HPE has introduced built-in telemetry and self-healing SAN features in the seventh generation of B-series Fibre Channel SAN directors, switches and HBAs. It has also doubled their speed.
Announcing the launch in a blog post, HPE Storage product manager Rob Gee set out the need for faster and smarter Fibre Channel SAN. “Flash storage is the de facto choice for many data centres worldwide. NVMe storage is becoming more and more common, bringing with it new benchmarks for high performance.
“Virtual machine densities continue to rise; the pressure to deliver reliable and fast access to data and applications – while ensuring business-critical workloads function correctly – is more significant than ever before. These trends combine to underscore just how important it is to have data paths keep pace and deliver on growing and evolving user expectations.”
HPE presents the Gen 7 tech as self-learning, self-optimising and self-healing. These features help SAN admin staff “take corrective action before a performance issue impacts the business”, Gee writes.
The HPE gen 7 products will support 64Gbit/s line speed with 64Gbit/s optics, which will become available in mid-2021.
HPE’s B-series is is based on Broadcom Gen 7 hardware, which was announced last September. The Broadcom Gen 7 range includes X7 Directors with component FC32-64 blades and G720 switches. The X7 Directors support gen 6 and gen 7 blades. They also enable NVMe and SCSI to run concurrently.
A Broadcom table compares gen 6 and gen 7 Fibre Channel product technology.
