Brocade, wake up: Cisco is here, and it also has 16 gig FC

Cisco has waited two years, watching while competitor Brocade launched and sold 16Gbit/s Fibre Channel, before finally doubling the speed of its own Fibre Channel switch products, belatedly announcing 16Gbps MDS switches. It's quite possible the networking giant had been hoping that Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) take-up …

[Anonymous Coward]

16Gbps going mainstream

16Gbps isn't new anymore, but with the other big switch vendor deciding to get involved, it's newsworthy again.

I expect more customers will now recognise that despite the FUD from some Ethernet quarters, Fibre Channel is still the right choice in a lot of environments/organisations.

[Skoorb]

Re: 16Gbps going mainstream

And, more people getting involved may mean that prices stop being quite as eye watering. Though that may be wishful thinking.

[chris coreline]

Re: 16Gbps going mainstream

16g is still fabric core only - i would doubt any storage arrays actual capability to serve four 16 gig front end ports.

and a trunking license with two 8gig links is probably *still* cheaper and more resilient.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 16Gbps going mainstream

Fibre Channel has always been about stability and performance first, features later. Cisco ethernet gear is fancy features first, everything else second.

Recent example. Firmware upgrade N5K, hit a bug. Both fabrics crashed and burned.

FCoE has a theoretical appeal, but in practice a long way to go before I put my really important stuff there.

[mgumn]

Typo?

End of the first paragraph. Could be a typo, could be my ignorance.

[Schmeelster]

Time will tell

Cisco's MDS has been dead in the water for a few years now as they pursued a rather single handed mission to build a market around a non existent connectivity "solution" in FCOE. I will make a prediction that in line with every previous iteration of the MDS family, this is not anywhere near as performant as they claim, horrendous to manage, disgustingly power hungry and remarkably inefficient in the context of emissions - the last generation was up to 4x WORSE than the competing products just in heat emission alone so it is difficult to see how Cisco can reengineer a product that inefficient and make it even close to the Brocade offerings which have always had a considerable upper hand.

This is effectively a massive climb down by Cisco yet I have no doubt that it will be perceived as a degree in virtuosity and fulfilling customer demand that is unprecedented in any area of trade, commerce and product design Oh, hold on, is that me just being a tad cynical about Cisco's marketing machine? Still, I am surprised by Brocade's rather weak response that this new MDS product is effectively the same as their 16gb products despite their significant time to market advantages........