Brocade vs. Cisco

[Armin Norouzi]

Hi,
Can anyone help me compare Brocade vs. Cisco fabric devices.

Regards

[IBaltay]

Hi,
this could help you:
http://www.brocade.com/data-center-best-practices/competitive-information/architecture.page

[Armin Norouzi]

Thanks IBaltay,
The stuff was very cool, but was provided by Brocade and not totaly impartial.
I found out that the market share for Brocad and Cisco is near 50% each. So their quality should not be very different, but Brocade claims that it is much better than Cisco.
Can you help me for a fair comparison.

[IBaltay]

Hi,
here are e.g. some other docs:
http://www.bradreese.com/cisco-mcdata.pdf

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com.au/articles/21242-Fibre-Channel-director-face-off-Brocade-vs-Cisco-Part-1

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com.au/articles/23426-Fibre-Channel-director-face-off-Brocade-vs-Cisco-Part-2

[Amar_Joshi · Accepted solution]

Arminn,

It's fair to ask this question and I am sure most of the answers will be biased because of personal preferences. More over that if someone compares 2 products, what matter most is which model are you looking at.

In general, Brocade is easy to manage, long-term player and scalable to data center needs. Cisco limits their product range (may be because they are new and not yet penetrated well into market) but carries plenty of features.

VSANS:
Only Brocade DCX supports the switch partition where as Cisco will support it using VSANs on all the models.

ISL/ICL:
DCX can go upto 128GB/s between DCXs, whereas Cisco will only support trunking. Other Brocade products also depends upon trunking.

Power:
Brocade is more greener than Cisco.

QOS:
It's a feature in recent Brocade FOS, Cisco maintains it all along.

Backend architecture:
Brocade has solid performance numbers if it comes to local switching (within ASIC) and it won't touch the backend if the data can be served via ASIC. Cisco always performs data transfer using backend. This allows Brocade to upgrade the firmware online.

POD:
Brocade licensing works better for SMBs when it come to license on demand.

Management:
Brocade has simpler management tools than Cisco.

Hope that helps. Again, I am not favoring any of the products but trying to send out the message that based on organizational requirements both products have their own place.

[Louis Henninger_1]

That was nicely done...

Louis