It’s sitting quietly in the data centre and doing a great job…
For those with long memories or decent Google search skills, the Brocade story has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Several members of our technical team were there from the beginning of the European launch. At one point, nearly 95% of all fibre channel switches were Brocade branded or OEM versions. Even though FC and SAN has declined in popularity, the specification and technology has the benefit of rock solid reliability and predictable, high performance. Even with Brocade split up and scattered across several acquirers, the products keep running; faithfully serving critical workloads at large enterprises across the UK.
Wakeup call
For existing customers of Brocade DCX 8510 directors and 6500 series switches, an email has probably turned up announcing the End-of-Support Notice. If it’s not already in your inbox, similar notices for users of OEM products including the EMC DS-6500 series, IBM 2498 series and models across the HP SN3000, HP SN6500 and HP SN8000 series will also be receiving EoSN’s. Depending on make and model, the date when support will end is around October 2021. The email will suggest that the Brocade Gen 6 FC directors and switches (or the equivalent models from EMC, IBM or HP) would make a good replacement. The email is right – the Gen 6 FC directors and switches are great products; our technical teams have installed many of them – but they won’t deliver a significant uplift in performance or reliability compared to the 8510’s.
Price hike
The main significance of the EoSN is that the cost of support contracts for all these models is likely to rise significantly. The reason is not technical but purely commercial – the vendors would like you to spend several hundred thousand pounds on buying some new kit. If that is your wish, then we have some of the best Brocade field service engineers in the UK that can help you transition to a new platform and manage the entire design, migration and test cycle for either new or refurbished equivalent products. Alternatively, we can take over the support and maintenance on any of the affected products at between 40%-70% less than what you may already be spending!
Ready when you are
We maintain a full set of spares for every serviceable element along with complete systems for an emergency forklift replacement scenario. End of Service will arrive for every piece of equipment. We have customers that have early Silkworm switches that are celebrating a 20th year operating and still going strong. For some of these customers, we have a structured transition plan in place to allow a smooth migration to newer technologies at a time and budget cycle that suits their business objectives. End of Support used to be called End of Life by many vendors. The truth is there is a lot of life left in Brocade products.
