AOC cables for Brocade Fiberchannel

Question

I have a FC switch from brocade with 16Gb ports and I want to connect to an array enclosure from another vendor. For internal requirements, it should be connected through twinax AOC cables. My problem is that all my cable suppliers only provide me "10Gb AOC cables" so I have a couple of questions:

• The SFP+ transceiver in the "10Gb AOC cable", would it be recognised in my 16Gb FC port in the Brocade switch?
• The 16Gb communication through the cable will work in the "10Gb AOC cable"?

Regards.

Answer 1

You will need to check your switch's manual or compatibility list. Not all switches (and firmware versions) are compatible with AOC cables.

Additionally, 10 Gb cables are not guaranteed to work with 16 Gb although they usually do.

If your supplier guarantees the cables to work with your switch he probably knows what he's talking about though.

Answer 2

After talking with my Brocade vendor, "there are no such thing as 16 GB FC AOC cable". Is have been a misunderstanding between Brocade FiberChannel and Brocade ethernet

I mean, the communication in Brocade FC is always done with the chain Transceiver FC<->Fiber cable<->Transceiver FC at 8, 16 Gbps or whatever.

In the other hand, the communication in Brocade ethernet can be done via with the chain Transceiver Ethernet<->Fiber cable<->Transceiver ethernet or alternatively with a single DAC/AOC cable whare each tail of the cable has to be compatible with the final device.

@Zac67 thanks for your answer. I will accept mine because it's a bit more accurrate.