Lenovo Flex System EN4023 Product Manual page 6

16/8/4/2 Gb Fibre Channel personality.
In Fibre Channel mode, these Flex Ports can be used either to directly connect Fibre Channel
storage to VCS fabrics, or to bridge FCoE traffic to Fibre Channel SANs as a Fibre Channel
Forwarder (FCF), thus protecting existing SAN investments.
Enables IP storage networking for improved performance, management, security, and span of
control.
High performance and reduced network congestion:
With 10 Gbps connections, the Flex System EN4023 switch can help your organization reduce
network congestion, improve application performance, and meet the capacity required by 10 Gbps
servers. The 40 Gbps uplinks can easily aggregate high-bandwidth traffic and reduce bottlenecks,
helping your network operate at its peak performance.
Provides ultra-low any-to-any port latency of 850 nanoseconds (Ethernet or FCoE/Fibre Channel).
The EN4023 delivers an industry-leading 24 MB tunable deep buffers per switch. This provides the
buffering capacity to handle increases in traffic, especially during peak times when ports are
congested, without lowering performance or increasing latencies.
The EN4023 features a single ASIC design instead of the multiple ASIC designs commonly found
on other switches. This further improves performance and reduces latency since all ports can
communicate via one ASIC.
The EN4023 helps maximize network utilization with hardware-based Brocade ISL Trunking.
Organizations can create an 80 GbE trunk by utilizing two 40 GbE ports, or a 160 GbE trunk with 16
10 GbE ports. The Brocade trunk is automatically formed between two EN4023 switches when they
are linked together, allowing traffic to be equally distributed among all ports. This increases link
efficiency and limits traffic disruptions, especially during high traffic times.
Simplicity and automation:
Brocade VCS Logical Chassis provides the ability to manage an entire Brocade VCS Fabric (up to
48 switches) as a single switch, upgrade software across the fabric with one command, and
centralize monitoring and troubleshooting to enhance the overall availability and reliability of the
network, with REST API support to allow higher-level management and orchestration frameworks.
Configuration is simplified with self-forming fabrics. As additional switches are added, they inherit
the configuration of the fabric. This allows the network to scale out with ease. Configuration and
device information is always shared among all switches allowing fabric nodes to be added or
removed and physical or virtual servers to be relocated — without the fabric requiring manual
reconfiguration. In addition, fabrics are self-healing which increases network resiliency. The fabric
redirects traffic in case a link fails which helps to ensure uninterrupted traffic flow and prevent data
loss.
Zero-touch provisioning enables simple, rapid deployment. This feature is provided natively in
EN4023 switches through VCS Fabric technology, and it enables installation, automatic software
download, and configuration without user intervention. VDX switches can be preconfigured so that
newly deployed switches require only power and a network connection to become a part of the
fabric. RBridge-ID, VCS-ID, and other VCS parameters are automatically assigned in this case. In
addition, Inter-Switch Links (ISLs) are automatically formed between all new and existing switches
in the fabric. By eliminating manual processes, this installation method greatly simplifies scale-out
architecture.
Zero-touch scale-out is achieved with automatic configuration of VCS parameters, self-forming
trunks, and logical chassis. Network engineers can add, move, and remove network Brocade VDX
switches without having to add or delete network configurations. This helps organizations contain
costs while increasing reliability and speed when deploying clouds and data centers.
Lenovo Flex System EN4023 switches can facilitate an optimal IP storage network by delivering a
fabric-based network architecture to manage the network and storage holistically. At the same
time, Brocade Network Advisor (Optional from Brocade)
Efficiency and resiliency:
Optimized east-west traffic: Embedded switching moves traffic through any active path and avoids
the multiple hops found in tiered tree topologies.
The EN4023 delivers a highly efficient In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) by leveraging a software
model that uses a dual-OS infrastructure on a multi-core CPU. This enables data center
administrators to deliver enterprise-class business continuity on the switches during a software
upgrade/downgrade process. This software change process is non-disruptive to Layer 2, Layer 3,
Fibre Channel, and FCoE traffic.
Lenovo Flex System EN4023 10Gb Scalable Switch 6