Brocade FCX Series Enterprise Switches- FCX 624 and FCX 648

Today I am going to talk about the Brocade enterprise switches which are used in many of the enterprise networks. I will talk about the two different models which is FCX 624s and FCX 648s which are enterprise switch models. There are other two models which are FCX 624 and FCS 648 which are generally used in the Datacenter environment due to the high capacity and capabilities.

Brocade INM provides uni ed management for Brocade FCX 624 and 648 switches along with the rest of the Brocade Ethernet network. It displays network- and application-level traf c information in graphical detail to greatly simplify network operations, provisioning, troubleshooting, and alarm reporting. 

Brocade FCX 624 and 648 switches provide full Layer 3 capabilities, along with metro features for connecting buildings and campuses. Because Brocade FCX 624 and 648 switches contain Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) features, organizations can use them to connect a distributed enterprise. In this type of environment, the switches provide rich services using MRP (v1 and v2) for building resilient ring-based topologies, Virtual LAN (VLAN) stacking, and advanced multicast capabilities—including IGMP v1/v2/v3 and Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) v1/v2 snooping for controlling multicast traf c for high-bandwidth content delivery.

Brocade FCX 624 and 648 Switches (Datacenter Switches) provide new levels of performance, exibility, and manageability required for today’s growing enterprise data centers. Featuring advanced capabilities and a purpose-built design, these switches support modern data center architectures where wire-speed performance and cost reduction are both high priorities. In fact, the innovative design doubles the number of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connections between network layers, making the switches ideal for highly utilized virtual data centers.

Below is the example network topology showing the use of the Switches in the VCS fabric environment. 

Fig 1.1- Sample Network Topology
Layer 2 Features Supported

802.1s Multiple Spanning Tree  802.1x Authentication, Auto MDI/MDIX,BPDU Guard, Root Guard,          Dual-Mode VLANs, Dynamic VLAN Assignment, Dynamic Voice VLAN Assignment, Fast Port Span, Flexible Static Multicast MAC Address Configuration, GARP VLAN Registration Protocol  IGMP Snooping (v1/v2/v3), Link Fault Signaling (LFS), MAC Address Locking, MAC Learning Disable; Port Security, MAC-Layer Filtering, MLD Snooping (v1/v2), Multi-device Authentication, Per VLAN Spanning Tree (PVST/PVST+/PVRST, PIM–SM Snooping, Policy-controlled MAC-based VLANs, Port Loop Detection, Port Speed Downshift and Selective Auto-negotiation, Port-based Access Control Lists, Port-based, ACL-based, MAC Filter-based, and VLAN-based Mirroring, Private VLAN, Private VLANs and Uplink Switch, Protected Link Groups, Protocol VLAN (802.1v), Subnet VLAN  Remote Fault Noti cation (RFN),    Single-instance Spanning Tree, Single-link LACP, Trunk Groups, Trunk Threshold, Uni-Directional Link Detection (UDLD)

Layer 3 Features Supported
ECMP   Host routes, IPv4 static routes, Layer 3/Layer 4 ACLs RIP v1/v2 announce ,OSPF v2,PIM-SM, PIM-SSM, PIM-DM, RIP v1/v2, Routed interfaces, Route-only support, Routing between directly connected subnets , Virtual interfaces, Virtual Route Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)

Below is the table showing the difference between the switches, so that if you want to have the switches in the network you can choose accordingly.

Fig 1.2- Brocade FCX Switches