Changing business requirements at many of todays best companies are driving the need for the scalability, resiliency, and manageability provided by modular chassis-based SAN switches. As new and unpredictable demands spring up every quarter, these companies require the flexibility to modify and expand their server/storage infrastructure frequently without impacting production environments. In addition, as the mission-critical role of data continues to grow, more businesses than ever must guarantee iron-clad security while providing a high degree of control and monitoring.
Until now, the robust performance, rapid deployment potential, and “pay as you grow” budgeting advantages of Fibre Channel chassis switches have been available only in the form of expensive Director appliances targeted primarily at mainframe customers. IT managers with high-port-count open systems SANs who are unwilling to pay a premium for unused Director features (such as FICON support) have been forced to purchase complicated meshes of smaller switches, or very large fixed-port units both of which offer high port counts, but much less flexibility, fault tolerance, and overall system control.
QLogic now provides a new class of core switch, representing a sane alternative to quarter-million dollar Directors and large, less resilient fixed-port switches. The QLogic 9000 is Designed to the Core for cost-sensitive, business-critical, open-system environments that require high port and performance, with support for 99.999% available solutions.