Brocade and EMC Work Together to Enable Software-Defined Storage for EMC Fibre Channel SAN Install Base


New EMC ViPR Software-Defined Storage Platform Now Shipping with Integrated Brocade SAN Management Technology; Enables Immediate Virtualization Functionality for 50,000 Joint EMC/Brocade SAN Customers

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD), the leader in data center fabric networking solutions, today announced that the company’s storage area networking (SAN) management technology is now available for more than 50,000 joint EMC and Brocade customers to immediately realize the virtualization benefits of the EMC® ViPR™ Software-Defined Storage Platform within highly virtualized cloud environments.

Specifically, Brocade® Network Advisor SAN management software has been integrated with the EMC ViPR platform to create a modern storage architecture that enables policy-based automation for managing and provisioning both EMC and non-EMC storage infrastructure using the industry-standard Storage Management Initiative (SMI) interface. This integration will help reduce data center costs and complexity for both current and future application deployments by taking advantage of Brocade Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN solutions enhanced with Brocade Fabric Vision™ technology. Brocade Network Advisor is sold by EMC as Connectrix® Manager Converged Network Edition (CMCNE).

As a result of the joint efforts, EMC SAN customers can now utilize the EMC ViPR platform to leverage existing storage infrastructures for traditional data center workloads, as well as provision new EMC ViPR Object Data Service and EMC ViPR HDFS Service through access to Amazon S3 and OpenStack Swift for next-generation workloads. This complete spectrum of capabilities can be run with enterprise storage, including the EMC VMAX®, VPLEX®, VNX®, Atmos® and Isilon® families, as well as commodity storage.

EMC ViPR is the world’s first software-defined storage platform that is designed to provide the ability to manage both storage infrastructure (called the Control Plane) and the data stored within that infrastructure (called the Data Plane). It masks the complexity behind configuring and managing storage infrastructure, providing single point-and-click management for complex, heterogeneous storage functions.

“Fibre Channel continues to be the dominant storage type deployed for virtualized environments and the Brocade integration with the EMC ViPR platform enhances those deployments by enabling new use cases built on top of the most reliable and highest-performing storage network,” said Greig Guy, Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand, Brocade. “Brocade and EMC customers can leverage existing and future investments in Fibre Channel SAN with full confidence, knowing that Brocade and EMC are both fully committed to making Fibre Channel an integral storage type in the Software-Defined Data Center.”

“We have worked with Brocade to ensure seamless integration of the networking stack with the ViPR platform,” said Christopher Ratcliffe, Vice President of Marketing, Advanced Software Division, EMC Corporation. “The result is a simple-to-use solution that automates and defines policies across the entire storage environment to further improve the utilization of our customers’ existing and future storage investments.”

Availability and Pricing

The EMC ViPR platform is now available from EMC and its global network of channel partners. For pricing information, please contact EMC at emc.com.

About Brocade

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) networking solutions help the world’s leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)

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