Brocade HD-6505-12-8G-0R 24x SFP+ 16Gb (12 Active) - Fibre Channel Switch

The Brocade 6505 Fibre Channel Switch (HD-6505-12-8G-0R) stands out as an excellent and outstanding device for modern Storage Area Networks (SANs) due to its exceptional blend of high performance, remarkable scalability, and inherent reliability. At its core, it offers cutting-edge 16 Gbps Fibre Channel connectivity, which was a leading-edge speed at the time of its introduction, ensuring that even the most demanding applications and highly virtualized environments receive ultra-low-latency and lossless access to critical data. This unparalleled speed is crucial for optimizing I/O-intensive workloads like large databases, analytics platforms, and virtual machine migrations. What makes the Brocade 6505 truly outstanding is its intelligent 'pay-as-you-grow' scalability. It allows organizations to start with a compact 12-port configuration and seamlessly activate additional ports up to 24 as storage needs evolve, all without the disruption of a hardware upgrade. This flexibility minimizes initial investment while ensuring the network can effortlessly adapt to increasing demands. Furthermore, operating on the industry-leading Brocade Fabric OS, it delivers robust enterprise-class reliability with features like redundant, hot-swappable power supplies and fans, guaranteeing continuous availability for mission-critical storage. Its non-blocking architecture ensures consistent, high-speed throughput across all ports, making it an indispensable foundation for building resilient, high-performance SAN fabrics that drive today's dynamic data centers.
The Brocade 6505 Fibre Channel Switch is perfect for:

• Building or Expanding Fibre Channel SANs: Its primary purpose is to connect servers (hosts) to shared storage arrays (like SAN-attached disk arrays or tape libraries) using Fibre Channel protocol, providing a dedicated, high-speed, and lossless network for storage traffic.
• Virtualized Environments: In highly virtualized data centers, efficient storage access is paramount. The 6505 provides the low-latency, high-throughput connectivity needed to ensure virtual machines have consistent and fast access to their data.
• Consolidating Storage Resources: By enabling multiple servers to access the same storage resources, it helps reduce storage sprawl, improve utilization, and simplify storage management.
• Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity: Its reliability and performance are critical for ensuring data replication and backup operations run efficiently, supporting DR strategies.
• Optimizing Database and Mission-Critical Application Performance: Applications with high I/O demands, such as large databases, benefit immensely from the dedicated and lossless nature of Fibre Channel, which the 6505 facilitates.
• Cost-Effective Scalability: Starting with 12 active ports and being able to upgrade to 24 ports on demand makes it a flexible and cost-effective solution for growing SAN requirements without needing a forklift upgrade.
• Integrating with Existing SAN Infrastructures: It can seamlessly integrate into existing Brocade or mixed-vendor Fibre Channel fabrics, leveraging established management tools and expertise.