Brocade Upgrades Popular SAN Health Analysis Tool

As part of its commitment to enabling peak performance in storage networks, Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Brocade) (Nasdaq: BRCDE) today announced a new release of SAN Health, the highly popular Web-accessible tool used for analyzing and optimizing Storage Area Networks (SANs). Available at no cost to Brocade Partners and SAN end-user customers, this industry-leading utility has been used to generate over 18,000 customized, in-depth SAN analysis reports since June 2004, helping more than 5,000 different organizations optimize their SAN designs and operations.

Brocade developed SAN Health to simplify SAN analysis and management tasks for end-user organizations and support professionals responsible for deploying and managing SANs. In response to requests from frequent SAN Health users, Brocade implemented upgrades in the new SAN Health Version 3.0 to make it easier to use and more secure, with more customizable report options. SAN Health 3.0 includes a simplified graphical user interface, support for Secure Shell (SSH) communications between SAN locations, and support for Brocade Secure Fabric OS. Version 3.0 also increases flexibility in generating reports and diagrams, including the ability to insert unique company branding and hyperlinks.

In addition, a recent enhancement to SAN Health allows it to now analyze McDATA SANs as well as Brocade SAN fabrics, and more than 300 McDATA customers have taken advantage of its capabilities in helping to better analyze and diagnose their McDATA storage networks.

A typical SAN Health report gives users a thorough inventory of complex shared storage systems and a detailed storage network topology diagram, a process that previously took extensive manual effort and several different tools to complete. The utility also alerts users to potential problems, and provides an accurate point-in-time documentation set, historical performance graphs, and best-practice recommendations to successfully optimize SAN maintenance and avert downtime.

Timely, Reliable Reports
Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation is a group of more than 30 entities equipped to provide medical care to more than 45,000 patients a year across the Mid-Southern U.S. It includes 16 hospitals, 23 home care branches, 14 hospice care facilities, and more. "At Baptist Memorial we rely on weekly SAN Health reports from Brocade to track our SAN configuration and usage," said Hal Weiss, System Engineer at Baptist Memorial. "With so many organizations depending on the data we maintain, SAN Health is indispensable in reporting to my management on the state of the storage network, and it helps us anticipate SAN-related issues before they become problems."

Commerzbank is one of Europe's leading banking institutions and is responsible for a full range of sensitive banking data for its nearly seven million private and corporate clients. The bank's staff of 32,000-including 7,000 international employees-depends upon smoothly running IT processes in order to provide first-class service to its clients. "Brocade's SAN Health Visio Diagram feature is an excellent reporting tool that has enabled Commerzbank to save significant time and internal resources by providing us with a complete and detailed report on our inventory layout, and total ports installed for all of our SAN switches and directors," said Dirk Haratz, Storage Administrator at Commerzbank Frankfurt/Germany. "Brocade's SAN Health product has contributed to our organizational goals, which include implementing best practices that optimize our SAN investment and increase our productivity."

Rex Healthcare is a private, not-for-profit healthcare system that has been providing healthcare services to Wake County, North Carolina and surrounding areas since 1894. "In a healthcare environment, the reliability of your IT systems is extremely important," said Dave Bullamore, Manager, Systems Integration at Rex Healthcare. "SAN Health is an excellent utility that will be a big help in managing our Brocade SAN. It quickly gives us an accurate picture of the networked storage environment and it helps us anticipate SAN-related issues before we have a problem. We are really pleased that Brocade has provided us with such a valuable tool."

"In the past 12 months, we've seen storage teams clambering for tools to improve SAN visibility," said Brad O'Neill, Senior Analyst at the Taneja Group. "The pressure is on vendors to provide analytical and diagnostic tools that are both comprehensive and extremely easy to use with a range of applications. The strong popularity and user community of SAN Health shows that Brocade is hitting these requirements on the mark. SAN Health has the right mix of speed, depth, and flexible reporting."

Brocade SAN users can access SAN Health by registering on Brocade Connect at www.brocade.com/sanhealth. Brocade Partners can access and share SAN Health with their customers through the Brocade Partner Network Web site, also accessed through www.brocade.com/sanhealth.

About Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
Brocade delivers the industry's leading platforms and solutions for intelligently connecting, managing, and optimizing IT resources in shared storage environments. The world's premier systems, server, and storage providers offer the Brocade SilkWorm family of fabric switches and software as the foundation for SAN solutions in organizations of all sizes. In addition, the Brocade Tapestry family of application infrastructure solutions extends the ability to proactively manage and optimize application and information resources across the enterprise. Using Brocade solutions, organizations are better positioned to reduce cost, manage complexity, and satisfy business compliance requirements through optimized use and management of their application infrastructures. For more information, visit the Brocade Web site at www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com.