The SAN switch and director vendor has already been talking up the product that it first released to OEMs for testing last October. But by its very nature the box is not going to be high-volume seller, and this may be why the OEMs are being slow to qualify it, although HP managed to signal its intentions to do so eventually by publicly praising the device.

Whatever Brocade actually feels about the issue, its marketing vice president Jay Kidd said: It is not uncommon for new concepts in storage networking to initially come to market thorugh resellers, as the OEMs gear up their qualification process. Kidd plugged what he said is strong customer interest in the product that will spur OEMs into action.

Around a dozen customers have received the box, and some are using it in production, Brocade said. Brocade declined to say when it expects OEMs to qualify and begin reselling the router. ComputerWire was unable to reach any OEMs for comment by press time.

OEM support for future versions of the device that will run third-party software that competes with their own products could well be problematic, but this is not the case with the Multiprotocol Router.

The device is the first shipping iteration of Brocade’s Rhapsody-developed Fabric Application Platform, and is called the Silkworm Multiprotocol Router. It is a version of the FAP running routing software that allows SAN islands to be linked together in a more useful way than was previously possible.

Brocade said the router will probably only be cost-effective for customers with three or more SAN islands or fabrics, although it stressed that some customers operate a dozen or so such islands.

The shipping announcement included a testimonial for the router from Hewlett-Packard Co. But neither HP nor any of the other large OEMs – IBM Corp, Hitachi Ltd, and EMC Corp- that account for the majority of SAN switch sales are yet offering the device.

Analysts endorsed the box. Brian Babineau, research analyst at the Enterprise Storage Group described it as certainly relevant, while John Webster at Data Mobility said: There’s a lot of value in it.

The OEMs have only just had to put a whole load of Brocade devices through expensive qualification testing. This latest one is unlikely to be high on their priorities. Brocade is probably trying putting a little pressure on them with this announcement, said Babineau.

Connecting SAN islands together increases the flexibility with which storage can be allocated to different host servers, or backups routed to central tape libraries. But it creates a risk that an error in what was previously an isolated SAN will propagate to other islands, and bring down those too.

Brocade’s new box will block errors when it is used to link islands via Fibre Channel, iSCSI or FCIP links. It will also allow virtual or software-defined links to be altered at will.

Other ways of linking SAN islands are to use straight SAN-to-SAN un-routed ISL links, or to use IP-based FCIP or iFCP connections. Straight ISL links will not block errors, while FCIP or iFCP links can only run over Ethernet links that do not match the throughput of Fibre Channel. According to Brocade, FCIP will also allow errors to spread, and iFCP requires every device in the merged islands to have a unique network name, creating difficulties if default names were originally used.

Another way to link islands is to use Cisco’s Virtual SAN feature, which is a software function on its MDS 9000 SAN devices. Although Brocade said that this is fine in concept, it claimed that VSANs allow some errors to propagate, and can create naming problems. Computerwire was unable to reach Cisco by press time for the inevitable rebuttal or qualification of this claim.

Until now, when two SANs built using different vendors’ gear have been linked together, advanced but non-standardized management features in both have had to be disabled, and the networks cut back to dumb interoperability mode.

Brocade says this will not be necessary with its multi-protocol router, and has demonstrated linking heterogenous SANs not running in interoperability mode. However it is still not know whether SAN rivals such as McData Corp and Cisco Systems Inc will continue to support customers who have connected their gear to Brocade’s using Brocade’s router.

The FAP was developed as a platform for third-party applications, such as virtualization or heterogeneous data replication. Brocade said the first of these third-party applications running on the FAP will reach customers in the Fall.