NetApp today announced it will OEM the Brocade DCX Backbone as part of its data centre storage offerings.

The companies established a storage and data management OEM alliance in October 2002, alongside other partnerships with Dell, EMC, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

Brocade data centre infrastructure vice president Ian Whiting said the DCX complements NetApp's products because it supports server virtualization, has high asset utilization and low power and cooling requirements.

"Brocade's DCX Backbone is an ideal complement to NetApp's unified storage platforms, including the FAS3000 series and FAS6000 series," Whiting said.

"The strategy with the DCX includes a future path to improved Fibre Channel or Ethernet interoperability and consolidation.

"NetApp's storage solutions coupled with the DCX will provide customers with interoperability and investment protection."

NetApp vice president of solutions marketing Patrick Rogers said the DCX helps its customers to consolidate data management and storage environments into logical infrastructure.

"Enterprise customers place much emphasis on rationalizing and virtualizing their data centre infrastructure," Rogers said.

"The DCX is more scalable than SAN directors and accommodates more virtualized applications and has the industry's highest density footprint as it requires half the power of competitive offerings and delivers five times the bandwidth.

"NetApp customers will be able to consolidate their data management and storage environments into logical, multi-protocol infrastructures for both Fibre Channel and Ethernet SANs and support existing and emerging protocols."

The DCX solution can be purchased immediately from NetApp and its channel partners.