DATA SHEET

Brocade G620 Switch

Ultra-dense, Highly Scalable, Easy-to-Use

Enterprise-Class Storage Networking Switch
HIGHLIGHTS Today’s mission-critical storage environments require greater
•• Provides high scalability in an ultra- consistency, predictability, and performance to keep pace with growing
dense, 1U, 64-port switch to support business demands. Faced with explosive data growth, data centers
high-density server virtualization,
need more IO capacity to accommodate the massive amounts of data,
cloud architectures, and flash-based
storage environments
applications, and workloads. In addition to this surge in data, collective
expectations for availability continue to rise. Users expect applications to
•• Increases performance for demanding
workloads across 32 Gbps links and be available and accessible from anywhere, at any time, on any device.
shatters application performance
barriers with up to 100 million IOPS To meet these dynamic and growing The Brocade® G620 Switch meets the
•• Enables “pay-as-you-grow” business demands, organizations need to demands of hyper-scale virtualization,
scalability—with 24 to 64 ports—for deploy and scale up applications quickly. larger cloud infrastructures, and growing
on-demand flexibility As a result, many are moving to higher flash-based storage environments by
•• Provides proactive, non-intrusive, Virtual Machine (VM) densities to enable delivering market-leading Gen 6 Fibre
real-time monitoring and alerting of rapid deployment of new applications Channel technology and capabilities. It
storage IO health and performance and deploying flash storage to help those provides a high-density building block for
with IO Insight, the industry’s first applications scale to support thousands increased scalability, designed to support
integrated network sensors of users. To increase agility, reduce growth, demanding workloads, and data
•• Leverages IO Insight intelligence expenses, and realize the full benefits of center consolidation in small to large-
to identify issues and understand these architectures, organizations need scale enterprise infrastructures. Delivering
key performance, health, and the network to deliver the performance unmatched 32/128 Gbps performance,
utilization trends, ensuring consistent required by today’s server and storage industry-leading port density, and
performance environments. In addition, storage integrated network sensors, the Brocade
•• Increases resiliency by automatically networks are becoming increasingly G620 accelerates data access, adapts to
discovering and recovering from important to application performance, evolving requirements, and drives always-
device or network errors which means that they also must become on business.
•• Leverages Brocade Fabric Vision easier to administer and manage. By
The Brocade G620 is built for maximum
technology to simplify administration, treating the network as a strategic part
flexibility, scalability, and ease of use.
quickly resolve problems, increase of a highly virtualized environment,
Organizations can scale from 24 to
uptime, and reduce costs organizations can increase optimization
64 ports with 48 SFP+ and 4 Q-Flex
•• Simplifies troubleshooting with real- and efficiency even as they rapidly scale
ports, all in an efficient 1U package. In
time and historical visibility in a single their environments.
addition, a simplified deployment process
dashboard
and a point-and-click user interface make 566 million frames switched per second, Designed for maximum flexibility and
the Brocade G620 easy to use. With the the Brocade G620 Switch shatters value, this enterprise-class switch
Brocade G620, organizations gain the application performance barriers with up offers “pay-as-you-grow” scalability
best of both worlds: high-performance to 100 million IOPS to meet the demands with Ports on Demand (PoD) capability.
access to industry-leading storage of flash-based storage workloads. At Organizations can quickly, easily, and
technology and “pay-as-you-grow” the same time, port-to-port latency is cost-effectively scale from 24 to 64 ports
