The Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Centre has enhanced its Storage Area Network (SAN) environment with Brocade systems.

The Enterprise Engineering Centre implemented 4 Gbit/sec Brocade 48000 Directors, SAN switches, and Fabric Manager software to enable a seamless and stable SAN environment for customers to simulate how new Microsoft solutions operate in real-world conditions.  The Enterprise Engineering Centre hosts customers who are testing and validating planned upgrades, migrations, or deployments of Microsoft’s next-generation enterprise software and solutions.

The Brocade infrastructure allows the Enterprise Engineering Centre to configure and isolate customers’ product tests on a single physical SAN fabric, ensuring privacy and reducing the centre’s management requirements.

“Traditionally we had to construct dedicated SAN fabrics to assure each customer’s security, which was laborious and time-consuming,” said Scott Napolitan, group manager, Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Centre. “With the Brocade technology, our engagement engineers can now tailor fabric environments for each customer rapidly and easily. We have up to five customer engagements on one physical network, enabling them to evaluate our products in a more time-efficient manner.”

The Brocade solution improves the centre’s productivity through the Brocade Fabric Manager application. Administrators can create, monitor, and dynamically provision multiple virtual SAN domains with any onsite devices without manually reconfiguring cables.