Brocade 6520 XBR-6520-48-R 96x SFP+ 16Gb (72 PORTS ACTIVE) Fibre Channel Switch

The Brocade 6520 (XBR-6520-48-R) is an excellent Fibre Channel switch due to its market-leading performance, exceptional scalability, and robust reliability, making it a superb choice for demanding, highly virtualized, and cloud-based SAN environments. Its market-leading performance is driven by its Gen 5 (16 Gbps) Fibre Channel technology, supporting up to 96 ports and providing an aggregate bandwidth of 1536 Gbps. This ensures extremely fast and low-latency data transfer, which is critical for I/O-intensive applications, large databases, and rapidly expanding virtualized server farms. Its exceptional scalability allows for flexible 'pay-as-you-grow' expansion from an initial 48 active ports (for this specific model) up to 96 ports via Ports on Demand (PoD) licenses, offering significant investment protection and the ability to adapt to evolving storage needs without disruptive upgrades. Finally, its robust reliability is guaranteed by redundant, hot-swappable components (power supplies and fans) and non-disruptive software upgrades, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuous data availability in mission-critical environments. These collective capabilities make it an ideal device for building a highly optimized, agile, and resilient storage infrastructure.
The Brocade 6520 Fibre Channel Switch (XBR-6520-48-R) is perfect for:

• Large-Scale Enterprise SANs: Its high port count and aggregate bandwidth make it suitable as a foundational building block for very large and complex Storage Area Networks.
• Highly Virtualized and Cloud Environments: Delivering 16Gbps Fibre Channel, it meets the demands of high-density server virtualization and private cloud architectures, ensuring low latency and high throughput for critical applications.
• Data Center Consolidation: By providing ultra-dense Fibre Channel connectivity, it helps consolidate IT resources, simplifying infrastructure and reducing operational costs.
• Mission-Critical Workloads: Its high performance, reliability features (like redundant power supplies), and advanced diagnostics are essential for maintaining uptime and performance for sensitive applications.
• Secure and Efficient Data Transfer: Capabilities like in-flight encryption and compression ports (optional licenses) offer enhanced security and bandwidth savings for data center-to-data center communication.