Can Nexus 5000 series replace brocade fiber channel switches?

[Justin Westover]

We currently use brocade fiber channel switches connecting to EMC sans in our environment. I'm looking into the Nexus 5000 series and I see that it is capable of doing FCoE and native Fiber Channel so can the 5000 series and the 2000 series fabric extenders replace our brocade switches?

Currently we use the brocades to provision access to different servers (e.g. what server has access to what LUN), can this be done on the 5000 series? I'm very new to the nexus series switches and what their capabilities are exactely. Some clearing up here would be helpful.

Thanks

[Jerry Ye]

The N5K will support native FC and FCOE and you can definitely use it to replace your Brocade.

For the Nexus 2000, only N2232 supports FCOE. There isn't any native FC support so you have to home your FC connection to the N5K.

Here is the data sheet for your reference:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps10110/data_sheet_c78-507093.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9670/data_sheet_c78-618603.html

HTH,

jerry

[Justin Westover]

So I could connect my connections from our EMC san to the 5K and control from the 5K what devices have access to what LUNs on the san? I'm assuming once you have the native fiber channel into the 5K then you can use the 2Ks and FCoE to get fiber to your servers right? I appricate your help by the way.

[Jerry Ye]

I think this is what you need:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/operations/n5k_fcoe_ops_appB.html

Sorry, I am not a SAN expert. I would suggest you to check out the SAN forum

https://supportforums.cisco.com/community/netpro/data-center/storage-network

HTH,

jerry