IBM Storage Networking SAN512B-7 Gen 7 Fibre Channel Director, 8961-F78

8961-F78 is the machine type-model of the IBM Storage Networking SAN512B-7, the 8-slot IBM b-type Gen 7 Fibre Channel director, which is the Brocade X7-8. It is a 14U chassis for large enterprise SANs, with eight vertical blade slots giving up to 384 line-rate 64Gbps ports, or up to 512 line-rate 32Gbps ports, for device connectivity.

Port blades available for it are the FC64-48 (48 ports at 64Gbps, backward compatible to 8, 10, 16 and 32Gbps), the FC32-X7-48 (48 ports at 32Gbps) and the FC32-64 (64 ports at 32Gbps, with 10, 25 and 40GbE FCoE through its QSFP ports). The SX6 extension blade adds 16 32Gbps Fibre Channel ports, 16 1/10GbE ports and two 40GbE ports for replication over IP, and up to four can be installed.

Two control processor blades (CPX7) occupy the half-height slots, where one active blade controls all ports and the standby takes over on failure. Two core routing blades (CR64-8) interconnect all port blades and provide up to 32 QSFP56 UltraScale ICL ports for linking neighbouring chassis without using port-blade ports.

Serviceable parts are hot-swappable: three fan assemblies, up to four power supplies and two WWN cards, with NPI or NPE airflow depending on the fan and power supply type. Port blades use SFP+, QSFP+ and QSFP28 transceivers, and the core routing blades take QSFP28 or QSFP56 optics. A chassis door is required for EMI compliance, and a cable management comb mounts below the blades.

For a 32Gbps port blade that fits this chassis, see the FC32-X7-48 48-port 32Gb blade.