Lenovo X8-4 Gen 8 Fibre Channel Director

Networking

Lenovo X8-4 Gen 8 Fibre Channel Director

The Lenovo X8-4 Gen 8 Fibre Channel Director is a storage network switch from Lenovo, supporting FC128-48 port blade provides 48 ports of 64Gb/s Fibre Channel.

SKU: X8-4 Category: Networking Brand: Lenovo

Technical Specifications
Overview

Product SKU	X8-4
Generation	Brocade Gen 8 Fibre Channel director
Blade Slots	4 open blade slots
Maximum Ports	Up to 2304 Fibre Channel ports with UltraScale ICL ports
Fabric Scale	Connect up to 12 Brocade Gen 7 or Gen 8 directors in a single fabric
Power Supply	Two PSUs for 1+1 redundancy
Availability	Designed for 99.999% uptime; hot-pluggable redundant power supplies, fans and WWN cards
Component	Specification
System Architecture	System Architecture
Chassis	X8-4: Non-blocking architecture • X8-4 Director with 4 128G 48-port blades: 31Tb/s of aggregate chassis bandwidth (192 device ports with a 128G data rate plus 8 UltraScale ICL ports with 8 x Gen 8) Each provides support for (E, F, D, M, SIM, and EX) Fibre Channel ports using Fibre Channel blades
Control Processor	Redundant (active/standby) control processor blades.
Scalability	Full-fabric architecture of 239 switches.
Certified Maximum	6000 active devices per switch; 56 switches, 19 hops in Brocade Fabric OS® (FOS) fabrics; larger fabrics certified as required.
Port Blades	FC128-48 port blade provides 48 ports of 64Gb/s Fibre Channel. • Fibre Channel: 112.2Gbps line speed, full duplex; 57.8Gbps line speed, full duplex; 28.05Gbps line speed, full duplex; 14.025Gbps line speed, full duplex; autosensing of 128, 64, 32, and 16G port speeds depending on SFPs used. • Autosensing of 16, 32, 64 and 128Gbps port speeds depending on SFPs used.
ISL Trunking	Frame-based trunking with up to eight 128G SFP+ ports per ISL trunk; up to 1024Gbps per ISL trunk between switches using 128, 64, 32, or 16G ports; Exchange-based load balancing across ISLs with DPS included in Brocade FOS.
UltraScale ICL Trunking	For chassis-to-chassis links on the inter-chassis link (ICL) blade to form a trunk: • Trunks are formed from individual FC ports within different OSFP ports residing in the same trunk group indicated by the color borders under the ports on the blade faceplate. • A minimum of within a port trunk group on the ICL blades that are installed in one device must be connected to a pair of OSFPs within a trunk group on the ICL blades in another device. This will result in 8 trunks of 2 ports each. • Additional OSFP connections should be added in pairs, with each additional pair residing within the same trunk boundary. Best practice is to deploy across both ICL blades on each chassis to achieve ICL blade redundancy.
Multi-chassis With UltraScale ICL Ports	Up to 4608 Fibre Channel ports; UltraScale ICL ports (16 ports per 8-slot chassis or 8 ports per 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.
Slot Bandwidth	6144Gbps providing line-rate performance for the FC128-48 blade.
Maximum Frame Size	2112-byte payload.
Frame Buffers	40,000 per ASIC.
Fibre Channel Port Types	• FC128-48: F_Port, E_Port, EX_Port, M_Port, SIM, and D_Port. X8-4 CR Blades: E_Port, EX_Port, and D_Port. Self-discovery is based on switch type (U_Port) with an optional port type control.
Data Traffic Types	Fabric switches supporting unicast.
Media Types	• FC128-48 port blade: – 128G FC SFP+: SWL (LC Connector) – 64G FC SFP+: SWL, LWL, ELWL (LC Connector) • Inter-Chassis Links (ICL) blades: – Gen 8 FC OSFP MMF, OSFP connector: SWL 100m (MPO-16 connector) – Gen 8 FC OSFP SMF, LCx2 connector: LWL 2 km (LC x 2 connector) All Brocade transceivers are PC/UPC compatible.
USB	One USB port per control processor for firmware download, SupportSave, and configuration upload or download.
Fabric Services	BB Credit Recovery; Brocade Advanced Zoning (Default Zoning, Port/WWN Zoning, Peer Zoning); Congestion Signaling; Dynamic Path Selection (DPS); Extended Fabrics; Fabric Performance Impact Notification (FPIN); Fabric Vision; FDMI; FICON CUP; Flow Vision; F_Port Trunking; FSPF; Integrated Routing; ISL Trunking; Management Server; Name Server; NPIV; NTP v3; Port Decommission/Fencing; QoS; Registered State Change Notification (RSCN); Target-Driven Zoning; Traffic Optimizer; Virtual Fabrics (Logical Switch, Logical Fabric); SAN Fabric Intelligence; VMID+ and AppServer.
Long Distance	Fibre Channel, in-flight compression (Brocade LZO) and encryption (AES-GCM-256 encryption on FC ISLs [E_Port]); support for DWDM MAN connectivity.
System Components	System Components
Classes Of Service	Class 2, Class 3, Class F (inter-switch frames).
ANSI Fibre Channel Protocol	Fibre Channel Physical and Signaling Interface standard (FC-PH).
Port-to-port Latency	• Local switching: 580 ns at 128G with dual forward error correction (FEC). • Blade-to-blade: 1.74 μs.
Chassis Power	• All six 3000W power supplies are required to support N+N redundancy • Chassis ships with Core Processing (CP) and Core Routing (CR) blades only • Offers optional airflow directions: nonport-side intake (NPI) or nonport-side exhaust (NPE) • PSU and fan assemblies with matching airflow direction must be ordered separately X8-4: • All four 3000W power supplies are required to support N+N redundancy • Chassis ships with Core Processing (CP) and Core Routing (CR) blades only • Offers optional airflow directions: nonport-side intake NPI or nonport-side exhaust NPE • PSU and fans with matching airflow direction must be ordered separately
Cooling	• Requires 3 fan tray assemblies for a 2+1 redundancy. A failure condition is 1 failed fan from any fan tray. X8-4: • Requires 3 fan tray assemblies for a 2+1 redundancy. A failure condition is 1 failed fan from any fan tray. • Each assembly contains 2 fans for a total of 6 fans. The system requires 5 of 6 functioning fans for operation in the X8-4. One fan assembly can be hot-swapped and should be replaced immediately in the event of a failure.
Management	Management Brocade Web Tools; Brocade SANnav Management Portal and SANnav Global View; command-line interface (CLI); HTTPS; RESTful API; SSH; SNMPv3 (FE MIB, FC Management MIB); trial licenses for add-on capabilities. 1/10Gbps Ethernet (RJ-45) per control processor; serial console port (RJ-45) and one USB per control processor module; DHCP/DHCPv6; call-home integration enabled through Brocade SANnav Management Portal.
Security	AES-GCM-256 encryption on FC ISLs (E_Port); Device Connection Control (DCC); DH-CHAP (between switches and end devices); Fabric Configuration Server (FCS); Federated Authentication; FCAP switch authentication; FIPS 140-3 compliant; HTTPS; IP filtering; OpenLDAP; port binding; principle of least privilege architecture; user-defined role-based access control (RBAC); Secure Boot; Secure Copy (SCP); Secure Syslog; SFTP; SSH v2; Switch Binding; TLS v1.3; PQC algorithms; Trusted FOS Certificates (TruFOS); USGv6 compliant.
Warranty & Support	Warranty & Support
Hardware Warranty & SW Entitlement	Three-year customer-replaceable unit limited warranty with 9×5 next business day parts delivered. Also, entitlement to access latest FOS software
Architecture	Nonblocking shared memory; passive backplane; redundant active/passive control processor; redundant active/active core switching blades; single chassis ID (CID) card with built in redundancy. Card is not field replaceable.
Solution Availability	Designed to provide 99.999% uptime with nondisruptive capabilities, hot-pluggable components and a no-single-point-of-failure design. • Includes redundant: power supplies, fans, CID cards, processors, core switching, ICL blades, port blades, and optics. • Includes online diagnostics and nondisruptive firmware download and activation
Diagnostics	Active Support Connectivity (ASC) and Brocade Support Link (BSL); built-in flow generator; ClearLink optics and cable diagnostics, including link traffic/latency/distance; Fabric Performance Impact Monitoring (FPI); flow mirroring; dual forward error correction (FEC); frame viewer; IO Insight for SCSI and NVMe monitoring; Monitoring and Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS); nondisruptive daemon restart; optics health monitoring; POST and embedded online/offline diagnostics, including environmental monitoring, FCping, and Pathinfo (FC traceroute); power monitoring; RAStrace logging; Rolling Reboot Detection (RRD); SAN Fabric Intelligence (SAN FI); Syslog/Audit Log; VM Insight.

