IBM SAN24B-6 8969-F24 Brocade G610 Storage Networking Switch
The IBM SAN24B-6 is a Brocade G610 1U high performance storage networking switch that can be configured with up to 24 ports, supports 32G, 16G, 8G and 4G speeds, and has 8960-F24 model number. The IBM SAN24B-6 switch includes 8 active ports and has 16 expandable Ports on Demand POD, allowing flexible and cost effective pay-as-you-grow capability to scale from eight to twenty-four ports. Each of the IBM SAN24B-6 twenty four SFP+ ports support 32, 16, 8 and 4 Gbps FC speeds, and includes EZ Switch Setup and Web Tools for point-and-click simplicity and enterprise-class functionality. The IBM SAN24B-6 has four built-in fans that help keep energy costs and consumption to 0.10 watts per Gbps and 3.2 watts per port, and includes an integrated power supply with a real-time power monitor.
The IBM 8960-F24 SAN24B-6 switch delivers exceptional performance with Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology for FlashSystem workloads, robust enterprise class features and flexibility to expand quickly at a very low cost. The IBM SAN24B-6 switch delivers advanced 32G performance with industry leading throughput and low latency that enable flash storage to achieve optimal bandwidth utilization, high availability, and load balancing by combining up to eight Inter-Switch Links (ISLs) in a 256 Gbps framed-based trunk via eight individual 32 Gbps SFP+ ports. Exchange-based Dynamic Path Selection DPS optimizes fabric-wide performance and load balancing by automatically routing data to the most efficient, available path in the fabric. This augments ISL Trunking to provide more effective load balancing in certain configurations.
The IBM SAN24B-6 is ideal for NVMe SSD and enables significant performance gains for flash storage, allowing users to achieve faster application response times and harness the performance of SSD for better scalability across virtual data centers with flash. Leveraging the efficiency of NVMe over FC and adding the high performance and low latency of IBM SAN24B-6 of Gen 6 FC, organizations can accelerate IOPS to deliver the maximum performance, application response time, and scalability.
IBM SAN24B-6 8960-F24 Specifications
Scalability: Full-fabric architecture with a maximum of 239 switches
Certified maximum: 9,000 active nodes; 56 switches, 19 hops in Fabric OS fabrics; larger fabrics certified as required
Performance Fibre Channel: auto-sensing of 32, 16, 8 and 4 Gbps port speeds; 14.025 Gbps line speed full duplex; 8.5 Gbps line speed full duplex; 4.25 Gbps line speed full duplex
ISL Trunking: Frame-based trunking with up to eight 32 Gbps ports per ISL trunk; up to 256 Gbps per ISL trunk. Exchange-based load balancing across ISLs with DPS included in Fabric OS.
Aggregate bandwidth: 768 Gbps end-to-end full duplex
Maximum fabric latency: Latency for locally switched ports is 900 ns (including FEC)
Maximum frame size: 2,112-byte payload
Frame buffers: 2,000 dynamically allocated
Classes of service: Class 2, Class 3, Class F (inter-switch frames)
Port types: F_Port, E_Port, M_Port, D_Port (ClearLink Diagnostic Port) on
24 SFP+ ports.
Access Gateway mode: F_Port and NPIV-enabled N_Port
Data traffic types: Fabric switches supporting unicast
Hot-swap components: Small form-factor pluggable SFPs
Port speed: 32, 16, 8 and 4G when using 32 Gbps SFP+ transceivers or 16, 8 and 4G when using 16 Gbps SFP+ transceivers
USB One USB port for system log file downloads or firmware upgrades
Fabric services: Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite MAPS, Flow Vision, Adaptive Networking for Traffic Isolation and quality of service, Fabric Performance Impact FPI Monitoring, Slow Drain Device Quarantine SDDQ, Advanced Zoning (default zoning, port/WWN zoning, broadcast zoning, peer zoning, target-driven zoning), Dynamic Fabric Provisioning DFP, Dynamic Path Selection DPS, Extended Fabrics, Enhanced BB credit recovery, FDMI, Frame Redirection, Frame-based Trunking, FSPF, ISL Trunking, Management Server, NPIV, NTP v3, Registered State Change Notification RSCN, Reliable Commit Service RCS, Simple Name Server SNS, Read Diagnostics Parameter (RDP), VM Insight
Note: Some fabric services do not apply or are unavailable in Access Gateway mode.
