Technical data

2 Brocade VA-40FC Hardware Reference Manual

53-1001540-04

Brocade VA-40FC overview

• Single motherboard design with 667 MHz PowerPC 440EPx Reduced Instruction Set Computer

(RISC) CPU and integrated peripherals which provide high performance.

• Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Trunking (licensable), which allows up to eight ports (at 1, 2, 4, or 8 Gbps

speeds) between a pair of switches combined to form a single, logical ISL with a speed of up to

128 Gbps full duplex for optimal bandwidth utilization and load balancing.

• Dynamic Path Selection (DPS), which optimizes fabric-wide performance and load balancing by

automatically routing data to the most efficient available path in the fabric.

• Rack-mount design using existing rail kits (fixed, sliding, and mid-mount/Telco rail kits) on a

19” EIA rack.

• Rack-mount design using fixed rack mount kit for 24” depth racks.

• Industry-leading extended distance support, which enables native Fibre Channel extension

greater than 590 km.

• Expanded security for up to 16,000 hardware zones. Hardware zoning is accomplished at the

port level of the switch or by World Wide Name (WWN). Hardware zoning permits or denies

delivery of frames to any destination port address.

• Unicast, multicast (255 groups), and broadcast data traffic type, are support.

• Brocade Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) or SFP+ optical transceivers support any

combination of Short Wavelength (SWL), Long Wavelength (LWL) or Extended Long Wavelength

(ELWL) optical media among the switch ports.

• Brocade Fabric Operating System (Fabric OS), which delivers distributed intelligence

throughout the network and enables a wide range of value-added applications including

Brocade Advanced Web Tools and Brocade Zoning. Optional Fabric Services include: Adaptive

Networking with QoS, Brocade Extended Fabrics, Brocade Enhanced Group Management,

Brocade Fabric Watch, ISL Trunking, Integrated Routing, and End-to-End Performance

Monitoring (APM).

• Port-to-port latency minimized to 700 nanoseconds through the use of cut-through frame

routing at 8 Gbps.

• Extensive diagnostics and system monitoring capabilities, which enhance high Reliability,

Availability, and Serviceability (RAS).

• The Brocade EZSwitchSetup wizard, which makes SAN configuration a three-step point-and

click task.