Release Notes

Fabric OS v7.2.0a Release Notes v1.0 Page 19 of 93
Important Notes
This section contains information that you should consider before you use this Fabric OS release.
Brocade Network Advisor Compatibility
Brocade Network Advisor greatly simplifies the steps involved in daily operations while improving the
performance and reliability of the overall SAN and IP networking environment. Brocade Network Advisor
unifies, under a single platform, network management for SAN, LAN and converged networks. Brocade Network
Advisor provides a consistent user experience, across the entire Brocade portfolio of switches, routers and
adapters.
Brocade Network Advisor provide health and performance dashboards, with an easy-to-use graphical user
interface and comprehensive features that automate repetitive tasks. With Brocade Network Advisor, storage
and network administrators can proactively manage their SAN environments to support non-stop networking,
address issues before they impact operations, and minimize manual tasks.
Brocade Network Advisor is available with flexible packaging and licensing options for a wide range of network
deployments and for future network expansion. Brocade Network Advisor 12.1.1 is available in
 SAN-only edition
 IP-only edition
 SAN+IP edition.
For SAN Management, Network Advisor 12.1.1 is available in three editions:
 Network Advisor Professional: a fabric management application that is ideally suited for small-size
businesses that need a lightweight management product to manage their smaller fabrics. It manages
one FOS fabric at a time and up to 1,000 switch ports. It provides support for Brocade FC switches,
Brocade HBAs / CNAs, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switches.
 Network Advisor Professional Plus: a SAN management application designed for medium-size
businesses or departmental SANs for managing up to thirty-six physical or virtual fabrics (FOS) and up
to 2,560 switch ports. It supports Brocade backbone and director products (DCX 8510-4/DCX-4S,
48Ks, etc.), FC switches, Fibre Channel Over IP (FCIP) switches, Fibre Channel Routing (FCR) switches/
Integrated Routing (IR) capabilities, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) / DCB switches, and Brocade
HBAs / CNAs.
 Network Advisor Enterprise: a management application designed for enterprise-class SANs for
managing up to thirty-six physical or virtual fabrics and up to 9,000 switch ports. Network Advisor SAN
Enterprise supports all the hardware platforms and features that Network Advisor Professional Plus
supports, and adds support for the Brocade DCX Backbone (DCX 8510-8/DCX) and Fiber Connectivity
(FICON) capabilities.
More details about Network Advisor’s new enhancements can be found in the Network Advisor 12.1.1 Release
Notes, Network Advisor 12.1.1 User Guide, and Network Advisor 12.1.1 Installation, Migration, & Transition
Guides.
Note:
Brocade Network Advisor 12.1.1 or later is required to manage switches running FOS 7.2 or later.
WebTools Compatibility
FOS v7.2 is qualified and supported only with Oracle JRE 1.7.0 update 25.