Brocade(R) has demonstrated a new server-to-storage area network (SAN) management productivity solution for Microsoft System Centre that provides customers with end-to-end data centre fabric and host bus adapter (HBA) management capabilities, as well as recommendations for optimising their system performance.

Called the Brocade Management Pack for Microsoft System Centre, the new solution helps enable IT organisations to take advantage of these capabilities to monitor the health and performance of the SAN infrastructure and use the information to dynamically optimise data and server resources in virtualised data centres.

"Customers continue to ask us for simpler and more efficient ways to track and manage their critical data to maintain business continuity, and the advent of virtualisation and virtual machine mobility has only magnified that need," said Harry Petty, director of Marketing for the Brocade Server Division. "As the world leader in connecting businesses to their data, Brocade is pleased to align with Microsoft to deliver management solutions that are easy to deploy and that meet the highest levels of quality of service and return on investment in today's dynamic IT environment."

Brocade Management Pack for Microsoft System Centre interoperates directly with Performance and Resource Optimisation (PRO), a feature of Virtual Machine Manager 2008, to offer expanded visibility and dynamic management of virtualised infrastructures beyond the confines of the server and into the shared storage network. PRO's real-time monitoring and remedial capabilities enable IT organisations to act upon an event that is impacting performance or a pending failure in the storage network, ultimately helping them to optimise application performance, seamlessly connect data, and unify management of their information assets.

The Brocade solution is built on the innovative Brocade Data Centre Fabric (DCF) architecture and HBA management capabilities to help bridge the "virtualisation management gap" and empowers organisations to make informed decisions about where to place, migrate, or reconfigure applications, hardware, and virtual machines. Brocade offers a comprehensive portfolio of data centre networking products delivering superior performance, reliability and ease of use versus competitors.

"We are pleased to align with Brocade in their delivery of new capabilities which integrate with the end-to-end virtualisation management solutions provided by System Centre to simplify infrastructure management and provide powerful new capabilities to the dynamic, virtualised data centre," said Zane Adam, senior director of integrated virtualisation at Microsoft. For more information on how Brocade is aligning with Microsoft to deliver dynamic management solutions for virtualised IT environments visit us at http://www.brocade.com/msvirt.

About Brocade

Brocade is the leading provider of data centre networking solutions that help organisations connect, share, and manage their information in the most efficient manner. Organisations that use Brocade products and services are better able to optimise their IT infrastructures and ensure compliant data management. For more information, visit the Brocade Web site at http://www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com.

Brocade, the B-wing symbol, DCX, Fabric OS, File Lifecycle Manager, MyView, and StorageX are registered trademarks, and DCFM and SAN Health are trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of, and are used to identify, products or services of their respective owners.