Emulex Announces LP21000 Family of Converged Network Adapters Supporting Fibre Channel over Ethernet By VSM News Staff published: Tuesday, April 08 2008
New
Products Leverage Emulex's Fully Qualified, OEM Certified Fibre Channel
Drivers to Provide Investment Protection
Storage Networking World - ORLANDO, Fla.,
April 8, 2008 - Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX) today introduced its
LightPulse® LP21000 family of converged network adapters (CNAs), which enable
both network and storage traffic to be combined onto a single Unified Fabric.
Utilizing a 10Gb/s Enhanced Ethernet network, Emulex's LP21000 family is
designed to support the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol that
converges Ethernet-based LAN and Fibre Channel-based SAN connectivity. Available
this quarter, Emulex's family of LP21000 CNAs enable reduced data center
complexity, management costs and power consumption.
Customers deploying Emulex LP21000 CNAs benefit from many of
the same features and capabilities associated with the Company's award-winning
LightPulse family of Fibre Channel host bus adapters, such as fully qualified,
OEM supported drivers based on a common architecture that spans both product
lines. Providing a common driver architecture allows end users to seamlessly
integrate Emulex FCoE-based CNAs into existing data centers using the same
software infrastructure across the SAN.
"Emulex's approach to FCoE promises to deliver
the convergence that data center managers require to streamline operations and
reduce overall total cost of ownership. Enabling our customers to use a common
architecture across both CNAs and HBAs provides a seamless migration path for
deploying next generation FCoE connectivity solutions," said Ameesh
Divatia, general manager and senior vice president, Intelligent Network
Products, Emulex Corp. "Our goal is to preserve and leverage the
substantial investments our customers have made in Fibre Channel technology and
SAN management tools, while delivering the next generation products necessary
to help transform their data center infrastructures."
Additionally, Emulex is working with an ecosystem of
partners to bring interoperable FCoE-based solutions to market. For example,
Emulex is collaborating with Cisco to help ensure broad interoperability of the
LP21000 family of CNAs and the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series of switch products.
Emulex is also working with its OEM partners on product qualification and
support.
"FCoE can help deliver a seamless path for data center
managers looking to converge multiple fabrics to help streamline operations in
an effort to consolidate their environments onto a single network," said
Barbara Robidoux, vice president of storage marketing, EMC. "EMC is
working with partners like Emulex to help ensure the optimization benefits
ultimately translate into increased efficiency and lower costs. One of the ways
to lower costs is to help preserve customers' existing investments, which is
one of the key attributes of Emulex's approach to a common architecture."
Trends such as server consolidation, convergence and
virtualization are key drivers for increased SAN deployments. With FCoE,
customers may now leverage the ubiquity of Ethernet to converge both storage
and networking traffic, improve overall efficiency and simplify the
infrastructure. Designed to natively transport Fibre Channel traffic over the
Ethernet network, FCoE will take advantage of lossless Ethernet in the data
center. A lossless Ethernet fabric provides the level of performance and
reliable delivery of data required for enterprise storage environments.
"Working with an ecosystem of leading vendors such as
Emulex, we expect FCoE to provide customers with a compelling next-generation
solution that fits within their existing SAN environments and preserves their
current data center investment," said Soni Jiandani, vice president of
marketing at Nuova Systems, a majority-owned subsidiary of Cisco. "Cisco
and Emulex share a vision to help customers migrate to technologies like FCoE
that provide a solid return on investment, while taking advantage of existing
data center investments in both Ethernet and Fibre Channel."
"Enterprises face a number of difficult challenges as
they strive to simplify their data centers through converged networks. They
need solutions that allow them to protect their investments in key mission
critical and business critical applications," said Richard Villars, vice
president of storage systems research, IDC. "Solutions like
Emulex's new FCoE-enabled products that protect enterprises' investments
in existing tried and tested driver architectures will play a critical role in
helping companies deploy more scalable and efficient data centers."
Emulex is teaming with Cisco to demonstrate FCoE products
within the Emulex booth at this week's Storage Networking World in Orlando, Fla.,
Booth 308.
About FCoE
FCoE is designed to provide an efficient storage protocol
for use on a Unified Fabric within the data center. The end user benefits
associated with FCoE include consolidated management and connectivity, which
will lower operating costs and protect customers' existing Fibre Channel
infrastructure investments. For more information on Emulex's FCoE
products, click here .
About Emulex
Emulex Corporation creates enterprise-class products that
intelligently connect storage, servers and networks. The world's leading
server and storage providers rely on Emulex award-winning HBAs, intelligent
storage platforms and embedded storage products, including switches, bridges,
routers and I/O controllers, to build reliable, scalable and high performance
storage and server solutions. Emulex is listed on the New York Stock Exchange
(NYSE:ELX) and corporate headquarters are located in Costa Mesa, California.
News releases and other information about Emulex Corporation are available at www.emulex.com .
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