Security: DH-CHAP between switches and end devices, FCAP switch authentication, HTTPS, IPSec, IP filtering, LDAP with IPv6, OpenLDAP, Port Binding, RADIUS, TACACS+, User-defined Role-Based Access Control RBAC, Secure Copy SCP, Secure RPC, Secure Syslog, SFTP, SSH v2, SSL, Switch Binding, Trusted Switch
Management access: 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet (RJ-45), in-band over Fibre Channel, serial port (RJ-45), and one USB port
Diagnostics: ClearLink optics and cable diagnostics, including electrical/optical loopback, link traffic/latency/distance, Flow mirroring, Built-in flow generator, POST and embedded online/offline diagnostics, including environmental monitoring, FCping, and Pathinfo FC traceroute, Frame viewer, Non-disruptive daemon restart, Optics health monitoring, Power monitoring, RAStrace logging, Rolling Reboot Detection RRD
Supported management software: HTTP, SNMP v1/v3 (FE MIB, FC Management MIB), SSH, Auditing, Syslog, Advanced Web Tools, IBM Network Advisor SAN Enterprise, IBM Network Advisor Professional Plus, CLI, SMI-S compliant, Administrative Domains and Trial licenses for add-on capabilities
Power supply: Base switch includes a single, fixed power supply with four integrated system cooling fans
AC input: 90 V - 264 V
Power consumption: 76.52 W with all 24 ports populated with 32 Gbps SWL optics 55.83 W for idle configuration (all optics loaded but not initialized)
IBM SAN24B-6 8960-F24 Optional Features
Width: 16.88 in.
Height: 1.69 in.
Depth: 12.07 in.
Weight: 12.65 lbs with one integrated power supply, without transceivers
IBM SAN24B-6 leverages Gen 6 rich heritage of Fibre Channel innovation to deliver industry-leading reliability for the world’s most demanding data centers. IBM SAN24B-6 uses Fabric Vision technology helps simplifies monitoring, maximize network availability, and gain insight into issues to speed resolution and meet critical SLAs.
VM Insight is the newest feature in Fabric Vision technology, enabling proactive visibility into the health and performance of individual VMs with integrated sensors. Using this capability, administrators can quickly identify abnormal VM behaviors to facilitate troubleshooting and fault isolation, helping to ensure maximum performance and operational stability.
Forward Error Correction FEC capabilities further increase resiliency by automatically detecting and recovering network transmission errors. To ensure predictable performance before deployment, organizations can validate infrastructure with the ClearLink Diagnostics and Flow Generator features.
Fabric Vision technology provides unprecedented insight and visibility across the storage network, with powerful integrated monitoring, management, and diagnostic capabilities. These innovative features enable administrators to avoid problems before they impact operations, helping organizations meet SLAs. Fabric Vision technology includes these features:
VM Insight monitors VM performance throughout a storage fabric with standards-based, end-to-end VM tagging. Administrators can quickly determine the source of VM application performance anomalies, as well as provision and fine-tune the infrastructure based on VM application requirements to meet SLA objectives.
Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite MAPS uses prebuilt, rule and policy based templates to simplify fabric-wide threshold configuration, monitoring, and alerting. Administrators can configure the entire fabric or multiple fabrics at one time using common rules and policies, or customize policies for specific ports or switch elements. With Flow Vision and VM Insight, administrators set thresholds for VM flow metrics in MAPS policies to be notified of VM performance degradation.
Fabric Performance Impact FPI Monitoring uses predefined MAPS policies to automatically detect and alert administrators to different latency severity levels, and to identify slow-drain devices that could affect network performance. This feature identifies various latency severity levels, pinpointing exactly which devices are causing or are affected by a bottlenecked port, and quarantines automatically slow-drain devices to prevent buffer credit starvation.
Dashboards: Provides integrated dashboards that display an overall SAN health view, along with details about out-of-range conditions, to help administrators easily identify trends and quickly pinpoint issues occurring on a switch or in a fabric.
Configuration and Operational Monitoring Policy Automation Services Suite COMPASS: Simplifies deployment, safeguards consistency, and increases operational efficiencies of larger environments with automated switch and fabric configuration services. Administrators can configure a template or adopt an existing configuration to seamlessly deploy a configuration across the fabric. In addition, they can ensure that settings do not drift over time with COMPASS configuration and policy violation monitoring within IBM Network Advisor dashboards.
ClearLink Diagnostics: Ensures optical and signal integrity for Fibre Channel optics and cables, simplifying deployment and support of high-performance fabrics. ClearLink Diagnostic Port D_Port is an advanced capability of Fibre Channel platforms.
Flow Vision enables administrators to identify, monitor and analyze specific application flows in order to simplify troubleshooting, maximize performance, avoid congestion, and optimize resources. Flow Vision includes these features:
Flow Monitor provides comprehensive visibility, automatically learns and non-disruptively monitors flow performance. Administrators can monitor all flows from a specific host to multiple targets or logical unit numbers (LUNs), from multiple hosts to a specific target/LUN, or across a specific ISL. Additionally, they can perform LUN-level monitoring of specific frame types to identify resource contention or congestion that is affecting application performance. With VM Insight, administrators can monitor network throughput statistics for each VM.
