In This Chapter; Powerconnect B-Dcx-4S Features - Dell PowerConnect B-DCX-4S Backbone Hardware Reference Manual

Hardware Overview

In this chapter

PowerConnect B-DCX-4S features

The PowerConnect B-DCX-4S is part of Brocade's industry-leading Backbone-class product line, a
highly robust class of network switching platform that combines breakthrough performance,
scalability, and energy efficiency with long-term investment. Supporting open systems and System
z, DCX Backbones are designed to address the data growth and application demands of evolving
enterprise data centers, achieve server, SAN, and data center consolidation, and reduce
infrastructure and administrative costs.
Key features of the PowerConnect B-DCX-4S include:
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PowerConnect B-DCX-4S features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
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Hardware components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
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PowerConnect B-DCX-4S blades. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
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High availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
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Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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Serviceability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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Software features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
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Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
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Network manageability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Up to 192 port horizontal chassis with four usable port blades (in addition to two core
switching and two core processing blades).
Support for all of the application, port blade, and control processor (CP) blades supported in
the PowerConnect B-DCX Backbone (with the exception of the PowerConnect B-DCX Core
Switch Blade), thereby providing flexible system configurations and fewer types of new blades.
Up to 384 ports can connect with the use of inter-chassis links (ICLs).
Support for high-performance port blades running at 1-, 2-, 4-, 8-, or 10-Gbps, enabling flexible
system configuration.
Support for 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-Gbps auto-sensing Fibre Channel ports. Trunking technology
groups up to eight ports to create high performance 64-Gbps ISL trunks between switches (10
Gbps ports (FC10-6) are 10 Gbps only).
Dual-redundant control processor blades (CP8) and core switch blades (CR4S-8) that provide
high availability and enable nondisruptive software upgrades.
Redundant and hot-swappable CP8 and CR4S-8 blades, power supplies, blower assemblies,
and WWN cards that enable a high availability platform for mission-critical SAN applications.
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