Brocade Communications Systems
NAS Recovery - Brocade Communications Systems
Brocade Communications Systems (Brocade) designs, manufactures and sells data center networking solutions and services. Established in 1995, the company has played a significant role in promoting the growth of networking solutions through innovation of Fibre Channel (FC) switches and directors.
Brocade released the first Fibre Channel switch SilkWorm in 1997. SilkWorm became the marketing designation for entire line of switches, directors and routers. SilkWorm was based on the Stitch ASIC and their own VxWorks-based firmware Fabric OS. SilkWorm was later renamed SilkWorm 1000 (SW 1000) to distinguish it from other platforms.
The next important offering from Brocade was Flannel ASIC which supported an FC-AL interface to a switched fabric and the next-generation switches based on the LOOM ASIC. In 2001, Brocade introduced SilkWorm 6400, a semi-director product that consisted of a bunch of small switches integrated with a new management application Fabric Manager 1.0.
Following years, Brocade provided the industry with a number of switches and a director based on its third generation ASIC Big LOOM (BLOOM). In April 2002, BLOOM was integrated into its first director SilkWorm 12000. BLOOM offered an increased throughput of 2Gbit/s in place of the existing 1 Gbit/s. Bloom ASIC also gained the credit as the industry first to offer hardware-based frame-level Fibre Channel trunking.
During 2002, Brocade included FICON and FICON CUP support to the 12000 and succeeded in the mainframe market. In 2004, the BLOOM II was improved by reducing its die size and power consumption while maintaining 2 Gbit/s speed.
Starting late 2005, Brocade rolled out a complete range of 4 Gbit/s switches. In January 2007, Brocade acquired McDATA Corporations, one of its toughest competitors. Brocade dropped the SilkWorm (SW) name from its products’ names starting with Brocade 5000 switch.
