QLogic 10GbE Network Adapters Certified for VMware ESX

QLogic Corp. announced that its 8000 Series 10GbE Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) converged network adapters (CNAs) are now certified for VMware ESX, enabling customers to consolidate data and storage networking into a single adapter.

The QLogic 8000 Series integrates seamlessly with existing Fibre Channel devices and provides all the benefits of QLogic Fibre Channel adapters, including port virtualization. QLogic CNAs reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) through reduced hardware, power, cabling, cooling and management costs, while providing superior performance through 10Gig Ethernet speeds with full FCoE offload.

QLogic, the first company to ship converged network adapters, designed the 8000 Series CNAs to meet the high-performance needs of VMware ESX through 10Gb Ethernet speeds and throughput, and full hardware offload for FCoE protocol processing, unlike NIC solutions that will rely on FCoE software initiators. The 8000 Series leverages the same Fibre Channel adapter architecture that has been deployed and battle-hardened in millions of previous installations, for full compatibility with current data center investments.

"As customers continue to rapidly increase their VMware virtualization footprint in datacenters, QLogic’s FCoE technology aims to simplify cabling and provide higher performance storage connectivity through converged data and storage networking," said Shekar Ayyar, vice president of alliances at VMware. "QLogic 10GbE CNAs are a great complement to the VMware platform, allowing customers to take full advantage of the enhanced performance and manageability features of VMware virtualized environments."

"QLogic continues its longstanding collaboration with VMware to provide emerging technologies that solve end-user needs in a virtualized data center," said Amit Vashi, vice president of marketing, QLogic Host Solutions Group. "VMware-certified CNAs are the latest joint effort by our companies to provide high-performance I/O convergence technology in a virtualized data center."

"As businesses begin to move to 10Gb Enhanced Ethernet networks, we see significant market potential for FCoE," said Dennis Martin, founder and president of computer industry analyst firm Demartek. "In the recent Fibre Channel Test Drive conducted by QLogic and numerous other industry participants, we observed QLogic CNAs to be fully compatible with existing Fibre Channel products, and with their ability to fully offload FCoE processing from the server CPU, the 8000 Series should prove to be a worthy FCoE solution in virtualized environments like VMware ESX."’

Fibre Channel over Ethernet — Unifying Data and Storage Networks
FCoE, the standard for transporting Fibre Channel frames over Ethernet, is designed to make converged networks possible for data centers. With converged networks now on the way to becoming a reality, servers will no longer require separate interfaces for data and storage networking. IT professionals can increase functionality while reducing cost and complexity by using a single set of cables and switches.

QLogic 8000 Series CNAs — Make Your Network Fly
The QLogic 8000 Series is a family of converged network adapters designed for next-generation, virtualized and unified data centers with powerful multi-processor, multi-core servers. QLogic 8000 Series CNAs are optimized for both data and storage (FCoE) networking virtualization with fierce 10GbE performance to handle large numbers of virtual machines. QLogic 8000 Series CNAs also reduce data center TCO by enabling consolidation of data and storage networking onto a single adapter to reduce cabling, power and cooling. By using the same industry-standard storage area network (SAN) services, QLogic driver architecture and QLogic management tools already deployed with the largest installed base of Fibre Channel HBAs in the world, the QLogic 8000 Series CNAs completely protect customer investments in their existing Fibre Channel SANs.