Product Reviews

Prices for SAN (storage area network) products are traditionally nothing less than stratospheric, resulting in many small companies being forced to look for more cost-effective methods of sharing storage resources. However, the past year has seen a significant effort on the part of a number of SAN vendors to woo small- to medium-sized businesses with more affordable products. Brocade's SilkWorm 3850 offers a low-cost entry point to the world of SANs that can be upgraded as demand increases.

The biggest difference between the Brocade product and those of QLogic and McData is that all 16 ports are supplied fully activated. On QLogic's SANbox 5200 and McData's Sphereon 4500 you can start with as few as eight ports activated and buy firmware upgrades that bring more online as you need them. Brocade's approach is to get small businesses started with as little as a two-switch fabric to which more can be added as required. Furthermore, advanced features such as performance monitoring, fabric security and trunking can be activated by applying software licence keys.

The 3850 is well built, with the 16 ports arranged in two groups in the centre of the front panel. Each port is accompanied by a pair of LEDs showing the negotiated speed and status of the link. The 3850 is also equipped with a power supply on each side of the chassis, although

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these aren't hot-swappable. General installation is easy enough, as the interfaces on the 3850 are self configuring and will automatically detect the operating speed of connected devices and identify the type of connection. For initial configuration you access the CLI (command-line interface) either by a remote Telnet session or via a local serial port connection. Once you've assigned the switch an IP address, you can move over to remote management. Brocade scores over QLogic here, as the 3850 supports web browser management whereas the SANbox switches can only be monitored and configured using QLogic's SANbox Manager software.

Brocade's Web Tools software offers a smart interface from where you can manage all switches within a single fabric. The switches are displayed in the left-hand pane along with their IP addresses and WWNs (world-wide names). Selecting one displays a graphic of the switch complete with hotspots for easy access to individual ports. You can view port modes, negotiated speeds and the type of installed transceiver. Web Tools uses colour codes throughout so you can see the operational status of any component at a glance. Below the switch graphic is a row of buttons providing swift access to component status screens and a basic performance graph showing throughput for all ports. The buttons are also colour-coded so if, for example, a power supply fails then the power and status buttons will turn orange as a warning. Secure administrative access to all the switch parameters is also available at the press of a button. Managing multiple fabrics will require Brocade's optional Fabric Manager software, which provides an equally intuitive interface.

The SilkWorm 3850 offers an impressive range of features and a particularly good bundle of management tools. However, compared with QLogic's SANbox 5200 its backplane speed isn't as fast, stacking isn't supported and the starting price is too high.