hardware and software technology that maximizes uptime, simplifies SAN management, and provides unprecedented visibility and insight across the storage network. Offering innovative diagnostic, monitoring, and management capabilities, the Brocade 1860 with Fabric Vision technology helps administrators avoid problems, maximize application performance, and reduce operational costs. Brocade Fabric Vision technology includes:

- Integration into Brocade Network Advisor: Provides customizable health and performance dashboard views to pinpoint problems faster, simplify SAN configuration and management, and reduce operational costs.
- Brocade ClearLink diagnostics: This ensures optical and signal integrity for Gen 5 Fibre Channel optics and cables, simplifying deployment and support of high performance fabrics. It leverages ClearLink Diagnostic Port (D_Port) capabilities of Gen 5 Fibre Channel platforms.

ClearLink diagnostic ports (D_Ports) are a unique port type that enables administrators to quickly identify and isolate optics and cable problems, reducing fabric deployment and diagnostic times. Organizations also can use ClearLink Diagnostics to run a variety of tests through Brocade Network Advisor or Command Line Interface (CLI) to test ports, SFPs, and cables for faults, latency, and distance. ClearLink Diagnostic Ports can be configured either explicitly by the user in static mode or forced by the switch port in dynamic mode. Dynamic mode automatically configures ClearLink Diagnostic Ports on the adapter from the switch, streamlining deployment and reducing operational overhead. To take advantage of ClearLink Diagnostics functionality, the Brocade 1860 needs to be in HBA mode and requires 16 Gbps optics.

In addition, the Brocade 1860 extends credit recovery and Forward Error Correction (FEC) from the SAN fabric to the server level. Extending these fabric services to the server improves link resiliency and enhances overall application performance and availability.

Optimal Support for Windows Server 2012

By supporting Windows Server 2012, the Brocade 1860 enhances its ability to support Windows-based virtual workloads and provides network administrators with policy-based tools to manage traffic on the virtual and physical networks. Furthermore, its support of the Hyper-V Virtual Fibre Channel feature enables direct connectivity to Fibre Channel SANs from within a Hyper-V VM, allowing Fibre Channel SANs to seamlessly support Windows-based virtualized workloads. Support for Fibre Channel in Hyper-V guests also includes support for many high-availability features, such as virtual SANs, clustered VMs, live migration, and Multi-Path I/O (MPIO).

Through its support of Windows Server 2012 policy-based QoS, the Brocade 1860 enables administrators to specify network bandwidth controls based on application type, users, and servers for the physical network. In addition, support of Hyper-V QoS enables cloud hosting providers and enterprises to deliver predictable network performance for multiple types of traffic for VMs using Brocade 1860 adapters running in DCB mode.

SIMPLIFYING SERVER DEPLOYMENT WITH DYNAMIC FABRIC PROVISIONING

Dynamic Fabric Provisioning (DFP) allows organizations to eliminate fabric reconfiguration when adding or replacing servers through the virtualization of host World Wide Names (WWNs). It combines Brocade switch and adapter technology to reduce or eliminate the need to modify zoning or Logical Unit Number (LUN) masking. In addition, DFP enables pre-provisioning of virtual WWNs, helping organizations eliminate time-consuming steps when deploying new equipment or moving devices within a switch.

OPERATIONAL SIMPLICITY AND UNIFIED MANAGEMENT

The Brocade 1860 provides a robust and holistic management stack, including a Command Line Interface (CLI), an element manager called Brocade Host Connectivity Manager (HCM), as well as unified management through Brocade Network Advisor and third-party management and orchestration tools.

Brocade Network Advisor centralizes and unifies the management of Brocade Storage Area Network (SAN), LAN, and server connectivity resources under a single pane of glass. It can monitor and manage multiple adapters across a data center, including performance monitoring across groups of adapters, diagnostics capture, event management, and group BIOS and driver upgrades. Brocade Network Advisor reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) through features such as customizable dashboards and historical data visibility. In addition, seamless configuration capabilities such as wizard-based configuration, integrated SAN diagnostics, policy monitoring, bottleneck detection, FICON Port Decommissioning, and Boot LUN Zoning improve business agility.

Brocade Network Advisor also provides VM visibility in VMware ESX environments for hosts running Brocade server adapters, providing end-to-end VM-to-LUN path information for all the VMs running on each physical server. It provides detailed information such as guest OS, assigned CPU and memory resources, and all the I/O paths and data stores associated with each VM. This gives network administrators unprecedented levels of visibility into the virtualized server infrastructure, enabling them to more efficiently manage their storage network resources. Coupled with N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), Brocade Network Advisor can also provide end-to-end performance statistics with VM granularity, increasing visibility down to the LUN level.

In addition, Brocade Network Advisor integrates with many industry-leading third-party management frameworks, including IBM Systems Director, IBM Tivoli Productivity Center (TPC), EMC Next-Generation Resource Management Suite, HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM), HP Storage Provisioning Manager (SPM), Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), and VMware vCenter. This allows organizations to choose the management framework that best meets their needs.

Boot-over-SAN enables the deployment of both Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) point-to-point topology as well as diskless servers and centralized management of OS images in the shared storage pool. Traditional boot-over-SAN environments, however, require access to each individual HBA BIOS (and each individual server console), making them cumbersome to configure, laborious to maintain, and prone to human error. To simplify the management of boot-over-SAN environments, Brocade HBAs provide Fabric-based Boot LUN Discovery—a feature that enables each server to automatically retrieve its boot LUN information from the switch fabric. This provides a centralized management point for all boot-over-SAN operations through Brocade Network Advisor, enabling organizations to fully reap the benefits of diskless servers. To account for the disk spinup delay time when servers and storage devices are powered on simultaneously, users can configure a 1-, 2-, 5-, or 10-minute delay to boot with the Brocade Boot-up Delay feature.

The Brocade 1860 also provides bare-metal provisioning, allowing organizations to provision and configure storage and network attributes on the Brocade 1860 adapter through the server BIOS UEFI HII menu—without having to install and boot to the OS. This simplifies adapter provisioning and administration, resulting in increased business agility and reduced operating expenses.