Storage vendor Brocade has announced plans to adapt existing storage infrastructure for the software defined data center (SDDC), with Ethernet fabrics being the latest target for modification.

At the VMWorld conference in San Francisco, Brocade unveiled the latest stage of its Solid State Ready program, which will address Ethernet fabrics, solutions testing and market development initiatives.

The Solid State Ready program - launched earlier this year - is a framework of tests for qualities such as availability, functionality, manageability, performance, reliability, serviceability and scalability.

The scheme is designed to investigate the interoperability and performance of equipment with Brocade technology.

It involves stress testing with a variety of tools and workloads, with performance being certified under a variety of VMware configurations.

At the VMworld conference Brocade demonstrated how data centers can use solid-state storage along with its Brocade Fabric Vision technology and VMware’s vCenter operations management suite and VMware Log Insight.

According to Brocade, this combination will give data center managers and service providers more ‘actionable intelligence and greater visibility’ in tomorrow’s SDDC.

VMware’s VP of product marketing for the cloud management business unit Sajai Krishnan said the foundations of this will be solid state technology.

“All-flash storage and high-performance networks have become essential elements in creating and operating software-defined data centers," Krishnan said.

"This Solid State Ready program will allow enterprises to realize the benefits of the collaborative efforts of VMware and Brocade to get better visibility, simplified management, rapid root-cause detection and optimal performance in virtual environments."

Brocade Fabric Vision - an extension of it 5G Fiber Channel system – promises more uptime and simpler SAN (storage area networks) management.

According to IDC research director for storage systems Ashish Nadkarni software-defined platforms will faster than any other market segment in the file- and object-based storage market.

“This growth will primarily be driven by a rich and diverse set of data-intensive use cases across multiple industries and geographies".