scalability to support an evolving storage minimized to 900 nanoseconds through with a combination of 12-port SFP+ PoD
environment. the use of cut-through switching at and 16-port Q-Flex PoD. Each of the
32 Gbps. With 48 SFP+ ports and 48 SFP+ ports supports 4, 8, 10, 16,
4 Q-Flex ports, each providing four and 32 Gbps Fibre Channel speeds, while
32 Gbps connections, the Brocade each of the 4 Q-Flex ports is capable of
GEN 6 FIBRE CHANNEL
G620 can scale up to 64 device ports supporting 4×32 Gbps, or 128 Gbps,
Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel is the
for an aggregate throughput of 2 Tbps. Fibre Channel speeds. In addition, Q-Flex
purpose-built network infrastructure
for mission-critical storage, delivering Moreover, each Q-Flex port is capable ports are designed to support QSFP
breakthrough performance, increased of 128 Gbps parallel Fibre Channel optics to deliver 4 to 1 cable consolidation
scalability, and operational stability. The for device or ISL connectivity, enabling (combining four cables into one cable
Brocade G620 Switch with Gen 6 Fibre administrators to consolidate and simplify per port).
Channel, Brocade Fabric Vision technology,
cabling infrastructure.
and IO Insight delivers unmatched Brocade G620 ports are available for
32/128 Gbps performance, industry- Administrators can achieve optimal device port or ISL port connectivity. As
leading port density, and integrated bandwidth utilization, high availability, such, Q-Flex ports can be used as ISLs
network sensors. These next-generation
and load balancing by combining up to to provide simple build-out of fabrics, with
storage networking technologies and
eight ISLs in a 256 Gbps framed-based more switching bandwidth. In addition,
capabilities enable the Brocade G620
to accelerate data access, adapt to trunk. This can be achieved through flexible, high-speed 32 Gbps and
evolving requirements, and drive always- eight individual 32 Gbps SFP+ ports or 16 Gbps optics allow organizations
on business operations for hyper-scale two 4×32 Gbps QSFP ports. Moreover, to deploy bandwidth on demand to
virtualization, larger cloud infrastructures, exchange-based Dynamic Path Selection meet growing data center needs. With
and growing flash-based storage
(DPS) optimizes fabric-wide performance its flexible PoD capability, the Brocade
environments.
and load balancing by automatically G620 provides excellent overall value
routing data to the most efficient, available and the agility needed to deliver rapid
path in the fabric. This augments Brocade deployments to meet user demands and
Maximize Performance for ISL Trunking to provide more effective support higher growth.
Application and Solid State load balancing in certain configurations.
Along with providing best-in-class
Storage Architectures Simplify Scalability and scalability, the Brocade G620 simplifies
Faced with unpredictable virtualized end-to-end network management by
Management Complexity
workloads and growing flash storage automating monitoring and diagnostics
The Brocade G620 features up to
environments, organizations need to through Brocade Fabric Vision™
64 Fibre Channel ports in an efficiently
ensure that the network does not become technology. The switch is easy to deploy
designed 1U form factor, delivering
the bottleneck. The Brocade G620 with the Brocade EZSwitchSetup
industry-leading port density and space
delivers increased performance for wizard and provides validation prior to
utilization for simplified scalability and
growing and dynamic workloads through deployment with the Brocade ClearLink®
data center consolidation. With this
a combination of market-leading Diagnostic Ports (D_Ports) feature. For
high-density design, organizations can
throughput and low latency across maximum flexibility, the switch also
pack more into a single data center with
32 Gbps and 128 Gbps links. With features dual airflow direction options
a smaller footprint, reducing costs and
Gen 6 ASIC technology providing up to to support the latest hot aisle/cold aisle
management complexity.
configurations.

