Open the door to blazing-fast 16 Gbps Fibre Channel bandwidth end-to-end across servers, storage and SAN networking with the Brocade M6505 Fibre Channel Blade.

- Enable flatter, faster and simpler fabrics with fewer cables, increasing consolidation while reducing network complexity and costs.
- Manage explosive physical and virtual server growth with pay-as-you-grow scalability. Buy only what you need now and add more blade switches down the road.
- Meet the uncompromising I/O demands of enterprise-class storage.
- Maximize performance and protect your SAN and server investments with flexible 16/8/4 Gbps speed options and scalable growth.
- Protect your SAN and Server investments with flexible speed options and scalable growth.
- Help ensure uptime with up to four switches per chassis for complete redundancy.

Simplified, flexible deployment

Deploy the M6505 as a Brocade Access Gateway or as a full-fabric switch.

- Access Gateway mode utilizes N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) switch standards to present physical and virtual servers directly to the core of SAN fabrics. This makes the Access Gateway transparent to the SAN fabric, greatly reducing management of the network edge. The Brocade M6505 in Access Gateway mode can connect servers to NPIV-enabled Brocade B-Series, Brocade M-Series and other SAN fabrics.
- Dynamic Ports on Demand (POD) provides a flexible mechanism for allocating port licenses that you can purchase to extend the base functionality of your Brocade switches. These additional ports are enabled after you install the appropriate license keys. The Dynamic POD feature assigns port licenses based on your connectivity choices. Any port on the switch can claim a free assignment from the pool of available POD licenses.