storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from serve ...

ing, Fabric OS is the

firmware In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...

for

Brocade Communications Systems Brocade is an American technology company specializing in storage networking products, now a subsidiary of Broadcom Inc. The company is known for its Fibre Channel storage networking products and technology. Prior to the acquisition, the comp ...

Fibre Channel switch In the computer storage field, a Fibre Channel switch is a network switch compatible with the Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. It allows the creation of a Fibre Channel fabric, that is the core component of a storage area network (SAN). The fabric i ...

es and

Fibre Channel director In the computer storage field, a Fibre Channel switch is a network switch compatible with the Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. It allows the creation of a Fibre Channel fabric, that is the core component of a storage area network (SAN). The fabric ...

s. It is also known as FOS.

First generation

The first generation of Fabric OS was developed on top of a

VxWorks VxWorks is a real-time operating system (or RTOS) developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aptiv. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems requiring real-time, determin ...

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learnin ...

and was mainly used in the Brocade Silkworm 2000 and first 3000 series on

Intel i960 Intel's i960 (or 80960) was a RISC-based microprocessor design that became popular during the early 1990s as an embedded microcontroller. It became a best-selling CPU in that segment, along with the competing AMD 29000. In spite of its success, ...

. Even today, many production environments are still running the older generation Silkworm models.

Second generation

The second generation of Fabric OS was developed on a

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

platform, and uses

MontaVista MontaVista Software is a company that develops embedded Linux system software, development tools, and related software. Its products are made for other corporations developing embedded systems such as Automotive industry, automotive electronics ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, a Linux derivative with

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

performance enhancements. With the advent of MontaVista, switches and directors have the ability of hot

activation (without downtime for

Fibre Channel fabric Switched fabric or switching fabric is a network topology in which network nodes interconnect via one or more network switches (particularly crossbar switches). Because a switched fabric network spreads network traffic across multiple physical li ...

), and many useful diagnostic commands. According to free software licenses terms, Brocad
provides access to sources
of distributed free software, on which Fabric OS and other Brocade's software products are based.

Additional licensed products

Additional products for Fabric OS are offered by Brocade for one-time fee. They are licensed for use in a single specific switch (license key is coupled with device's serial number). Those include: * Integrated Routing * Adaptive Networking:

Quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...

, Ingress Rate Limiting *

Brocade Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian ''broccato'' meaning "embos ...

Advanced

Zoning Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a si ...

(Free with rel 6.1.x) * ISL

trunking In telecommunications, trunking is a technology for providing network access to multiple clients simultaneously by sharing a set of circuits, carriers, channels, or frequencies, instead of providing individual circuits or channels for each clie ...

* Ports on Demand * Extended Fabrics (more than 10 km of switched fabric connectivity, up to 3000 km) * Advanced Performance Monitoring (APM) * Fabric Watch * Secure Fabric OS (obsolete) * VMWare VSPEX integration

Versions

* Fabric OS 9.x ** 9.0: Traffic optimizer, Fabric congestion notification * Fabric OS 8.x ** 8.2:

NVMe NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via PCI Express (PCIe) bus. The ...

capable +

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and entert ...

API ** 8.1: ** 8.0: Contains many new software features and enhancements as well as issue resolutions * Fabric OS 7.x ** 7.4: Switch to Linux 3.10 kernel ** 7.3: ** 7.2: ** 7.1: ** 7.0: * Fabric OS 6.x ** 6.4: ** 6.3: Fillwords 2 and 3 introduced in Fabric OS 6.3.1a ** 6.2: Virtual Fabrics-capable ** 6.1: M-EOS compatibility enhancements ** 6.0: LDAP support * Fabric OS 5.x ** 5.3: Switch to Linux 2.6 kernel ** 5.2: ** 5.1: Access Gateway mode ** 5.0: * Fabric OS 4.x ** 4.4: ** 4.3: ** 4.2: ** 4.1: SSH support, Multiple user access ** 4.0: * Fabric OS 3.x * Fabric OS 2.x

References

Fibre Channel Internet Protocol based network software {{network-software-stub