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 Gain Control and Insight to Simplified Management and
BROCADE FABRIC VISION Quickly Identify Problems Robust Network Analytics
TECHNOLOGY
and Meet Critical SLAs Brocade Fabric Vision technology
Brocade Fabric Vision technology with provides a breakthrough hardware and
The Brocade G620, with Gen 6 Fibre
IO Insight, an extension of Gen 6 Fibre
Channel technology and integrated software solution that helps simplify
Channel, provides unprecedented insight
and visibility across the storage network network sensors, helps organizations monitoring, maximize network availability,
with powerful integrated monitoring, achieve greater control and insight to and dramatically reduce costs. Featuring
management, and diagnostic tools that quickly identify root cause at the storage innovative monitoring, management,
enable organizations to: tier, reducing time to resolution so critical and diagnostic capabilities, Fabric Vision
Simplify monitoring: Service Level Agreements (SLAs) can technology enables administrators to
•• Deploy more than 20 years of storage be met. The IO Insight capability non- avoid problems before they impact
networking best practices with a single intrusively gathers IO statistics, which can operations, helping their organizations
click be used within an intuitive, policy-based meet SLAs. Fabric Vision technology
•• Leverage visibility into storage IO health monitoring and alerting suite to configure includes:
and performance with key latency and thresholds and alarms. In-band device •• IO Insight: Proactively and non-
performance metrics to maintain SLA latency and IOPS monitoring detects
compliance
intrusively monitors storage device IO
degraded storage performance, allowing performance and behavior through
•• Gain comprehensive visibility into administrators to proactively optimize
the fabric using browser-accessible
integrated network sensors at the
performance and availability to ensure storage tier, providing deep insight into
dashboards with drill-down capabilities
maximum performance. Additional problems and ensuring service levels.
Increase operational stability: features include:
•• Avoid 50 percent of common network •• Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite
•• Provides proactive, non-intrusive, (MAPS): Leverages prebuilt, rule-/
problems with proactive monitoring
real-time monitoring and alerting with policy-based templates within MAPS
•• Identify hot spots and automatically
visibility into storage IO health and to simplify fabric-wide threshold
mitigate network problems—before they
impact application performance performance configuration, monitoring, and alerting.
•• Identify IOs that deviate from expected •• Monitors individual host or storage Administrators can configure the entire
behavior to facilitate fault isolation and devices to gain deeper insight into the fabric (or multiple fabrics) at one time
troubleshooting performance of the network to maintain using common rules and policies,
Dramatically reduce costs: SLA compliance or customize policies for specific
•• Eliminate nearly 50 percent of ports or switch elements. In addition,
•• Obtains IO latency and IOPS metrics for
maintenance costs through automated administrators can include IO Insight
a storage device in order to diagnose IO
testing and diagnostic tools metrics in MAPS policies to be notified
operational issues
•• Save up to millions of dollars on of performance degradation.
CapEx costs by eliminating the need Forward Error Correction (FEC)
•• Fabric Performance Impact (FPI)
for expensive third-party tools through capabilities further increase resiliency by
integrated network sensors, monitoring, Monitoring: Leverages predefined
automatically detecting and recovering
and diagnostics MAPS policies to automatically detect
network transmission errors. To ensure
•• Tune device configurations with and alert administrators to different
predictable performance prior to
integrated IO metrics to optimize storage latency severity levels, and to identify
deployment, organizations can validate
performance and increase ROI slow drain devices that could impact
infrastructure with ClearLink Diagnostics
network performance. This feature
and Flow Generator features, and baseline
identifies various latency severity levels,
storage performance using IO Insight.
pinpointing exactly which devices
are causing or are impacted by a
bottlenecked port, and quarantines slow
drain devices automatically to prevent
buffer credit starvation.

