Connectrix ED-DCX8-8B 128G Fibre Channel Director

Overview

The Connectrix ED-DCX8-8B is the 14U member of the 128 Gb/s ED-DCX8 enterprise director family, built on Connectrix B-Series GEN8 technology. Eight port blade slots carry up to 384 x 128 Gb/s Fibre Channel ports, and 16 UltraScale inter-chassis link (ICL) ports add up to 128 chassis-to-chassis interconnect ports. The director is purpose-built to power and secure large-scale storage environments, supporting growth, workload consolidation and enterprise AI workloads without compromising performance.

Chassis and Port Configuration

• Form factor: 14U (61.8 cm / 24.3 in. high), rack-mountable in a standard 19-inch EIA cabinet
• Blade slots: 14 blade slots, of which 8 are port blade slots
• Fibre Channel ports: Up to 384 x 128 Gb/s Fibre Channel ports, supporting E, F, D, M, SIM and EX port
  types on Fibre Channel blades
• UltraScale ICL ports: 16 UltraScale ICL ports, providing up to 128 chassis-to-chassis interconnect ports
• Aggregate chassis bandwidth: 62 Tb/s with eight FC128-48 port blades (384 device ports at 128G plus 16 UltraScale ICL ports)
• Slot bandwidth: 6,144 Gb/s, providing line-rate performance for the
  FC128-48 blade
• AnyIO ports: 24 AnyIO ports per FC128-48 blade (ports 24-47) are
  Ethernet-capable and support Ethernet speeds up to 100GbE, changing speed on a per-port basis
  when configured for IP storage. Up to 192 100GbE Ethernet ports with eight FC128-48 port blades
• Control processor: redundant active/standby control processor blades
• Chassis availability: ships with Core Processing (CP) and Core Routing (CR)
  blades only

Performance

• Fibre Channel (FC128-48 blade): 112.2 Gb/s, 57.8 Gb/s, 28.05 Gb/s and
  14.025 Gb/s line speed, full duplex; auto-sensing of 128, 64, 32 and 16 Gb/s port speeds
  depending on the SFPs used
• AnyIO ports: configurable as Fibre Channel or IP, supporting 128, 64, 32
  and 16 Gb/s Fibre Channel or 100, 50, 25 and 10GbE IP speeds. The 128G SWL SFP+ supports 100,
  50, 25 and 10GbE; the 64G SWL SFP+ supports 25GbE and 10GbE
• Port-to-port latency: 580 ns local switching at 128G with dual forward error
  correction (FEC); 1.74 µs blade-to-blade
• ISL trunking: frame-based trunking with up to eight 128G SFP+ ports per ISL
  trunk, up to 1,024 Gb/s per trunk between switches using 128, 64, 32 or 16G ports; exchange-based
  load balancing across ISLs with DPS included in Fabric OS
• UltraScale ICL trunking: trunks are formed from individual FC ports within
  different OSFP ports in the same trunk group; a minimum of two OSFPs in one device must connect
  to a pair of OSFPs in another, giving eight trunks of two ports each. Additional OSFP connections
  are added in pairs, and deploying across both ICL blades on each chassis gives ICL blade
  redundancy
• Maximum frame size: 2,112-byte payload; IPS jumbo frames up to 9K
• Frame buffers: 40,000 per switching ASIC
• Classes of service: Class 2, Class 3 and Class F (inter-switch frames)
• Data traffic types: fabric switches supporting unicast

AI-Powered Autonomy and SAN Management

GEN8 technology embeds SAN AI and SAN Fabric Intelligence (SAN FI) so that the fabric
monitors its own behaviour, detects anomalies and self-corrects before performance is impacted.
Built-in intelligence collates millions of data points from across the fabric and reduces complex
telemetry to actionable insight.

• SAN Fabric Intelligence: eliminates manual correlation of servers, storage,
  virtual machines and fabric connections and provides end-to-end fabric visibility
• Adaptive Traffic Optimizer: automatically prioritises critical application
  traffic, adapts performance groups as traffic characteristics change, and isolates flows that are
  adversely affecting others
• Web Tools and SANnav: a simplified built-in interface for everyday tasks plus
  modern dashboards, accelerated troubleshooting and rapid deployment of applications, servers,
  switches and storage
• Congestion management: keeps traffic flowing and performance consistent
  without manual tuning

Multi-Chassis Scalability

UltraScale ICLs are OSFP-based and enable scalable core-edge and active-active full-mesh chassis topologies. Because ICL connections reside on the core routing blades instead of consuming port blade ports, up to 33% more device ports remain available for server and storage connectivity, and high-density chassis topologies reduce inter-switch cabling by up to 87.5%. A chain of UltraScale ICLs connects up to 12 ED-DCX7 or ED-DCX8 directors, enabling flatter and simpler fabrics.

• Maximum fabric: full-fabric architecture of 239 switches
• Multi-chassis scale: up to 4,608 Fibre Channel ports; UltraScale ICL ports
  (16 on the 8-slot chassis, 8 on the 4-slot chassis, optical OSFP) connect up to 9 chassis in a
  full-mesh topology or up to 12 chassis in a core-edge topology
• I2C/ICL cabling: the 100 m GEN8 ICL port uses OSFP transceivers with MPO-16
  multimode connectors; the 2 km ICL port uses two single-mode LC-LC connectors. Connecting an
  ED-DCX8 GEN8 ICL to an ED-DCX7 GEN7 ICL requires an OSFP-to-2x QSFP breakout cable
• Media types: 128G FC SFP+ with LC connector (SWL); 64G FC SFP+ with LC
  connector (SWL, LWL, ELWL); GEN8 FC OSFP multimode (SWL 100 m) and single-mode (LWL 2 km) for
  ICLs. All transceivers are PC/UPC compatible
• Unified Storage Fabric: IP storage support with the IPS logical switch is available on the ED-DCX8-8B and ED-DCX8-4B with the FC128-48 port blade, consolidating IP storage and Fibre Channel onto the same storage network and extending SAN services, centralised management and dual-fabric resiliency to IP storage workloads

Cyber-Resilient, Quantum-Safe Security

Connectrix B-Series GEN8 secures storage traffic through Fibre Channel isolation and
role-based access controls, protecting against unauthorised access. Hardened Fabric OS and
validated hardware and software roots of trust ensure that only authenticated components operate
within the system, and a principle of least privilege architecture grants users, applications and
systems only the minimum access necessary to perform their functions.