Overview

The Lenovo X8-4 Gen 8 Fibre Channel Director is a storage network switch from Lenovo supporting FC128-48 port blade provides 48 ports of 64Gb/s Fibre Channel.

It provides FC128-48: F_Port, E_Port, EX_Port, M_Port, SIM, and D_Port. delivering 6144Gbps providing line-rate performance for the FC128-48 blade.

Key Features

Ports and port types: FC128-48 port blade provides 48 ports of 64Gb/s Fibre Channel. / Fibre Channel: 112.2Gbps line speed, full duplex; 57.8Gbps line speed, full duplex; 28.05Gbps line speed, full duplex; 14.025Gbps line speed, full duplex; autosensing of 128, 64, 32, and 16G port speeds depending on SFPs used. …
Blade slots: 6144Gbps providing line-rate performance for the FC128-48 blade.
Bandwidth: 6144Gbps providing line-rate performance for the FC128-48 blade.
Management and software: Management / Brocade Web Tools; Brocade SANnav Management Portal and SANnav Global View; command-line interface (CLI); HTTPS; RESTful API; SSH; SNMPv3 (FE MIB, FC Management MIB); trial licenses for add-on capabilities. …
Power and cooling: Requires 3 fan tray assemblies for a 2+1 redundancy. A failure condition is 1 failed fan from any fan tray. / X8-4: / Requires 3 fan tray assemblies for a 2+1 redundancy. A failure condition is 1 failed fan from any fan tray. …

Applications

Fibre Channel SAN fabric expansion
NVMe over Fibre Channel and all-flash storage networking
Data center consolidation and fabric modernization
Mission-critical storage networking with high availability

Configuration, availability and lead time depend on the required quantity, chassis and CPU platform, and delivery destination. Send your requirement to receive a quotation.