IBM 8960-F64 48x SFP+ 32Gb 4x QSFP28 128Gb (All Active) - Fibre Channel Switch

The IBM 8960-F64 is more commonly known as the IBM Storage Networking SAN64B-6 Switch. This device is a cutting-edge Fibre Channel switch, specifically designed to address the escalating demands of hyper-scale virtualization, expanding cloud infrastructures, and the pervasive adoption of flash-based storage in modern data centers. It represents a significant leap forward in Storage Area Network (SAN) technology, leveraging Gen 6 Fibre Channel capabilities.
The IBM SAN64B-6 (8960-F64) is an exceptionally high-performance and agile Fibre Channel switch. It delivers unmatched 32 Gbps and 128 Gbps performance across its ports, capable of shattering application performance barriers with up to 100 million IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) and an astonishingly low 700-nanosecond latency. This makes it an ideal choice for flash-based storage workloads where every millisecond counts. Its 'pay-as-you-grow' port-on-demand scalability (from 24 up to 64 ports) provides remarkable flexibility, allowing organizations to scale their SAN infrastructure cost-effectively without over-provisioning. Furthermore, with Brocade's Fabric Vision technology and built-in features like IO Insight and VM Insight, it offers unparalleled visibility, monitoring, and diagnostic capabilities, simplifying management and proactively identifying performance issues across the storage network.

The IBM 8960-F64 (SAN64B-6) is best used for:

• High-Performance Flash Storage Deployments: Crucial for environments heavily reliant on flash arrays (NVMe/NVMe-oF, SSDs), ensuring the Fibre Channel network does not become a bottleneck for the high IOPS and low latency requirements of these storage systems.
• Hyper-scale Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructures: Designed to support extremely dense virtual machine environments and large-scale cloud deployments, where rapid provisioning, dynamic workloads, and guaranteed performance for virtualized applications are paramount.
• Data Center Consolidation: Its high port density (up to 64 ports in a 1U form factor) enables organizations to consolidate more servers and storage into a smaller footprint, reducing costs, power consumption, and cooling requirements.
• Mission-Critical Enterprise Applications: Ideal for core business applications (ERP, databases, analytics) that demand the highest levels of performance, availability, and predictable latency to ensure continuous operations.
• SAN Core, Edge, or Backbone: Can be deployed flexibly as a core switch for smaller SANs, an edge switch connecting hosts to a larger fabric, or as a key component in larger, multi-switch SAN backbones to provide high-speed inter-switch links (ISLs) and connect to high-performance arrays.
• Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: Its reliability and performance are critical for ensuring fast data replication and recovery processes in disaster recovery solutions.