• Quantum-resistant encryption: 256-bit post-quantum cryptography algorithms
  designed to protect data against future quantum-computing attacks
• Fabric isolation: Fibre Channel zoning and role-based access control keep
  storage traffic separate from general-purpose networks
• MapS security monitoring: SANnav Management Portal captures MAPS alerts for
  real-time monitoring of the security configuration, fabric health and performance

Management

• Management software: Brocade Web Tools; Brocade SANnav Management Portal and
  SANnav Global View; command-line interface (CLI); HTTPS; RESTful API; SSH; SNMP v1/v3 (FE MIB, FC
  Management MIB); trial licences for add-on capabilities
• Management access: 1/10Gb/s Ethernet (RJ-45) per control processor, serial
  console port (RJ-45) and one USB per control processor module; DHCP/DHCPv6; call-home integration
  through SANnav Management Portal
• Diagnostics: Active Support Connectivity (ASC) and Brocade Support Link (BSL); built-in flow generator; ClearLink optics and cable diagnostics including electrical/optical loopback and link traffic/latency/distance; Fabric Performance Impact Monitoring (FPI); flow mirroring; Forward Error Correction; frame viewer; IO Insight for SCSI and NVMe monitoring; Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS); non-disruptive daemon restart; optics health monitoring; POST and embedded online/offline diagnostics including environmental monitoring, FCping and Pathinfo (FC trace route); power monitoring; RAStrace logging; Rolling Reboot Detection (RRD); Syslog/Audit Log; VM Insight

FICON and Mainframe Support

Fibre Channel port blades and the extension blade support mainframe storage environments
alongside open-systems traffic, so a single fabric can carry both.

• FICON services: FICON cascading, support for lossless DLS, FICON CUP and the
  Advanced Accelerator for FICON (IBM z/OS Global Mirror and read/write tape pipelining)
• Note: FICON connectivity is not supported on the PB-DCX6-64P32G blade

High Availability and Power

• Architecture: non-blocking shared memory with passive backplane, redundant
  active/passive control processor, redundant active/active core switching blades and a single
  chassis ID (CID) card with built-in redundancy (the card itself is not field replaceable)
• Power supplies: All six 3000W power supplies required to support N+N redundancy
• Cooling: Three fan tray assemblies for 2+1 redundancy; each assembly holds four fans (12 total), and 11 of 12 fans must be operational
• Airflow: non-port-side intake (NPI) or non-port-side exhaust (NPE) options;
  PSU and fan airflow directions must match
• Rack support: 27-31 in. and 22-27 in. rail kits for four-post racks
• Solution availability: designed for 99.999% uptime with non-disruptive
  firmware download and activation, hot-pluggable power supplies, fans, CID cards, processors, core
  switching, ICL blades, port blades and optics

Physical Specifications

• Height x width x depth: 61.8 cm x 44.2 cm x 68.7 cm (24.3 in. x 17.4 in. x 27.0 in.), 14U
• Weight: 99.6 lb (45.2 kg) empty chassis; 257.5 lb (116.8 kg) fully populated

Power and Heat Dissipation

• Heat dissipation and power: Typical: 13,652 Btu/hr; maximum: 24,687 Btu/hr. Power consumed: typical 4,000 W, maximum 7,233 W, measured at 200 VAC with full PSU redundancy
• Power supply rating: 3,000W PSUs, 80 PLUS Titanium certified
• Input voltage: standard AC input range 90-264 VAC auto-volt, nominal
  100-240 VAC; 85-132 VAC delivers 1,500W and 180-264 VAC delivers 3,000W
• Input line frequency: 50-60 Hz nominal
• Inrush current: less than 50 A maximum, peak

Environmental Specifications

• Operating temperature: 0°C to 40°C (32°F to 104°F)
• Non-operating temperature: -25°C to 70°C (-13°F to 158°F)
• Operating humidity: 5% to 93% RH non-condensing at 40°C (104°F),
  with a maximum gradient of 10% per hour
• Non-operating humidity: 10% to 93% RH non-condensing at 70°C (158°F)
• Altitude: up to 3,000 m (9,842 ft)
• Shock: operating 10g, 11 ms half-sine wave; non-operating 20g, 11 ms
  half-sine wave
• Vibration: operating 5-10 Hz at +5 dB/Oct, 10-200 Hz at 0.0005 G2/Hz,
  200-500 Hz at -5 dB/Oct, scale 0.5 Grms; non-operating 3-10 Hz at +5 dB/Oct, 10-200 Hz at
  0.0065 G2/Hz, 200-500 Hz at -5 dB/Oct, scale 1.12 Grms

Services and Warranty

Dell Technologies Services cover the full lifecycle of a SAN build-out: Consulting Services for design and planning, ProDeploy Enterprise Suite for deployment through planning, configuration and complex integrations, Residency and Managed Services for ongoing operations, and ProSupport Enterprise Suite for expert support backed by proactive and predictive AI tools.

Ordering

Configuration, availability and lead time depend on the required model, port count, optics and delivery destination. Send your requirement to receive a quotation.