<p>Brocade announced its newest Ethernet fabric switch, the VDX 8770, a massively scalable modular chassis switch that scales to over 8,000 ports, at its Analyst And Technology Day briefings Wednesday in San Jose, Calif.</p><p>Flat fabric topology, rather than inflexible legacy hierarchical topologies, maximizes network utilization and provides multi-pathing between Layers 1-3. The result is an efficient fabric, which is simple to deploy and is designed for enterprises and service providers that want to both simplify and scale out their data center infrastructure to accelerate new service introduction and lower installation and maintenance costs.Webcasts More >>White Papers More >>Reports More >></p><p>Available in either a four- or eight-slot chassis, the VDX 8770 can handle four TBs per second per slot with only 3.5 microseconds of latency between any two devices in the network. The modular switch supports from 12 to over 8,000 ports in a single fabric and provides hardware-enhanced network virtualization. It will also support 100-GbE devices when the port hardware is available. Network utilization is enhanced through automatic load balancing all the way through the Layer 3 gateways directly in the fabric. The first modules available will be 48 x 1 Gbps, 48 x 10 Gbps, and 12 x 40 Gbps in a single slot.</p><p>The VCS architecture, which was introduced in 2010, is designed specifically for highly virtualized data centers. Ethernet fabrics built on VCS technology accelerate application deployment and enable faster virtual machine (VM) migrations through automated features including VM discovery, VM mobility, and VM port configuration migration. Using VCS fabrics, networks can be managed over dozens of switches as a single logical device, reducing operational costs. Installation time is reduced as new switches self-provision when they are connected to the fabric.</p><p><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/infrastructure/switches/brocade-announces-highly-scalable-gigabi/240007249">Keep reading...</a></p>