3
•• Dashboards: Provides integrated target/LUN, or across a specific ISL. Brocade Network Advisor
dashboards that display an overall SAN Additionally, they can perform LUN- Brocade Network Advisor simplifies
health view, along with details on out-of- level monitoring of specific frame Gen 6 Fibre Channel management and
range conditions, to help administrators types to identify resource contention helps organizations proactively diagnose
easily identify trends and quickly or congestion that is impacting and resolve issues to maximize uptime,
pinpoint issues occurring on a switch or application performance. With IO increase operational efficiency, and
in a fabric. Insight capability, administrators can reduce costs. The wizard-driven interface
monitor first IO response time, IO dramatically reduces deployment and
•• Configuration and Operational
completion time, number of pending configuration times by allowing fabrics,
Monitoring Policy Automation
IOs, and IOPS metrics for a flow from switches, and ports to be managed
Services Suite (COMPASS): Simplifies
a specific host to a target or LUN. as groups. Customizable dashboards
deployment, safeguards consistency,
and increases operational efficiencies ––Flow Learning: Enables administrators graphically display performance and
of larger environments with automated to non-disruptively discover all flows health indicators out of the box, including
switch and fabric configuration services. that go to or come from a specific all data captured using Brocade Fabric
Administrators can configure a template host port or a storage port, or traverse Vision technology. To accelerate
or adopt an existing configuration to ISLs/IFLs or FCIP tunnels to monitor troubleshooting, administrators can use
seamlessly deploy a configuration fabric-wide application performance. dashboard playback to quickly review
across the fabric. In addition, they can In addition, administrators can discover past events and identify problems in the
ensure settings do not drift over time top and bottom bandwidth-consuming fabric. Dashboards and reports also can
with COMPASS configuration and policy devices and manage capacity be configured to show only the most
violation monitoring within Brocade planning. relevant data, enabling administrators to
Network Advisor dashboards. more efficiently prioritize their actions and
––Flow Generator: Provides a built-in
maintain network performance.
•• Brocade ClearLink Diagnostics: traffic generator for pretesting and
Ensures optical and signal integrity validating the data center infrastructure A Building Block for
for Fibre Channel optics and cables, for robustness—including route Virtualized, Private Cloud
simplifying deployment and support verification and integrity of optics, Storage
of high-performance fabrics. ClearLink cables, ports, back-end connections, The Brocade G620 provides a critical
Diagnostic Port (D_Port) is an advanced and ISLs—before deploying building block for today’s highly
capability of Fibre Channel platforms. applications. virtualized and cloud environments. It
•• Flow Vision: Enables administrators to ––Flow Mirroring: Provides the ability both simplifies server virtualization and
identify, monitor, and analyze specific to non-disruptively create copies of meets the high-throughput demands of
application flows in order to simplify specific application and data flows or Solid State Disks (SSDs). The Brocade
troubleshooting, maximize performance, frame types that can be captured for G620 also supports multitenancy in cloud
avoid congestion, and optimize in-depth analysis. environments through Virtual Fabrics,
resources. Flow Vision includes: Quality of Service (QoS), and fabric-based
•• Forward Error Correction (FEC):
zoning features. In addition, it provides
––Flow Monitor: Provides Enables recovery from bit errors in
efficient link utilization with up to 64 Gbps
comprehensive visibility, automatically device connections and ISLs, enhancing
of in-flight data compression over ISLs.
learns, and non-disruptively monitors transmission reliability and performance.
Organizations can have up to four ports
flow performance. Administrators
•• Credit Loss Recovery: Helps overcome at 16 Gbps of in-flight data compression
can monitor all flows from a specific
performance degradation and per Brocade G620 Switch. Furthermore,
host to multiple targets or LUNs,
congestion due to buffer credit loss. internal fault-tolerant and enterprise-class
from multiple hosts to a specific
RAS features help minimize downtime
to support mission-critical cloud
environments.

