Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. today announced an agreement that allows Sun to resell, service and support Brocade SilkWorm(R) fabric switches worldwide in qualified configurations. In addition, Brocade and Sun are continuing to jointly qualify supported storage networking configurations and work together on the software development initiatives that were announced earlier this year.
According to the companies, customers can select pre-tested SAN configurations of Sun storage and Brocade SilkWorm fabric switches and obtain Sun consulting services and support for the entire solution. Sun and Brocade have already qualified Brocade SilkWorm switches with Sun servers and the Sun StorEdge(TM) T3 and A5x00 arrays, and plan to continue to add configurations to the qualification list which are designed to satisfy customer requirements.
Through this expanded relationship, Sun says its customers benefit from the recently announced Brocade Intelligent Fabric Services Architecture which comprises a family of multi-protocol switch platforms and an intelligent software platform. The software platform includes intelligent fabric services that increase performance in the storage network and enable new applications, a comprehensive suite of security features that secure the SAN fabric from unauthorized access, and an open fabric management interface that simplifies the management of large SANs. Using Brocade fabric switches, customers can connect servers with storage devices through a SAN, creating a highly reliable, manageable, scalable, and secure environment for storage applications.