Flow Learning enables administrators to non-disruptively discover all flows that go to or come from a specific host port or a storage port, or traverse ISLs/inter-fabric links IFLs or Fibre Channel over IP FCIP tunnels, to monitor fabric-wide application performance. In addition, administrators can discover top and bottom bandwidth-consuming devices and manage capacity planning.
Flow Generator provides a built-in traffic generator for pretesting and validating your infrastructure for robustness, including route verification and integrity of optics, paths and connectors, cables, ports, back-end connections, and ISLs, before deploying applications.
Flow Mirroring provides the ability to non-disruptively create copies of specific application and data flows or frame types that can be captured for in-depth analysis.
Forward Error Correction FEC enables recovery from bit errors in device connections and ISLs, enhancing transmission reliability and performance.
Credit Loss Recovery helps overcome performance degradation and congestion due to buffer credit loss.
IBM Network Advisor simplifies Gen 6 Fibre Channel management and helps organizations proactively diagnose and resolve issues to maximize uptime, increase operational efficiency, and reduce costs. The wizard-driven interface dramatically reduces deployment and configuration times by allowing fabrics, switches, and ports to be managed as groups. Customizable dashboards graphically display performance and health indicators out of the box, including all data captured using Fabric Vision technology. To accelerate troubleshooting, administrators can use dashboard playback to quickly review past events and identify problems in the fabric. Dashboards and reports can be also configured to show only the most relevant data, enabling administrators to more efficiently prioritize their actions and maintain network performance.
The IBM SAN24B-6 can be deployed as a full-fabric switch or as an Access Gateway, which simplifies fabric topologies and heterogeneous fabric connectivity. Access Gateway mode utilizes N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) switch standards to present physical and virtual servers directly to the core of SAN fabrics. This configuration makes a switch in Access Gateway mode transparent to the SAN fabric, greatly reducing management of the overall storage network edge. SAN24B-6 in Access Gateway mode can connect servers to NPIV-enabled SAN fabrics.
Organizations can easily enable Access Gateway mode via IBM Network Advisor or a command-line interface CLI. Access Gateway mode includes improved scalability for large or rapidly growing server and virtual server environments, reduced management of the network edge because Access Gateway does not have a domain identity and appears transparent to the core fabric and provides support for heterogeneous SAN configurations without reduced functionality for server connectivity.
IBM SAN24B-6 8960-F24 Optional Features
2445 - F24 Zero SFP Bundle enables FC ports 0 to 7
2446 - F24 8 x 16Gbps SW SFP Bundle provides a bundle of eight SW 16 Gbps SFPs transceivers with 8 FC ports enabled.
2447 - F24 16Gbps SW SFP Enterprise Bundle provides a bundle of 24 SW 16 Gbps SFP transceivers with 24 FC ports enabled.
7422 - SAN24B-6 Enterprise Bundle enables the following: Trunking Activation, Extended Fabric, and Fabric Vision.
7426 - SAN24B-6 8 Port 32Gbps SW Upgrade
7498 - SAN24B-6 8 Port 16Gbps SW Upgrade enables additional port activation for ports 8 to 15 (first eight port increment) or ports 16 to 23 (second eight port activation). Note that the first port is designated as port zero and the last port is designated as port 23. It includes eight 16 Gbps SW SFP transceivers.
7499 - Gen 6 8 Port Activation enables additional port activation for ports 8 to 15 (first eight port increment) or ports 16 to 23 (second eight port activation). Note that the first port is designated as port zero and the last port is designated as port 23. This feature does not include SFPs.
2460 - F24 8 x 16Gbps SW SFP Bundle
2461 - F24 8 x 32Gbps SW SFP Bundle
2462 - F24 32 Gbps SW SFP Enterprise Bundle
2463 -- F24 16Gbps FlashSystem Value Bundle
2464 - F24 32Gbps FlashSystem Value Bundle
5810 - OM3 Cable LC/LC 10 m
5811 - OM4 Cable LC/LC 8m
5835 - OM3 Cable LC/LC 5m
5845 - OM3 Cable LC/LC 25m
5910 - Rack Mount Kit, Long Rack Ears
2300 - SFP+ Transceiver 32 Gbps SW
2301 - SFP Transceiver 32 Gbps 10Km LW
2308 - SFP+ Transceiver 32 Gbps SW 8-Pack
2309 - SFP Transceiver 32 Gbps 10Km LW 8-Pack
2602 - SFP+ Transceiver 16 Gbps SW
2603 - SFP+ Transceiver 16 Gbps SW 8-Pack
2612 - SFP+ Transceiver 16 Gbps 10Km LW
2613 - SFP+ Transceiver 16 Gbps 10Km LW 8-Pack
2615 - SFP+, SWL, 16G, 1-PK, SECURE
2616 - SFP+, SWL, 16G, 8-PK, SECURE
2625 - SFP+,SWL,32G,1-PK, SECURE
2626 - SFP+,SWL,32G,8-PK, SECURE
2886 - 16 Gbps 25 km ELW SFP+