Home / Brocade / Introduction to Brocade 6510 Switch

Introduction to Brocade 6510 Switch


Today I am going to talk about the Brocade 6510 Switch with the specifications and the details. Brocade 6510 switch features up to 48 ports of Gen 5 Fibre Channel technology with specifications suitable for hyper-scale, private cloud, virtualized, and other high-bandwidth Fibre Channel environments. 

Fig 1.1- Brocade Fiber Switch with Cisco Nexus 5K Switch Testing

With an aggregate 768Gb/s throughput and an 18-inch deep 1U footprint, the 6510 supports 2, 4, 8, 10, or 16 Gb/s Fibre Channel across 24, 36, or 48 ports of connectivity and with a feature set that can be extended via add-on licenses for a wide variety of usage scenarios. 

The Brocade 6510 represents best-of-class Fibre Channel SAN switching, which is an important asset to the Storage Review Enterprise Storage Lab in order to ensure that network components do not bottleneck storage devices during SAN benchmarks.

Fig 1.2- Brocade VCS Fabric Extension Over Brocade 6510 Switch
Let's talk about the Brocade Switch Specifications in detail. Above is the sample diagram showing the use of the Brocade VCS and below is the specifications of the Switch.
Brocade 6510 Switch Specifications
  • Fibre Channel ports: Switch mode (default): 24-, 36-, and 48-port configurations (12-port increments through Ports on Demand [PoD] licenses); E, F, M, D, EX ports
  • Performance: Fibre Channel 2.125 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; 4.25 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; 8.5 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; 10.53 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; 14.025 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; auto-sensing of 2, 4, 8, and 16 Gb/s port speeds; 10 Gb/s optionally programmable to fixed port speed
  • Media types: 16 Gbps SWL, LWL, ELWL; 10 Gbps SWL, LWL; 8 Gbps SWL, LWL, ELWL
  • Aggregate bandwidth: 768 Gb/s end-to-end full duplex
  • Scalability: Full fabric architecture with a maximum of 239 switches
  • Certified maximum: 6000 active nodes; 56 switches, 19 hops in Brocade Fabric OS fabrics; larger fabrics certified as required
  • ISL trunking: Frame-based Trunking with up to eight 16 Gbps ports per ISL trunk; up to 128 Gbps per ISL trunk. Exchange-based load balancing across ISLs with DPS included in Brocade Fabric OS.
  • Management access: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet (RJ-45), in-band over Fibre Channel, serial port (RJ-45), and one USB port
  • Power supply: Dual, hot-swappable redundant power supplies with integrated system cooling fans
  • Power consumption: 110 W with all 48 ports populated with 16 Gb/s SWL optics, 72 W for empty chassis with no optics
  • Dimensions (WxHxD): 437.64 x 43.18 x 443.23 mm (17.23 x 1.7 x 17.45")
  • Weight: 9.16 kg (20.2 lbs) with two power supply FRUs, without transceivers
  • Supported management software: HTTP, SNMP v1/v3 (FE MIB, FC Management MIB), SSH; Auditing, Syslog; Brocade Advanced Web Tools, APM, Brocade Fabric Watch; Brocade Network Advisor SAN Enterprise or Brocade Network Advisor SAN Professional/Professional Plus; Command Line Interface (CLI); SMI-S compliant; Administrative Domains; trial licenses for add-on capabilities
Conclusion

The Brocade 6510 provides powerful and flexible SAN switching technology for Fibre Channel networks that can span up to 100 km in distance. The hardware platform features the new Condor3 ASICs and a 667 MHz PowerPC 440EPx RISC CPU to maximize throughput while offering Brocade’s Fabric OS and Network Advisor SAN management software to configure and manage a robust set of features across the SAN architecture and link layers.

For Fibre Channel networks that need to maximize switching power to deal with complex, virtualized, or long-distance links, the Brocade 6510 is a strong offering. The add-on licensing model does require additional planning on the part of Fibre Channel SAN administrators, but that comes with the territory when dealing with high-end FC switches.
Like us on Facebook : Networks Baseline on Facebook

Subscribe us on Youtube: Youtube Subscription for Videos !