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Brocade Access Gateway Brocade Global Services
Mode Brocade Global Services has the
The Brocade G620 can be deployed expertise to help organizations build
as a full-fabric switch or as a Brocade scalable, efficient cloud infrastructures.
Access Gateway, which simplifies fabric Leveraging 20 years of expertise in
topologies and heterogeneous fabric storage, networking, and virtualization,
connectivity (the default mode setting is a Brocade Global Services delivers world-
switch). Brocade Access Gateway mode class professional services, technical
utilizes N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) support, and education services,
switch standards to present physical and enabling organizations to maximize their
virtual servers directly to the core of SAN Brocade investments, accelerate new
fabrics. This makes it transparent to the technology deployments, and optimize the
SAN fabric, greatly reducing management performance of networking infrastructures.
of the network edge. The Brocade G620
in Brocade Access Gateway mode can Maximizing Investments
connect servers to NPIV-enabled Brocade To help optimize technology investments,
B-Series, or other SAN fabrics. Brocade and its partners offer complete
solutions that include professional
Organizations can easily enable Brocade services, technical support, and education.
Access Gateway mode via Brocade For more information, contact a Brocade
Network Advisor or a CLI. Key benefits of sales partner or visit www.brocade.com.
Brocade Access Gateway mode include:

•• Improved scalability for large or rapidly

growing server and virtual server
environments

•• Reduced management of the network

edge, since Brocade Access Gateway
does not have a domain identity and
appears transparent to the core fabric

•• Support for heterogeneous SAN

configurations without reduced
functionality for server connectivity

5
Brocade G620 Specifications
System Architecture

Fibre Channel ports Switch mode (default): Minimum of 24 ports and maximum of 64 ports configuration. Port numbers above
minimum are enabled through 12-port SFP+ increments via Ports on Demand (PoD) licenses and through one
4-port QSFP PoD, providing 16-port increments through a Q-Flex license; E_Ports, F_Ports, D_Ports, EX_Ports.
Brocade Access Gateway default port mapping: 40 SFP+ F_Ports, 8 SFP+ N_Ports

Scalability Full-fabric architecture with a maximum of 239 switches

Certified maximum 6,000 active nodes; 56 switches, 19 hops in Brocade Fabric OS® fabrics; larger fabrics certified as required

Performance Fibre Channel: 4.25 Gbps line speed, full duplex; 8.5 Gbps line speed, full duplex; 10.53 Gbps line speed, full
duplex; 14.025 Gbps line speed, full duplex; 28.05 Gbps, full duplex; 112.2 Gbps, full duplex; auto-sensing of
4, 8, 16, 32 Gbps port speeds and capable of supporting 128 Gbps speeds; 10 Gbps optionally programmable
to fixed port speed

ISL trunking Frame-based trunking with up to eight 32 Gbps SFP+ ports per ISL trunk or up to two 128 Gbps QSFP ports per
ISL trunk. Exchange-based load balancing across ISLs with DPS included in Brocade Fabric OS.

Aggregate bandwidth 2 Tbps

Maximum fabric latency Latency for locally switched ports is 900 ns; compression is 1 μs per node

Maximum frame size 2,112-byte payload

Frame buffers 15,360 dynamically allocated

Classes of service Class 2, Class 3, Class F (inter-switch frames)

Port types D_Port (ClearLink Diagnostic Port), E_Port, EX_Port, F_Port, AE_Port; optional port-type control
Brocade Access Gateway mode: F_Port and NPIV-enabled N_Port

Data traffic types Fabric switches supporting unicast

Media types 128 Gbps: Brocade G620 requires Brocade hot-pluggable QSFP, MPO connector; 128 Gbps SWL
32 Gbps: Brocade G620 requires Brocade hot-pluggable SFP+, LC connector; 32 Gbps SWL
16 Gbps: Brocade G620 requires Brocade hot-pluggable SFP+, LC connector; 16 Gbps SWL
10 Gbps: Brocade G620 requires Brocade hot-pluggable SFP+, LC connector; 10 Gbps SWL
Fibre Channel distance subject to fiber-optic cable and port speed.

