Brocade 6520 BR-6520-48-8G-R Data Sheet

scalability, reliability, and 16 Gbps 
performance in a flexible, easy-to-deploy 
enterprise-class switch, enabling greater  
data center consolidation, operational 
efficiency, and business continuity. In addition 
to increased throughput, it helps improve 
bandwidth utilization, security, and network 
visibility and management through in-flight 
data compression and encryption and 
advanced diagnostics. It’s an ideal switch 
for bandwidth-intensive workloads, evolving 
virtualized data centers, and private  
cloud architectures. 

EXCEPTIONAL SCALABILITY FOR 

DEMANDING WORKLOADS AND  

DATA CENTER CONSOLIDATION

The Brocade 6520 features 96 Fibre Channel 
ports in a 2U form factor, delivering 
industry-leading port density and space 
utilization for data center consolidation. 
Designed for maximum flexibility, this 
enterprise-class switch offers “pay-as-you-
grow” scalability with Ports on Demand (PoD). 
Organizations can quickly, easily, and 
cost-effectively scale from 48 to 96 ports in 
24-port increments, each supporting 2, 4, 
8, 10, or 16 Gbps. In addition, flexible, 
high-speed 16 Gbps and 8 Gbps optics allow 
organizations to deploy bandwidth on demand 
to meet growing data center needs. For 
maximum flexibility, the switch also features 
dual-direction airflow options to support the 
latest hot aisle/cold aisle configurations. 

INDUSTRY-LEADING PERFORMANCE 

FOR GROWING WORKLOADS

The Brocade 6520 delivers exceptional 
performance for growing and dynamic 
workloads through a combination of 
market-leading throughput and bandwidth 
utilization. With the unpredictability of 
virtualized workloads and cloud services, 
throughput becomes critical to ensuring that 
the network does not become the bottleneck. 
With 96 ports, the Brocade 6520 provides 
an aggregate 1536 Gbps full-duplex 
throughput. Up to eight ISLs can be combined 
together in a 128 Gbps framed-based trunk. 
In addition, 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 (see 
Figure 1). This augments Brocade ISL 
Trunking to provide more effective load 
balancing in certain configurations. 
Moreover, the enterprise-class capabilities 
of this switch yield 40 percent higher 
performance compared to 10 Gigabit 
Ethernet (GbE) alternatives at a similar cost. 

SIMPLIFIED MANAGEMENT AND 

ROBUST NETWORK ANALYTICS

Brocade Fabric Vision technology provides 
a breakthrough hardware and software 
solution that helps simplify monitoring, 
maximize network availability, and 
dramatically reduce costs. Featuring 
innovative monitoring, management, 
and diagnostic capabilities, Fabric Vision 
technology enables administrators to avoid 
problems before they impact operations, 
helping their organizations meet Service 
Level Agreements (SLAs). Fabric Vision 
technology includes:

• Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite 

(MAPS):

 Provides a pre-built, policy-

based threshold monitoring and alerting 
tool that simplifies fabric-wide threshold 
configuration and actions. Administrators 
can configure multiple fabrics at one  
time using pre-defined or customized 
rules and policies for specific ports or 
switch elements.

• Fabric Performance Impact (FPI) 

Monitoring: 

Uses pre-defined thresholds 

and alerts in conjunction with MAPS 
to automatically detect and alert 
administrators to severe levels of latency 
and identifies slow drain devices that 
might impact the network. This feature 
uses advanced monitoring capabilities 
and intuitive MAPS dashboard reporting 
to indicate various latency severity  
levels, pinpointing exactly which  
devices are causing or impacted by  
a bottlenecked port.

Brocade Fabric Vision Technology

Brocade Fabric Vision technology, an 
extension of Gen 5 Fibre Channel, 
provides unprecedented insight and 
visibility across the storage network 
with powerful built-in monitoring, 
management, and diagnostic tools that 
enable organizations to:

• Simplify monitoring:

 

– Deploy 15 years of SAN best 

practices in one click to simplify 

the deployment of monitoring with 

pre-defined, threshold-based rules, 

actions, and policies 

 

– Instantly identify latency and 

congestion issues in the fabric 

through increased instrumentation 

and granularity

 

– Gain comprehensive visibility into 

network health and performance 

using browser-accessible dashboards 
with drill-down capabilities 

• Increase availability: 

 

– Avoid 50 percent of common 

network problems with proactive 

monitoring and advanced diagnostic 

tools that address problems before 

they impact operations

 

– Identify hot spots and network 

problems before they impact 

application performance through 

intuitive reporting and trend analysis

 

– Minimize downtime and accelerate 

troubleshooting with live monitoring, 

integrated diagnostics, and point-in-
time playback

• Dramatically reduce costs: 

 

– Eliminate nearly 50 percent 

of maintenance costs through 

automated testing and diagnostic 

tools that validate the health, 

reliability, and performance of the 

network prior to deployment

 

– Save up to millions of dollars on 

CapEx costs by eliminating the  

need for expensive third-party  

tools through built-in monitoring  

and diagnostics

 

– Leverage specialized tools for 

pre-testing and validating IT 

infrastructure to accelerate 

deployment, simplify support,  

and reduce operational costs