In storage area networking, Fabric OS is a firmware for Brocade's Fibre Channel switches and directors.

First generation

The first generation of Fabric OS was developed on top of a VxWorks kernel and was mainly used in the Brocade Silkworm 2000 and first 3000 series. 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 platform, and uses MontaVista Linux, a Linux derivative with real-time performance enhancements. With the advent of MontaVista, switches and directors have the ability of hot firmware activation (without downtime for Fibre Channel fabric), and many useful diagnostic commands.

According to GPL and LGPL terms, Brocade provides access to sources of distributed free software, on which Fabric OS firmware is 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
• Secure Fabric OS (SFOS)
• Brocade Advanced Zoning
• ISL trunking
• Advanced Performance Monitoring (APM)
• Fabric Watch

Versions

• Fabric OS 6.x
  • 6.1: M-EOS compatibility enhacements
  • 6.0: LDAP support
• Fabric OS 5.x
  • 5.3: switch to Linux 2.6 kernel
  • 5.1: Access Gateway mode
• Fabric OS 4.x
  • 4.1: SSH support, Multiple user access
• Fabric OS 3.x
• Fabric OS 2.x

References