USB One USB port for system log file downloads or firmware upgrades

Fabric services Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS); Flow Vision; Brocade Adaptive Networking (Ingress Rate Limiting,
Note: Some fabric services Traffic Isolation, QoS); Fabric Performance Impact (FPI) monitoring; Slow Drain Device Quarantine (SDDQ);
do not apply or are unavailable Brocade Advanced Zoning (default zoning, port/WWN zoning, broadcast zoning, peer zoning, target-driven
in Brocade Access Gateway zoning); Dynamic Fabric Provisioning (DFP); Dynamic Path Selection (DPS); Brocade Extended Fabrics; Enhanced
mode. BB Credit Recovery; FDMI; Frame Redirection; Frame-based Trunking; FSPF; Integrated Routing; IPoFC;
Brocade ISL Trunking; Management Server; NPIV; Time Server; Registered State Change Notification (RSCN);
Reliable Commit Service (RCS); Simple Name Server (SNS); Virtual Fabrics (Logical Switch, Logical Fabric); Read
Diagnostics Parameter (RDP)

Extension Fibre Channel, in-flight compression (Brocade LZO); integrated optional 10 Gbps Fibre Channel for DWDM MAN
connectivity

6
Brocade G620 Specifications (continued)
Management

Supported management software HTTP, SNMP v1/v3 (FE MIB, FC Management MIB), SSH; Auditing, Syslog; NTP v3; Brocade Advanced Web
Tools; Brocade Network Advisor SAN Enterprise or Brocade Network Advisor SAN Professional/Professional
Plus; EZSwitch; Command Line Interface (CLI); SMI-S compliant; REST API; Administrative Domains; trial licenses
for add-on capabilities

Security DH-CHAP (between switches and end devices), FCAP switch authentication; HTTPS, IPsec, IP filtering, LDAP
with IPv6, OpenLDAP, Port Binding, RADIUS, TACACS+, user-defined Role-Based Access Control (RBAC),
Secure Copy (SCP), Secure RPC, Secure Syslog, SFTP, SSH v2, SSL, Switch Binding, Trusted Switch

Management access 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet (RJ-45), in-band over Fibre Channel, serial port (RJ-45), and one USB port

Diagnostics ClearLink optics and cable diagnostics, including electrical/optical loopback, link traffic/latency/distance; flow
mirroring; built-in flow generator; POST and embedded online/offline diagnostics, including environmental
monitoring, FCping and Pathinfo (FC traceroute), frame viewer, non-disruptive daemon restart, optics health
monitoring, power monitoring, RAStrace logging, and Rolling Reboot Detection (RRD)

Mechanical

Enclosure Front-to-back airflow; non-port-side exhaust; power from back, 1U

Back-to-front airflow; non-port-side intake; power from back, 1U

Size Width: 440 mm (17.32 in.)

Height: 43.9 mm (1.73 in.)
Depth: 355.6 mm (14 in.)

System weight 7.73 kg (17 lb) with two power supply FRUs, without transceivers

Environment

Operating environment Temperature: 0°C to 40°C/32°F to 104°F

Humidity: 10% to 85% (non-condensing)

Non-operating environment Temperature: -25°C to 70°C/-13°F to 158°F

Humidity: 10% to 90% (non-condensing)

Operating altitude Up to 3,000 m (9,842 ft)

Storage altitude Up to 12 km (39,370 ft)

Shock Operating: Up to 20 G, 6 ms half-sine

Non-operating: Half-sine, 33 G 11 ms, 3/eg axis

Vibration Operating: 0.5 g sine, 0.4 grms random, 5 to 500 Hz

Non-operating: 2.0 g sine, 1.1 grms random, 5 to 500 Hz

Heat dissipation 64 ports at 716 BTU/hr

7
Brocade G620 Specifications (continued)
Power

Power supply Dual, hot-swappable redundant power supplies with integrated system cooling fans

AC input 90 V to 264 V ~3.5 A

AC input line frequency 47 Hz to 63 Hz

AC power consumption 204 W with all 64 ports populated with 48×32 Gbps SFP+ SWL optics and 4× (4×32 Gbps) QSFP SWL optics
85 W for empty chassis with no optics

For information about supported SAN standards, visit www.brocade.com/sanstandards.

For information about switch and device interoperability, visit www.brocade.com/interoperability.

For information about hardware regulatory compliance, visit www.brocade.com/regulatorycompliance.

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