DELL Brocade 6520 210-AAOC Data Sheet

Product codes

210-AAOC

It provides industry-leading scalability,
reliability, and 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.

ENTERPRISE-CLASS RELIABILITY,

AVAILABILITY, AND SERVICEABILITY

The Brocade 6520 leverages proven
enterprise-class Gen 5 Fibre Channel
technology to deliver unmatched reliability
to support non-stop operations for mission-
critical workloads. It features advanced

monitoring, diagnostics, and RAS capabilities
to maximize availability, optimize performance,
and simplify administration. These
enterprise-class features include:

• Critical diagnostic and monitoring

capabilities to help ensure early problem
detection and recovery

• Non-intrusive and non-disruptive

monitoring on every port to provide a
comprehensive end-to-end view of the
entire fabric

• Forward Error Correction (FEC) to recover

from bit errors on links, enhancing
transmission reliability and performance

• Additional buffers to overcome

performance degradation and congestion
due to buffer credit loss

• Monitoring of real-time bandwidth

consumption by hosts/applications on
Inter-Switch Links (ISLs) to easily identify
hot spots and potential network congestion

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 DEPLOYMENT AND

CENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT

Automating and simplifying SAN management
enables data centers to quickly adapt to
change and overcome disruptions in a
private cloud infrastructure. Brocade 6520
advanced diagnostics, monitoring, and
management reduce end-to-end SAN
management complexity and costs.

The Brocade 6520 helps reduce operating
costs through simplified server provisioning
and change management, advanced cable
and optics diagnostics, and comprehensive
management. Several technologies support
these capabilities, including:

• Dynamic Fabric Provisioning (DFP):

Combines Brocade switch and adapter
technology to reduce or eliminate the
need to reconfigure zoning and Logical
Unit Number (LUN) masking when adding
or replacing servers.

• Diagnostic Ports (D_Ports):

Help identify

and isolate optics and cable problems,
reducing fabric deployment and
diagnostic times.

• Brocade Network Advisor:

Provides

comprehensive management of data
center fabrics, including configuration,
monitoring, and management of Brocade
backbones, switches, and adapters.

DPS

Dynamic Path Selection (DPS)
Balancing data flow between

multiple trunk groups

Up to

128 Gbps

Up to

128 Gbps

Trunk group

Frame-based Trunking
ASIC preserves in-order delivery

8.5 Gbps

4.5 Gbps

9 Gbps

6 Gbps

2 Gbps

10.5 Gbps

...n Gbps